ELECTIVE COURSE: Special Topics

Special Topics was an elective course at Parishville-Hopkinton Central School. The course consisted of juniors and seniors who already completed US History and Government. There content covered in the course varies from semester to semester, and is determined by the course instructor. During my student teaching semester, I chose to teach a unit on the History of Rock Music. In the process of examining the rock music's history, students learned about various aspects of US History. For example, students examined the US economic boom and generation gap in the period after WWII, and how the led to the emergence of rock and roll in the 1950s.

Folk Music and the Vietnam War

During the unit on the History of Rock Music, I spent one day talking about the role of Folk Music and the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War, Folk Music, a sub-genre of rock, was used primarily to protest the war. For part of the period, I went through a brief PowerPoint slideshow with fill-in-the-blank notes. Afterward, I gave students a handout with lyrics from popular anti-war songs, and I played a clip from each song on the list.

Name that Tune Bellringer

To get students thinking about the variety of sub-genres of rock that emerged in the 1970s through 1990s, I had students play "Name that Tune." Students were asked to identify the name of the song, the artist, and the decade. While playing the music, I used PowerPoint to give the students a hint about each decade. For example, the 1970s contained a light brown background with a guitar to symbolize the rise of the Singer/Songwriter Movement of the 1970s. To represent the 1980s, I used a bright, neon background to represent New Wave, and for the 1990s, I used a dirty/ink splattered background to represent Grunge. The students had a tremendous amount of fun playing the game, and for the remainder of my student teaching experience at Parishville-Hopkinton, students requested to play the game during the last few minutes of class. Some of the students in the course were also in the economics class I was teaching, and they would ask to play at the end of economics.

Jeopardy Mid-Unit Review Game

About half way through the unit, I gave the students a mid-unit quiz, covering the origins and early years of rock music. To prepare for this quiz, as the first half of the unit covered a lot of material, I created a Jeopardy PowerPoint game to review the material. Students were arranged into three teams. The game included a Daily Double and a Final Jeopardy.

Music and Technology Lesson

The final topic examined in class for the unit was Music and Technology. The lesson examined sixteen key pieces of technology that played an important role in rock music's history. For example, students looked at the invention of the mp3 in the early 1990s and the rise of Napster in the early 2000s. For the lesson's bellringer, students were grouped into pairs. Then, each pair was given a blank timeline, with a word bank containing the sixteen key inventions in rock music's history. Then, students were put on the clock for five minutes to arrange each technology in order from oldest to most recent.

Hippie Webquest

For two days in the unit, I covered the Counterculture movement of the 1950s and 1960s. One of these days was spent on the Hippie Webquest. This was a webquest I created. Since one of the sites was blocked by the school, I created PDF versions of the articles from the website, so that students could at least read them. I selected several articles. Of the articles posted, students were required specific articles, and then, of the remaining articles, the students had to choose two to read. In addition to reading articles about the Counterculture, students examined pictures and videos from era.

Final Project Guidelines

For the final project, students were given several options. Option 1 was for students to create a "Best of..." album. Students create a "Best of..." album for all of rock music, or a specific sub-genre of rock, such as Motown, Punk, or Rap. This option required students to select 15 to 20 songs for the tracklist, design a cover art for the album, and to write a one page, double-spaced essay, in which they justify their song choices. Option 2 was for students to create a brochure. For this option, students created a brochure advertising an important place in rock history, such as the Grand Ole Opry or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to creating the brochure, students had to write a one page, double-spaced essay explaining the importance of the place in rock music's history. The final option was for students to write a short two to three page, double-spaced and MLA formatted research paper. This option was for students who were not interested in an "artistic" final project. Students selecting the research paper could pick topics that were not covered in class. For example, Motown was an important part of rock's history, but it was a topic that I did not have time to cover in the course, as the course met for only 40 minutes every other day, as opposed to the other courses at Parishville-Hopkinton which met every day for 75 minutes. In addition to these three options, if students had their own ideas for the final project, they could discuss them with me. One student did this. They came up with the idea of creating a video slideshow for an anti-war song, and they wrote a paper explaining the significance of the song in the anti-Vietnam War protest.

Final Project- Student Example

This is cover art to one of the final projects a student created. This student chose to create a "Best of Punk" Compilation.

Censorship and Sampling Graphic Organizer

One of the final topics covered in the unit was Censorship and Sampling. As part of the lesson, students examined several songs accused of copyright infringement, including Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice, Baby," accused of stealing from the song "Under Pressure" and The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony," accused of stealing from the Rolling Stone's "The Last Time." For homework, students were to use their notes to fill out the graphic organizer.

History of Rock Music Review PowerPoint

This is an interactive PowerPoint, and is designed to be viewed by an individual to review key concepts from the entire Rock History Unit. Unlike a linear PowerPoint slideshow, users must use buttons to navigate the slideshow. The slideshow includes some music and video clips, which were used in class throughout the unit.

 

Note: the download version requires at least PowerPoint 2007. If you do not have PowerPoint installed on your computer, you can download Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer for PC for free from Microsoft's website.

 

Site designed and maintained by Christopher Chapin.  Last updated June 24, 2017.  All links and content were working at the time of last update.  Please report any broken links by using the contact form on the Contact Page or by e-mailing me directly at:  chapincm190@potsdam.edu