Four iPod-inspired Writing Lessons from the Classroom of Rob Stone: |
 Lesson Title: With Your Own Two Hands
Lesson Overview: Using Ben Harper's "With My Own Two Hands" (as well as another song and two video clips) as inspiration, students create a free-verse poem about their own beliefs on whether they can make a difference and change this world of ours.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: "Yesterday," "Today," and "Tomorrow"
Lesson Overview: After listening to three modern songs that capture this symbolism in words--“Yesterday” by the Beatles, “Today” by the Smashing Pumpkins, and “Tomorrow” from the Annie Soundtrack--students will analyze their own experiences with these three concepts and then compare and contrast them with those of a character from the novel they are reading.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: Poems about Ages and Stages
Lesson Overview: Shakespeare’s The Seven Ages of Man famously pointed out how life happens in stages, as does Harry Chapin’s Cat’s In The Cradle, which breaks a father-son relationship into four stages (verses). Each Student will describe some part (or all) of his/her life as four definitive stages in an original poem. Like Chapin, students will interject a thoughtful, themed statement (chorus) throughout the poem that ties this reflective and introspective activity together.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: My Addidas
Lesson Overview: After listening to Run D.M.C.’s classic, My Adidas, students will think about everywhere their shoes have taken them and the story they have to tell. Using literary devices such as personification, point of view, repetition and rhyme scheme, students will creatively and vividly describe their life and experiences from the perspective of their shoes.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
Eleven iPod-inspired Poetry Lessons from
Nevada Teachers:
|
Twelve iPod-inspired Writing Across the Curriculum Lessons from Nevada Teachers:
|
 Lesson Title: Ain't That America
Lesson Overview: John Mellencamp's song "Pink Houses" focuses on conflicts such as racism, poverty and shattered Amerifcan dreams. For this assignment, students will re-write the song's lyrics, incorporating conflicts from literature they are reading, history they are studying, or conflicts an original character they create might be having.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: Boogie Woogie with a B
Lesson Overview: After discussing both the word choice and the patriotic tones of the Andrews Sisters' "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," students create new songs (sung to the same tune) that speak of other WWII patriotic characters.Cross-Curricular Connection: History
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
|
|
 Lesson Title: Is Perception Reality?
Lesson Overview: Jack Johnson’s “Inaudible Melodies” creates an interesting paradox of how society perceives itself versus the reality of how society really behaves. Students will create a paradox of their own that they feel describes the difference between perception and reality. Students will then turn their paradox into an extended poem using each song as a model for their own writing.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: Summertime and the Writin' is Easy
Lesson Overview: Using various modern renditions of "Summertime," from the opera Porgy and Bess, students study mood as it pertains to musical style. They then attempt to add moods from the song variations to pieces of writing about personal summertime memories.Cross-Curricular Connection: Language Arts
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
|
|
 Lesson Title: One Minute in Time
Lesson Overview: Using The Cure's "10:15 on a Saturday Night" as inspiration, students create a free-verse poem about the minute before something happens. Student poems, like The Cure's song, will be inspired by carefully-chosen onomatopoetic words.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: Dancing with the Math Stars!
Lesson Overview: Using disco music and the inspiration of TV's "Dancing with the Stars," students write the biographies of equations and graphs that are dancing on a television show where math-inspired dancers compete against each other. Cross-Curricular Connection: Math
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
|
|
 Lesson Title: Color my World Grey and Blue
Lesson Overview: After listening to the song “Grey Street” by the Dave Matthews Band, as well as the song “Blue is a Mood” by Blu Cantrell, students will explore the lyrics and discover what role color can play when combined with a particular setting. Once they are armed with this information, students will choose their own color and setting on which to write their own poem or song.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: This I Believe
Lesson Overview: This writing assignments asks students to take a stand and decide how they will make a difference in the effort to save our oceans. First students will listen to several episodes of “This I Believe” to understand the structure of these NPR pod casts. Next, they will listen to a “Science Friday” podcast that describes the state our oceans and how they can take action to reverse the current path of destruction. Finally, students will create a "This I Believe" podcast about the oceans to publish to the classroom iPod or webpage. Cross-Curricular Connection: Science
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
|
|
 Lesson Title: Quest Item Poetry
Lesson Overview: Using Jim Croce's "I've Got a Name" and two stories from Greek mythology as inspiration, students plan a poem about being on life's journey. Croce sings about three unique items he takes on his journey through life (a name, a song, and a dream); students do the same, choosing three unique items.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: Your Own Personal 'Dream Team'
Lesson Overview: Using the song Dream Team by Spearhead as a guide, students will craft an event program outlining and highlighting their own dream team. They will discover who is important in their lives, who motivates and inspires them, and how they can creatively describe these people to share with others in a fun and easy format. Cross-Curricular Connection: Language Arts or Social Studies
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
|
|
 Lesson Title: What Else is Love?
