LESSON OVERVIEW

Thanks to this lesson plan on music, students will learn various adjectives for describing music and watch a video in which orchestra musicians talk about the world without music.

VOCABULARY

First, students get a set of pictures to describe. The goal of this warm‐up activity is to elicit from students music‐related vocabulary such as concert hall, conductor, orchestra, live concert, violinist, instrumentalist, etc. Next, students move to a short discussion about music and their preferences. In this part of the lesson, students will also learn adjectives for describing music. They get a box with ten adjectives and need to match them to their meanings. To practice them a bit, they also have to choose correct adjectives in a few sentences. The list of adjectives includes, e.g. moving, saddening, entrancing, unsettling, uplifting, etc.

VIDEO & DISCUSSION

Before watching the video, students discuss a quote by Keith Richards (the guitarist of The Rolling Stones) and talk about emotions that music evokes in them. Then, they watch the video for the first time and just need to listen for gist and answer three general questions about the speakers. Next, they watch the video again and have to write down four effects that music has, according to the speakers. There are a lot more effects, so you can expect different students to note down different effects. Finally, this lesson plan on music ends with a short discussion that includes questions about the role of music in our lives, emotions that live concerts evoke as well as pieces of music that bring back memories.