Native American: Music and Dance

Subject: Music

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Video

Singers from three different nations—Navajo, Apache, and Totonac—discuss the purposes of their music and the connection between music/singing and dancing in their cultures.

Skill: Relate musical ideas and works with societal, cultural, and historical contexts to deepen understanding.

Georgia Standard: ESBC.CN.2

 

Song Maker

Subject: Music

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Interactive

Learn to create and share your own songs, adding beats, melodies and harmonies.

Skill: Create basic rhythmic and melodic accompaniments to support other elements of musical performance.

Georgia Standard: ESBC.CR.1b

 

Fast or Slow Means Tempo

Subject: Music

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Video

Largo. Vivace. Adagio. These words may sound like dishes one can order at an Italian restaurant, but they’re actually very important directions found in a musical score. Tempo—an Italian word meaning "time"—tells musicians and listeners how fast or slow a piece of music should be performed. If a composer didn't include a tempo marking in his or her score, the resulting music might sound like chaos. This video explores the concept of tempo—what it means, how it's used, and why it's such an integral element of music—all with some help from two bearded lumberjacks.

Skill: Identify basic music vocabulary and symbols representing tempo, meter, dynamics, and other expressive elements.

Georgia Standard: ESBC.PR.1b

 

Bharatanatyam Performance | Dance Arts Toolkit

Subject: Dance

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Video

Dancer Lakshmi Sriraman performs the Bharatanatyam, a classical dance from India, in this video from the Dance Arts Toolkit series.

Skill: Understand and demonstrate dance throughout history and in various cultures.

Georgia Standard: ESD3.CN.1

 

Git-Hoan Eagle Dance | Dance Arts Toolkit

Subject: Dance

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Video

The Git-Hoan Dancers perform a traditional Tsimshian dance in this video from the Dance Arts Toolkit series. The dance tells the story of an eagle and a young chief.

Skill: Understand and demonstrate dance throughout history and in various cultures.

Georgia Standard: ESD3.CN.1

 

Lambah | Dance Arts Toolkit

Subject: Dance

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Video

Imani Dance and Drum Company performs the Lambah in this video from the Dance Arts Toolkit series. The Lambah is a traditional dance and music that originated in ancient Mali with the Bambara-Mandingo peoples.

Skill: Understand and demonstrate dance throughout history and in various cultures.

Georgia Standard: ESD3.CN.1

 

What Music Shares with Art

Subject: Music

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Video

Music and art—painting, sculpture, design, and architecture—echo each other in countless ways. Exploring this resonance can deepen our experience of both. Listening to a work through the lens of a companion piece of art helps us better know a style common to them both, such as Baroque or Impressionism; can clarify the particular historical period they share; and can sharpen our grasp of shared artistic elements, such as rhythm, color, texture, and form. Sometimes artworks also inspire musical compositions and sharing common stories. This short, vibrant tour of several art/music connections is designed to introduce sometimes abstract musical concepts through the concrete visuals of a different, but intriguingly related, kind of creation.

Skill: Describe connections between music and the other fine arts.

Georgia Standard: ESGM3.CN.1a

 

How History Influences Music

Subject: Music

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Video

Music reflects the time and place of its composition. Historians often look to music to learn more about a society and its culture. This video explores the history surrounding Zoltán Kodály's Dances of Galánta. Born in 1882, a time of great industrial and cultural change, Kodály grew up in Galánta, on a train line between Vienna and Budapest. There he was exposed to Hungarian folk and dance music. It made a lifelong impression on him. Later, wanting to preserve the music that entranced him as a child, and aided by the then-new technology of recording, Kodály went another step further by composing Dances of Galánta, a fusion of folk and classical rhythms and styles. This video links Dances to the culture, crises, and emerging technologies of its time.

Skill: Connect music to history and culture.

Georgia Standard: ESGM3.CN.2

 

Rests: Sometimes Music is Silence

Subject: Music

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Video

Two key symbols permeate a musical score—notes and rests. Notes represent the sounds (or pitches) we hear, while rests represent the sounds we don't hear. Rests indicate the absence of a sounding note, but they are very much part of the music. Every note value has an equivalent rest value. Quarter notes and quarter rests occupy the same amount of time, as do half notes and half rests, whole notes and whole rests, and so on. But while we count notes and rests in the same way, they are in a sense, opposites. They don't look very alike, either. With the help of Ulysses the Unicyclist, this video explores musical rests—what they look like, what they mean, and their durational values.

Skill: Read, notate, and identify quarter notes, quarter rests, half notes, half rests, barred eighth notes, and barred sixteenth notes using iconic or standard notation in simple meter.

Georgia Standard: ESGM3.PR.3a

 

Theatre | Artistic Roots

Subject: Theatre

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Video

Sophie visits the Cloverdale Playhouse in Montgomery, Alabama to learn more about community theatre and the tools of acting from theatre director Sarah Thornton and actor Ron McCall, which she then uses in acting exercises with students on stage.

Skill: Explore how theatre connects to life experience, careers, and other content.

Georgia Standard: TA3.CN.1

 

Controlling Creative Energy

Subject: Theatre

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Video with activity

Drama teacher Curt Tofteland leads students in an exploration of how actors use energy. In an activity called “Passing Energy,” students pass an imaginary ball of energy to each other.

Skill: Act by communicating and sustaining roles in formal and informal environments.

Georgia Standard: TA3.PR.1

 

Theater Warm-Up Games | Ford's Theatre

Subject: Theatre

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Video

Energize your class for learning and performance! These games and vocal warm-ups get your students moving, thinking creatively and working together.

Skill: Act by communicating and sustaining roles in formal and informal environments.

Georgia Standard: TA3.PR.1

 

Dream Catcher

Subject: Visual Art

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Video with Project

Susan Mullins Kwaronhia:wi is a Mohawk from the Kahnawake reserve in Canada. She now lives in Berea, Kentucky. She learned the traditional songs, stories, dances, and crafts of her people from the Elders and works to keep her heritage alive and share it with others. The dreamcatcher originated with the Ojibwe, but has been adopted by other nations. In this video segment, Mullins shows her grandchildren how to create a dreamcatcher. This video was produced with a primary-age audience in mind.

Skill: Investigate and discover the personal relationships of artists to community, culture, and the world through making and studying art.

Georgia Standard: VA3.CN.1

 

Poor Man's Africa

Subject: Visual Art

Source: PBS Learning Media

Resource Type: Video with Project

The Introduction to Ellis Wilson excerpt provides a context for the excerpt Poor Man’s Africa. Wilson (1899-1977) was an African-American painter from Mayfield, Kentucky, whose work honored the everyday lives of people of color. The Poor Man’s Africa segment focuses on Wilson’s travels to Haiti in the 1950s and their effect on his work. His paintings from this period illustrate the distinctive style that would become the hallmark of his work—flat shapes, sharp contrasts, bright colors, and patterned backgrounds with little attention, if any, given to facial features and details.

Skill: Investigate and discover the personal relationships of artists to community, culture, and the world through making and studying art.

Georgia Standard: VA3.CN.1