The candidate understands how to engage learners through interdisciplinary lessons that

utilize concept based teaching and authentic learning experiences to engage students in
effective communication, collaboration, outside resources, reading, technology, and in critical
and creative thinking.

The candidate should complete a reflective essay illustrating appropriate application of

content utilized in lessons. Three artifacts are to be submitted and may include Unit Plans,
Student Feedback, Student Evaluations, Teacher Observations and Evaluations, lesson plans,
assignments, and student work.

Music offers a fantastic avenue for cross-curricular lessons. Music is math and science, and each
song has a history. This creates the perfect opportunity for collaboration with other teachers and
classes. By collaborating, students are more apt to see the value of not only music but the collaborating
subject. When partnering with other teachers, students use resources and technology in new and
creative ways. These lessons are extremely engaging when presented in the appropriate manner.
In my experiences I created some lessons including different subjects. I successfully collaborated
with ag teachers creating a secondary lesson for animal byproducts and instrument production. This
lesson was not taught in a classroom, but I gained the experience to create cohesive lessons with other
subjects. I also participated in a group teach. This classroom combined argumentative essays with music
relevance. We created a debate. This debate argued over two songs and which one students thought
should be taken to space. Our final question after the debate was whether music should be a resource
we should take to space at all.
I love that music is susceptible to such collaboration and I look forward to implementing it in my
curriculum in the future. This offers great opportunities for authentic learning experiences and
assessments. Music ensemble assessments are already authentic (performing), but incorporating other
classes creates more experiences. The class could team up with a business class and create their own
recording business. These experiences are not exclusive to secondary music education. In elementary
music, I was creating a unit to teach Call and Response form. I found a nice song called Echoes that not
only exhibits the form I was teaching, but I connected it to soundwaves and echoes.
I taught two different lessons incorporating interdisciplinary connections as a student teacher.
One was a language arts connection where students created a story that followed the music of a piece
they were working on. The second was a movement activity that worked motor skills and left brain vs.
right brain. I asked leading questions as to how both these activities related to music, and I believe they
were very successful in making the connections.
These are vital experiences that keep students engaged and create authentic real-life moments.
Teachers must find ways to include these while teaching other musical concepts. There are ways to add
great value to music curriculum that can only be gained by collaborating.