Let It Be: Teachers Week One

Stage 4

Topic: Popular music (music of a group)

This unit is arranged to be taught over 6 weeks. This includes two assessments.

Prior knowledge required: Able to play an instrument or sing, some ability to read music (not essential though), sense of rhythm, chords and what makes a chord, role of instruments in a group

Welcome to this unit of work for a stage 4 class. This unit has been specified for year 7, yet a year 8 class can also complete this unit. It all depends on the levels of your students.

The resources are in the student pages. You can easily download any of these resources to use in class, or for your own blog.

This unit is flexible, and can be taught in many different ways. This blog will outline the way that I would teach it. I have successfully taught parts of this unit to a year 7 class previously. They were a selective class, with many musicians in the class. The unit can be adapted to suit any situation.

This is how you might choose to pace the unit.

Week One

Begin with listening. The students listen to Let It Be and consider some questions the teacher gives them. They are asked to create their own student music blog and write their first post on their thoughts of the song. During this week, you can also provide some background information on The Beatles. You could also listen to some other artists from the same era of music.
Have a look at the student page for Step One, and get some ideas from this. I would also recommend getting the students to do listening activities in groups, giving the class a quiz and bringing in different cover versions of Let It Be.
I found that covers that were very different from the original, got a strong reaction from the students I was teaching.
Week one is all about listening! If you have time, you could get them to do a practical activity this week too. Such as having a go at playing the chords.
Good luck!
Also, this is a great website for getting information and resources about The Beatles.

Next week