Lesson Overview: Using Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield" as inspiration, students create an original metaphor about love being something other than what it is. The metaphor is extended and unpacked for interesting details. These details become a free verse poem.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: Your Own Personal 'Bucket List'
Lesson Overview: Using the song "Live Like You Were Dying" from the soundtrack for The Bucket List as a model, students will take a look at their values and the things they would like to accomplish in their lives before they run out of time. They will use their writing skills to create their own unique "bucket list," taking this piece of work through the entire writing process. Cross-Curricular Connection: Language Arts
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
|
|
 Lesson Title: What's Important in Your World?
Lesson Overview: “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is a song by Billy Joel which catalogues historical events that happened during a period in his life, between 1949 and 1989. This lesson calls for students to take a closer look at some of the important historical events in their own lifetimes while also closely examining the traits, creating an original poem inspired by Billy Joel's song.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: Creating Memorable Writing
Lesson Overview: Using Baz Luhrmann's "Always Free (to wear sunscreen)" as an inspiration, students create a list of personal rules to live by, then revise the writing to be memorable. Students present their advice in a creative and original way. Cross-Curricular Connection: Language Arts
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
|
|
 Lesson Title: Singing the Blues
Lesson Overview: Inspired by some of the blues songs featured on Ken Burns' Jazz, student writers draft and publish original blues lyrics. Students may also perform their lyrics by using one of the tracks from Jamey Aebersold's Jazz CDs.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: Podcasting Science
Lesson Overview: Students write accurate and organized summaries after hearing about current events in science from the New York Times weekly podcasts: Science Times. These summaries will go into student portofolis so that students can compare their ability to summarize at the beginning of the year to the end of the year. Cross-Curricular Connection: Science
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
|
|
 Lesson Title: School Song Parodies
Lesson Overview: Using Weird Al Yankovic's "Eat It" alongside Alan Katz's picture book Take Me out of the Bathtub as inspiration, students create a song parody about something from school. Students will choose a song that the entire class is familiar with, and they will craft new lyrics to the song.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: How Can We Say "Never Again"?
Lesson Overview: This lesson focuses on this Essential Question, “After WWII, it was said that never again shall we--the international community--allow an act of genocide to occur in the world. What events in the world today would prove this statement false?” Students will look at the current situation in Darfur and, utilizing persuasive writing techniques, create a persuasive poster. Cross-Curricular Connection: History
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
|
|
 Lesson Title: Advice to Youth on Things Now GONE
Lesson Overview: Poetry and music are unmistakably intermixed, and in this lesson, we focus on the word choice and idea development of both song and poem. After listening to the modern song and reading the famous old poem, “Gone” by Switchfoot and “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” by Robert Herrick--students will analyze their own experiences with these the concept of “life” and “time.” They will create their own song or poem about their life philosophy.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: Itsy-Bitsy Math Songs
Lesson Overview: Students will take a mathematical procedure and write step-by-step instructions for the procedure that can be sung to the tunes of familiar nursery rhymes or songs. This will be first completed once as a whole class activity, and then students will work in groups or as individuals to create original songs that demonstrate their ability to put ideas from notes into original words. Cross-Curricular Connection: Math
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
|
|
 Lesson Title: Ain't Gonna Rain No More
Lesson Overview: Using Mance Lipscomb's blues rendition of "It Ain't Gonna Rain No More" and Karen Beaumont's picture book I Ain't Gonna Paint No More as inspiration, students create an original four-line stanza that can be sung to this classic campfire song. As they write to this quick-write, students study our language's helping verbs.
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
 Lesson Title: Scripting the Great Train Robbery
Lesson Overview: After viewing scenes from the 1903 silent movie The Great Train Robbery, students will listen to silent movie music clips. Students will choose one scene and one or two music clips that best go together based on their ears and eyes' perception. Students will write a short scene, inspired by a film clip, that can be read aloud while the silent movie clips play as background. Cross-Curricular Connection: Music and History
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources.
|
|
|
|
 Lesson Title: Native American Oral Storytelling
Lesson Overview: Inspired by the story-teller's voice from Ella Cara Deloria's novel, Waterlily, student writers will develop their own interpretation of a Native American story to share orally in the tradition of the Dakota people. Ulitmately, they will write down their oral stories, taking the written version through the writing process. An on-line video will help them see the importance of uniquely interpretting a story as part of the storytelling process Cross-Curricular Connection: History & Language Arts
Click on the lesson title or the album cover to read an overview and access the entire on-line lesson and its resources. |
| |
|
|
|
Propose your own iPod Lesson:
|
Template for iPod Lesson Proposals from teachers
|
The reality is that, though classic literature, chapter books and picture books will always maintain their well-deserved importance in growing minds, today’s students find inspiration in places beyond the published works traditionally used in the classroom. If we truly want to reach them and make connections, we have to meet them where they are and “link” our world as teachers to their world as millennial learners. 
