Lesson plan for Alice and Music

This is a work in progress.

I am working on this lesson plan for a 4 hour class for Girl Scouts I am teaching in a few weeks. As I was never a scout, this has been a learning experience.

Anyhoo, here is my lesson plan.

I want to structure the program around the vivid stories musicians imagine while they play. To do this I will  use Alice to animate songs my Scouts would like to perform.

Lesson Plan

10-12:30pm Session I
(Instead of a time-line, I have written interchangeable segments. I have written these in the order I intend to do them, but I may switch the order—ie, if the girls are bored during the session I will get into the breathing warm-ups, the singing earlier. I may include more singing if the girls have experience with that. I don’t want to force shy girls into performing if they aren’t comfortable; however if I get a bunch of extroverts or experienced performers I want to be able to support them.)

15 minutes
Login to the cluster computers, do a session introduction, etc, ask for questions

  • What’s the last song you had stuck in your head?
  • What’s your musical experience?
  • What do you want to know?

15 minutes

Alice Demonstration

  • Show what Alice does, explain why Alice is cool
  • Open a grassy plan, Draw a three step storyboard.
  • Create a scene with with Bird 1, Fairy, Mrs Mitchel, and Fish
  • Show how methods work with Fairy, how to create methods with Fish, an how to move parts of objects with Bird1
  • Show 3 Alice movies I have created
    • 1 with dancing,
    • 1 with scenery talking/moving (1. Chicken walks ¼ way across screen, cat following, sing ½ first verse 2. Chicken walks to center, cat follows, sing rest of ast verse, end together facing camera. 3) cat pounces )
    • 1 with narration
  • (recommended characters for dancing include Adults, Fairies, Fish)
  • Questions?

45 minutes
Roles of Music in Other Cultures

YouTube Videos

  • Sister Act/Philippine Prison Dance
  • Get cool Bollywood/Egyptian Music Video
  • Vitamin C Graduation with Muslim girls
  • Yes We Can from wil.i.am
  • Discuss

Opera

  • Show Papageno/Papagena dance (German)
  • (Show when I am laid in earth, jazz and traditional version)


  • Song to the Moon, Rusalka (Russian)
  • Discuss

15 minutes

  • Brainstorm ideas out-load as a group (Use board, see if they want to form groups)
  • Research what songs you want to work with on YouTube
  • Talk about good movie-making ideas

½ an hour

  • Warm up with breathing
  • Do simple scales
  • 2 choices—sing song with Karaoke, or we can play a recorded version
  • ½ an hour
  • Storyboard some ideas for music videos
  • Do Alice tutorials
  • Revise Storyboards
  • Questions?

Session II

1:15-3:15pm
1:15-2:30
Prepare and Give Presentations
Presentations will include:

  • 2 Sentences about the culture and history of the song (explain some references that don’t make sense). Do research on YouTube, on the internet.
  • What are the rhythm instruments? How would it be different if they had used bongoes? How did you use them as markers for your video?
  • Find a version of your chosen song with a movie from another culture

I will be walking around the cluster, helping the women with programming and editorial issues
2:30-3:05
Give Presentations
3:05-3:15

  • Wrap up, questions, issues, explain about the careers which being an extrovert and a logical thinker can push you towards, lay out several support societies and groups if they want to join a performance and/or programming community.

Inspirational Quote:

Milton Berle – “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”

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