From Question to Public Product
by ACEMM, based on the work of K. Michelle Lewis
WORKBOOK / PLANNER · TEACHER-FACING
Purpose
Turn a meaningful question or big idea into a music-centered project that gives students authentic opportunities to inquire, create, make choices, revise, and share their work.
AT A GLANCE
Best for — Teachers who have the seed of a project but need help turning it into a purposeful sequence of student learning.
Focus — Project-based learning · Inquiry · Student agency · Creation · Revision · Public sharing
You’ll need — A question, issue, story, topic, or experience that could become the starting point for deeper student inquiry.
Connections — PBL · Interdisciplinary learning
WHY CHOOSE THIS RESOURCE?
A good project is more than a collection of activities leading to an impressive final product. From Question to Public Product helps you plan the learning journey: beginning with a meaningful encounter, developing questions, investigating ideas, creating through music, giving students genuine voice and choice, revising the work, and sharing it with an authentic audience.
The goal is to make music part of how students investigate, express, create, and communicate—not something added at the end to make the project musical.
NEED A PLACE TO START?
Start with the question, not the final product.
Write down your big idea. Then resist the temptation to decide immediately what students will make.
Ask instead: What might students genuinely wonder about here? What could they investigate? Where could they make meaningful musical choices? Who might care about what they eventually have to say?
Let the project grow from those questions. The public product should emerge from the learning—not become the reason for it.
Ready to build your project?
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Making Assessment Easy
by Drue Bullington
TEACHER GUIDE · K–6
Purpose
Build authentic assessment into joyful music-making so you can see what individual students can actually do without stopping the learning to give a test.
AT A GLANCE
Best for — Teachers who need practical ways to gather individual assessment data during normal music instruction.
Students are — Singing · Moving/Dancing · Playing Instruments
You’ll need — Materials vary by activity; examples include classroom percussion, barred instruments, recorder, and a simple way to record observations.
Focus — Authentic assessment · Individual performance · Singing · Steady beat · Instrument skills · Musical literacy
The resource includes concrete opportunities to assess things like individual singing, rhythmic accuracy, steady beat, drone performance, recorder playing, and decoding—not merely general participation.
WHY CHOOSE THIS RESOURCE?
Assessment doesn't have to mean stopping the music to give a test. Making Assessment Easy shows how games and musical activities can create natural opportunities to hear and observe individual students while the rest of the class remains actively engaged.
Use the included examples as they are, or as models for designing assessments around the music your students are already learning.
NEED A PLACE TO START?
Choose one thing you genuinely need to know.
Instead of trying to assess everything at once, identify one observable musical skill: Can each student maintain a steady beat? Sing independently? Perform a rhythm accurately? Play a drone?
Then look at an activity your students already enjoy and ask: Where could I hear or see that skill individually?
Keep the music going, observe a few students at a time, and record what you notice.
I like that starting point because the resource itself demonstrates how one familiar game can become an “assessment cache”—with different roles revealing individual singing, rhythmic accuracy, steady beat, and instrumental skills.
Ready to use this resource?
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Music Class Rules
by Kate Bright
LESSON · K–6 ADAPTABLE
Purpose
Teach and reinforce music-room expectations through rhythm, speech, movement, and active music-making.
AT A GLANCE
Best for — Establishing or resetting classroom expectations while keeping students actively engaged in music.
Students are — Speaking · Moving/Dancing · Performing Rhythms
You’ll need — Space for movement and the included visuals/slides.
Focus — Classroom expectations · Rhythm · Independence · Ensemble habits
WHY CHOOSE THIS RESOURCE?
Classroom expectations don't have to interrupt the music-making. Music Class Rules turns the rules themselves into musical material, giving students repeated opportunities to hear, speak, move, and perform the expectations while developing rhythmic independence.
I particularly like this framing for the “Classroom management is getting in the way of the music” pathway because we're not promising that one lesson will solve classroom management. We're offering a resource that helps the teacher teach expectations through the work of music class.
NEED A PLACE TO START?
Choose one expectation and teach it musically.
Rather than explaining all of your classroom rules at once, begin with one of the rhythmic rules in the lesson. Model it, invite students to join you, and gradually remove your own voice as they become able to perform it independently.
The goal isn't just for students to know the rule. It's for the expectation to become familiar, memorable, and part of the shared language of your music room.
Ready to use this resource?
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New Teacher? Start here
Beg, Borrow and Steal
by Lisa Sempsey and Crystal Pridmore
WORKBOOK / PLANNER · TEACHER-FACING
Purpose
Build a practical teaching repertoire by learning from experienced educators, adapting strong ideas, and organizing what you learn so you can find and use it again.
AT A GLANCE
Best for — Beginning teachers and educators who are building their personal collection of lessons, activities, and teaching strategies.
Focus — Professional learning · Repertoire building · Planning · Reflection
You’ll need — A workshop, mentor, colleague, resource, or teaching idea you want to learn from.
Connections — Teacher development
WHY CHOOSE THIS RESOURCE?
You don’t have to invent everything you teach. Beg, Borrow and Steal helps you learn intentionally from other educators: observe strong teaching, ask questions about the thinking behind it, adapt ideas for your own students, use excellent shared lessons as they were designed when appropriate, and give credit to the people whose work helps you grow.
