The Sound of Change

Ashley Flemmer
OVERVIEW:
The purpose of this project is to guide high school students in the quest to
identify, evaluate, and create protest music throughout the history of the
United States.
This project is designed to not only guide students in the quest to identify,
evaluate, and create protest music. It is also designed to guide them to
finding how this music relates to their current life and how they can create
their own protest songs through the use of online sources, informational
texts provided, the use of instruments, the use of Keynote/PowerPoint and
the use of garage band and/or audacity.
GOAL: The goal of this project is ultimately to have students collaborate in
small groups of 2-3 to create a presentation about the history and
importance of protest music in the United States, learn how to evaluate
music, make correlations between this music and their lives, and to create a
song of their own using garage band/instruments.
GRADE LEVEL: Music in Grades 9-12
TIME: 60 minute sessions (6 sessions Total)
RESOURCES:
Computer
Speakers/Headphones
Drums
Other auxiliary instruments as needed
Paper
Markers
Colored Pencils
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmMS9XVIa00
http://showbams.com/2012/11/09/10-most-important-political-protestsongs-of-the-last-50-years/
2 articles on protest music
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/sixties/essays/protestmusic-1960s

http://xpatmatt.com/music-with-a-message-a-brief-historyof-protest-music-in-north-america/

MI STANDARDS AND BENCHMARKS:

I.

Communication and Collaboration

9-12.CC.2 use available technologies (e.g. desktop conferencing, email, videoconferencing, instant messaging) to communicate with
others on a class assignment or project

II.

9-12.CC.3. collaborate in content-related projects that integrate a

variety of media (e.g., print, audio, video, graphic, simulations, and
models)

III.

9-12.CC.4. plan and implement a collaborative project using

telecommunications tools (e.g., ePals, discussion boards, online
groups, interactive web sites, videoconferencing)

IV.

Technology Operations and Concepts

9-12.TC.6 participate in a virtual environment as a strategy to build
21st century learning skills

V.

9-12.CI.1. apply advanced software features (e.g. built-in

thesaurus, templates, styles) to redesign the appearance of word
processing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

VI.

9-12.CI.3. use a variety of media and formats to design, develop,

publish, and present projects (e.g., newsletters, web sites,
presentations, photo galleries)

Objectives:
Have all students/teachers/etc. (this section is very brief/succinct):
I.

Create a summarized history of protest music

II.

Fill out the music evaluation template and then type it into the
template and submit electronically.

III.

Create lyrics and music to original protest song using garage band.

IV.

Create a final Keynote/Powerpoint presentation that includes all

information gathered from the project (Objectives 1, 2, and 3)

V.

Add song in sound clip to the presentation in Keynote or Power

Point.

IMPLEMENTATION PLAN:
Week 1-I will read P!NKs Lyrics to Dear Mr. President to see what the
students take away from it. We will watch the video in the resources list
above and have guided notes. Once that is complete, students will be broke
up into 8 groups. These groups will consist of 2 to 3 students. They will be
assigned the two articles from above to read and outline. I will ask them to
use a collaboration tool such as google docs, Trello, or Popplet to first
brainstorm what they know already about protest music and then to outline
the articles in order to organize their information and ideas for the final
keynote/powerpoint/prezi presentation.

Week 2-Students will immediately divide into groups and get settled at their
stations. I will have sent them all a link to a google doc that contains a
music evaluation template and list of music vocabulary terms particularly for
their group. I will then play the top ten protest songs from the article listed
in the resources above. The group will discuss after each song and fill in
their google doc collaboratively at that time. They will have to give reason as
to why they chose the vocabulary words that they did to describe the song.
At the end of the session, I will send out a link to a list of key ideas for lyric
writing. Students will be given the assignment to discover a cause, either
new or old, to write a song about. They then will be given the assignment to
create the lyrics to their song. They will have to pick a collaboration tool
such as google docs or popplet to start brainstorming lyrics and writing the
verses and chorus to their songs.
Week3-Students (in their groups) will bring their work in progress lyrics with
them and will start the process of creating music to go with them. There will
be a folder in a google doc online that has resources on how to use
garageband, different writing techniques, and examples of of various nontraditional composition notation techniques. They need to have their songs
completed by next week so we can start creating the presentations.

Week 4- Students (in their groups) will be compiling all of their information
from the project and will be putting it into a presentation. They can use
Keynote, PowerPoint, or Prezi. The students need to put their song into their
presentations. I will have e-mailed the rubric for the presentation to them
already and it will be available at the front of the room if they need a hard
copy. We will start presenting next week.

Week 5-We will be presenting our projects to the class. Groups 1-4 will
present.
Week 6- We will be presenting our projects to the class. Groups 5-8 will
present.