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Lesson plans

Lesson Plan 1

Objective: 
Students will be able to compare work songs across cultures

Time Allotment: One class period (45 minutes – 1 hour)
Target Level:  3rd to 8th grade

Essential Questions:

  • Why do people sing, dance, and create art?
  • How can the products of one culture (such as songs) be compared to the products of another culture?
  • How do the practices and traditions of a people affect their culture?

Enduring Understandings:

  • A “work song” is an informal musical piece that workers sing to entertain themselves while they work.
  • People in farming cultures often sing songs that celebrate the harvest and build community around shared work.
  • Songs, especially songs that people sing at special times of the year, are an important part of a peoples’ culture.

Standards Alignment:
National Standards for Foreign Language Education: 

  • Standard 2.1 Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied
  • Standard 4.2: Students demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied and their own

National Standards for Music Education:

  • Standard 6. Listening to, analyzing, and describing music.
  • Standard 9: Students describe distinguishing characteristics of representative music genres and styles from a variety of cultures

Common Core Standards for Literacy in Social Studies:

  • Standard RH 7. Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts.

Steps for Teachers:
Resources:

Opening the Lesson:
Teacher will introduce the day’s topic: Work songs in different cultures. Students will be instructed to recollect songs from their own childhoods, and write down as many titles as they can remember. (3-5 minutes)

Introduction to Work Songs and “Yalli Zara’tu”
Teacher will write student submissions for songs on the board. If there are many songs that deal with work, or professions, or chores, or group activities, point that out to the students.
Teacher will play a clip from the 1937 Arabic film “Long Live Love” and invite students to make observations about what they see? (Sample prompt questions: What are the people in the film doing? What emotions are the characters showing? Why do you think they would be singing?)

Teacher will introduce the concept of “work songs” and especially “harvest songs.”
Ask students to speculate on why a person or group might sing songs during their work.
Possible answers: (“Pass the time,” “keep a rhythm,” alleviate boredom,” “celebrate the harvest.”)

Teacher will describe the role that communal labor plays in agricultural societies. Have students discuss or write their response to the question, “What do you do to pass the time when you are doing chores?”
Teacher will distribute or project the lyrics to “Yalli Zara’tu” and play the audio to the song (from the website), so that students may follow along. As they are listening, have students brainstorm (individually or in groups), what values are reflected in these lyrics. Have students record their thoughts in a graphic organizer (in the materials section).

Introduction to “Your Hay it is Mow’d, and your Corn is Reap’d” 
Teacher introduces the history and context for the song (part of the “King Author” opera, written in 1691). It occurs at a time when the peasants are singing about the harvest being brought in.
Relevant vocabulary:  “Parson” is a local priest, who at this time demanded 10% (“one in ten”) of every year’s harvest for the church.

Teacher plays the songs, and distributes lyrics sheets.

Group Work – “Compare and Contrast”
The students will complete a graphic organizer, listing the descriptions of the song “Yalli zara’tu” and “Your Hay it is Mow’d.” Have students share out how they would describe both songs. Then, students may transfer their descriptions into a Venn Diagram, in order to show the similarities and differences between the two songs.

Individual Work:
Each student will generate a list of daily activities and chores (washing the dishes, picking up your room, etc.). From that list, he or she will choose one activity from the list, and brainstorm a song that could be sung (below), to pass the time while completing that activity.

Closing
Each student complete a reflection slip, recounting what he or she learned that day.

Lesson Plan 2

Objective:  
Students will be able to sing “Yalli zara’tu” in Arabic with minimal adult assistance.

Time Allotment:  Three class periods
Target Level: 6th to 12th grade

Overview:
This lesson plan contains a step-by-step overview of how to make full use of the “Yalli zara’tu” online interactive tool.  This may be used by music and language teachers.

Standards Alignment:
National Standards for Foreign Language Education: 

  • Standard 1.2:  Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on a variety of topics
  • Standard 3.1:  Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language

National Standards for Music Education

  • Standard 1: Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
  • Standard 5: Reading and notating music.

Steps for Teachers

Necessary Resources:
To make full use of this lesson, teachers should have access to:

Introducing the Lesson:  (one class period)

  1. Announce to students that they will be learning how to sing a famous Egyptian song from the turn of the century.
    • Play the video clip of Al-Bustan resident takht ensemble with guest vocalist Youssef Kassab performing “Yalli Zara’tu”
    • Invite student reactions
  2. Introduce students to the online interactive tool for learning “Yalli zara’tu”
    • Distribute lyrics sheets so students can follow along with the words.
    • Play through the entire song once, with the full musical accompaniment.
    • Point out how the tool allows you to hear individual portions of the song.
    • Introduce the diction track, which allows the students to learn the lyrics in Arabic.
  3. If the classroom has percussive instruments, and the teacher feels confident in teaching percussive rhythms, divide the class into students who will sing, and students who will play percussion.
  4. Demonstrate how the students will learn to pronounce the lyrics in Arabic
    • Split up the song into small sections of one line each.
    • Play the section of the song with the instrumental track, percussion track, and diction track.
    • Section by section and based on the non-melodic diction track, lead the students in practicing pronunciation of the Arabic words.
  5. Introduce and demonstrate the call-and-response method of learning the song
    • Teacher plays the percussion track, sings a section of the song, and students respond.
  6. Begin with the first section of the song. Start by practicing the pronunciation of Arabic words until students are comfortable and confident with them.
  7. Conclude the class by reviewing the song in its entirety, and showing students how much they have learned.

Practice and Performance: (two class periods)

  1. Re-introduce the song by playing either the concert performance of “Yalli Zara’tu” or the clip from the 1937 film “Long Live Love”
  2. Review the procedures for pronouncing the Arabic lyrics, and practicing the song itself (call and response) with the students.
  3. Pick up where you left off with the song the previous day. Continue by reviewing and practicing the pronunciations.
  4. Use the call-and-response method of instruction to build student practice with singing the lyrics.
  5. When students are confident singing the lyrics, go back from the beginning and let them sing the song from the beginning, with teacher accompaniment. Continue to lead them through practice of the lyrics, gradually recusing yourself from providing aid.
  6. The final goal is for students to be able to sing the song by themselves, without teacher assistance. This may be most appropriate for secondary-level choirs. For younger students, students may need to retain their lyrics sheets and may take longer to learn the song.

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