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.