Overview
Suggested Paths offer teachers the quickest and most direct way to implement TeachRock materials into the classroom. These collections of lessons have been selected to align with specific grade levels, school subjects, and topics of study. Check back frequently for new additions to our Suggested Paths collections.
Lesson Plan Collection:
Black History
Without doubt, the history of American popular music is the history of Black experience in the United States. From the banjo (one of America's earliest popular instruments) to Hip Hop, popular music has been continually informed by the cultural resilience, ingenuity, and genius of the African American community in...
Lesson Plan Collection:
LGBTQ+ History
In recognition of the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the act that began the modern LGBTQ+ movement, TeachRock has released a collection of lessons that supplement the CNN Soundtracks "Out Loud and Proud" episode. Each lesson draws upon the voices and creative work of the LGBTQ+ community to...
Lesson Plan Collection:
Women’s History
Women’s history is American history, and women musicians have played a vital role in shaping it. This suggested path examines key moments and movements in Women’s history in the 20th century, as they have been articulated and defined by women musicians and activists. The suggested path begins with a lesson...
Lesson Plan Collection:
Document Based Questions
Common to Advanced Placement exams, Document-Based Questions (“DBQs”) require students to compose coherent essays that synthesize findings from historical documents with outside research. Document-Based Questions help students contextualize a historical era, examine bias in primary sources, and support a thesis with evidence--competencies equally valuable to students outside AP classes. The materials in...
Lesson Plan Collection:
What the Kids are Listening To
Looking to engage your students with the current music coming out of their headphones? This collection of lessons features contemporary Pop music as an entry point into a wide variety of topics. Use Beyoncé to introduce the United Nations and the transatlantic slave trade, or introduce traditional Latin rhythms through...
Lesson Plan Collection:
Social Emotional Learning (SEL)
The lessons in this collection encourage the development of social and emotional skills, including self-awareness and self-reflection, healthy decision making, self-care, navigating intense emotions, and cultivating good citizenship. By listening to the work of artists such as Beyoncé, Alessia Cara, the Grateful Dead, Charlie Puth and Whiz Khalifa, Tori...
Lesson Plan Collection:
Diverse Voices in Popular Music
In this Suggested Path, students investigate how musicians often serve as voices for the various racial, gendered, generational, and class communities they represent. The path begins with lessons examining how Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, and The Who each uniquely spoke for youth culture in the 1950s and 1960s. Students...
Lesson Plan Collection:
English/Language Arts
This collection presents popular music as an entry point for developing student skills in textual analysis, reading comprehension, persuasive writing, and other ELA skills. Covering a wide range of genres, these lessons ask students to conduct poetic analysis of Bob Dylan lyrics, write press releases on controversial issues in Hip-Hop,...
Lesson Plan Collection:
Music and Social Justice Movements
The lessons below explore the integral role music has played in major social justice movements in American history. In two introductory lessons, students examine how “the beat” in American popular music has both brought people together and threatened the status quo, and they discover how musical performance has been...
Lesson Plan Collection:
Upper Elementary
This collection of lessons is suitable for the upper elementary classroom. With popular music as the entry point, students compare superheroes with Greek mythological heroes, discover poetic devices in writing, consider what it means to be a good citizen. The collection also includes age-appropriate history lessons on the Great...
Lesson Plan Collection:
Blues Collection
These lessons trace the history of the Blues, from its origins in the rural Mississippi Delta to its present status as an international genre. The collection covers Country Blues, The Blues and the Great Migration, and the Electric Blues. It then traces the influences of The Blues in Early...
Lesson Plan Collection:
Guitar History
The lessons below offer a guitar-focused exploration of the history of Rock and Roll, and have been curated to allow guitar performance classes to meet prevailing state standards in English Language Arts and Social Studies. They may work equally well as part of a general music course, or as...
Lesson Plan Collection:
General Music
These collected lessons allow General Music courses to meet prevailing state standards in English Language Arts and Social Studies. In two interactive lessons, students explore rhythmic layering and sampling while discovering the Caribbean and African origins of these music production techniques. Students also discover the cultural origins of Latin...
Lesson Plan Collection:
Social Studies and History
The path begins in the early 1900s, with lessons on the rapid development of technology, and the Great Migration. It then moves into the development of Rock and Roll in the 1950s, taking as a focus the birth of the “teenager,” post-war immigration, McCarthyism, segregation and “white flight” into...