The workbook helps turn all those good ideas collected from workshops, mentors, and colleagues into a usable personal teaching library rather than a stack of notes you never look at again.
NEED A PLACE TO START?
Start with one idea worth keeping.
Think about a lesson, activity, or teaching strategy you've recently seen that made you think, I want to try that.
Don't worry about building your whole curriculum. Capture that one idea, identify what it helps you accomplish, record where it came from, and decide what—if anything—you need to change for your students.
Then try it. Your teaching repertoire grows one useful idea at a time.
ACCESS THIS RESOURCE
Ready to use this resource?
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Get Students Creating
Trepak Triptych
by Drue Bullington
LESSON SEQUENCE · K–6 ADAPTABLE
Purpose
Trepak Triptych uses Tchaikovsky’s Russian Dance (Trepak) from The Nutcracker as the starting point for a three-part sequence in imitation, exploration, and creation. Students experience pulse and form physically before moving toward collaborative choreographic and compositional choices.
AT A GLANCE
Best for — K–6 classrooms; particularly useful when students are comfortable copying a model but need support moving toward independent creative choices.
Students are — Moving/Dancing · Playing Instruments · Composing/Creating
You’ll need — Google Slides with audio and printable templates; optional unpitched percussion and barred instruments.
Musical focus — Form · Phrase · Pulse · Accelerando · Composition
Start with imitation.
Let students experience the music physically before asking them to create anything of their own. Give them a clear movement model and opportunities to notice what is happening in the music.
As they become familiar with the pulse, phrases, and form, begin opening up the choices: What could change? What could you try? What could your group create?
You don't have to reach the final creation in one lesson. The progression from Imitate → Explore → Create is the heart of the resource.
Ready to use this resource?
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Supporting the Reluctant Participant
My students don't want to participate.
Maybe they're watching instead of joining in. Maybe singing or moving feels risky. Maybe you're getting silliness, avoidance, refusal, or students who only participate when everyone else does.
Before increasing the demand, it can help to ask what is making participation difficult—and whether there's a smaller, safer way into the experience.
by Crystal Pridmore
TEACHER GUIDE · ALL AGES
Make participation more possible by looking beyond refusal or hesitation and designing meaningful, lower-risk ways into music-making.
At a Glance
Best for
Teachers working with students who watch, hesitate, avoid, refuse, or aren't yet ready to participate as expected.
Students are
Watching · Trying · Choosing · Sharing
You'll need
No special materials required.
Connections
Inclusion · Belonging · Student choice
Need a place to start?
Choose one student and one moment when participation tends to become difficult.
Rather than redesigning the whole lesson, offer one smaller meaningful invitation: more time, an opportunity to watch first, a choice, a smaller group, or another way to participate.
Decide beforehand what you will count as success. Then notice what happens.
Before increasing the demand, it can help to ask what is making participation difficult—and whether there's a smaller, safer way into the experience.
A practical teacher guide for looking at what participation may be costing a student and designing more possible, meaningful invitations into music-making.
Ready to use this resource?
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Help With Movement
I want to use movement, but I’m not confident teaching it.
You know movement can be a powerful part of music learning—but “Okay, everyone move creatively!” can feel like a pretty enormous leap for both you and your students.
You don't have to start there.
Movement can be built gradually. Students can develop trust, movement vocabulary, musical awareness, and confidence before they're asked to make increasingly independent artistic choices.
Body Engagement
by Michael Vasquez
TEACHER GUIDE · ADAPTABLE ACROSS AGES
Build a classroom culture in which movement develops from purposeful participation toward increasingly independent artistic expression.
At a Glance
Best for
Teachers who want to incorporate more meaningful movement into music learning but aren't sure how to scaffold students toward independent expression.
Focus
Movement · Musical response · Creative independence
You'll need
No special materials required.
Need a place to start?
Think about where your students are right now with movement.
Are they still developing comfort and trust? Do they need more movement vocabulary? Can they respond physically to concrete musical ideas but struggle when the task becomes more abstract?
Start there.
Choose movement experiences that give students something concrete to respond to before asking them to make independent artistic choices.
Ready to use this resource?
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Help With Older Beginners
My students are older, but they're beginning musicians.
Maybe your students haven't had consistent music instruction. Maybe their previous experiences are all over the map. Or maybe they're capable, interesting older kids who simply haven't developed some of the foundational skills you expected them to have by now.
My students are older, but they're beginning musicians.
Starting From Zero
Crystal Pridmore
A quick-start guide for teaching older elementary beginners without infantilizing them—beginning with observation, ensemble-building, and finding students' actual musical starting points.
Maybe your students haven't had consistent music instruction. Maybe their previous experiences are all over the map. Or maybe they're capable, interesting older kids who simply haven't developed some of the foundational skills you expected them to have by now.
Beginning musicians don't need to be treated like beginning learners.
Start by finding out what your students can already do. Then give them foundational musical experiences in ways that respect their age, interests, existing musicianship, and need for independence.
Ready to use this resource?
ACEMM Resource Library downloads are available to ACEMM members.
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