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ZOOM | Experimenting with a Glass Xylophone
Subject: Music
Source: PBS Learning Media
Resource Type: Video
The cast investigates how the pitch of sound changes when they strike a variety of glasses filled with different amounts and types of liquids in this video segment adapted from ZOOM. When you hit an empty glass with a spoon, both the glass and the air inside it vibrate. You hear these vibrations as sound through the air.
Skill: Improvise, compose, and arrange music within specified guidelines.
Georgia Standard: ESBB(4-5).CR.1
Subject: Music
Source: PBS Learning Media
Resource Type: Video
Peeking into a musical score for the first time can be puzzling to kids who've never before encountered the symbols and structures that composers use to put their musical ideas down onto paper or a computer, where performers can then bring them to life. But just as memorizing the alphabet is a first step in learning how to read and write, recognizing some of these basic musical symbols is a first step to learning how to read, play, and compose music. This Class Notes video gives a basic overview of what's in a score: the clefs, notes, signatures, instrumentation, and other elements that musicians refer to when they perform. It combines humor with a little Beethoven to help kids start this part of their musical journey.
Skill: Identify and define standard notation symbols (e.g. pitch, rhythm, dynamics, tempo, articulation, expression).
Georgia Standard: ESBB(4-5).PR.3a
About the Chinese Sword Dance | Dance Arts Toolkit
Subject: Dance
Source: PBS Learning Media
Resource Type: Video
Jingzian Zhang, a retired professor of Chinese opera, talks about the purpose and form of the Chinese Sword Dance in this video from the Dance Arts Toolkit series.
Skill: Understand and demonstrate dance throughout history and in various cultures.
Georgia Standard: ESD4.CN.1
Salsa Performance | Dance Arts Toolkit
Subject: Dance
Source: PBS Learning Media
Resource Type: Video
Cathya Beard and Prageeth Sasanka Hettiarachchi perform salsa in this video from the Dance Arts Toolkit series.
Skill: Understand and demonstrate dance throughout history and in various cultures.
Georgia Standard: ESD4.CN.1
Tarantella Performance | Dance Arts Toolkit
Subject: Dance
Source: PBS Learning Media
Resource Type: Video
The Berea Festival Dancers dance a variation of the Tarantella, a folk dance that originated in Italy in the Middle Ages, in this video from the Dance Arts Toolkit series.
Skill: Understand and demonstrate dance throughout history and in various cultures.
Georgia Standard: ESD4.CN.1
Major or Minor: What's the Difference?
Subject: Music
Source: PBS Learning Media
Resource Type: Video
In music, major and minor refer to keys, scales, intervals, and chords. They sometimes appear in the title of an overall work, or of a movement or section within a work. Just as painters combine colors to create various effects, composers cast music into major or minor to give it a particular mood, atmosphere, or intensity. But what exactly are major and minor? Here the concept is introduced by two unlikely friends—the bluebird Oliver and the lumberjack Jack. For younger kids unfamiliar with the concept, the video can simply help them experience the different feelings major and minor evoke. For those with more background, it fleshes out some key technical differences between the two, linking their different structural makeups to their emotional effects.
Skill: Describe music using appropriate vocabulary (e.g. fortissimo/pianissimo, presto/largo/moderato/allegro/adagio, legato/staccato, major/minor), intervals (e.g. step, skip, repeat, leap), timbre adjectives (e.g. dark/bright), and texture adjectives (e.g. thick/thin).
Georgia Standard: ESGM4.RE.1b
Introduction to Instruments of the World
Subject: Music
Source: PBS Learning Media
Resource Type: Video
Ethnomusicologist Gregory Acker introduces students to the four families of world instruments—idiophones, chordophones, membranophones, and aerophones—and shows a variety of instruments, including handmade versions.
Skill: Identify and classify (e.g. families, ensembles) classroom, orchestral, American folk, and world instruments by sight and sound.
Georgia Standard: ESGM4.RE.1c
Subject: Media Arts
Source: Georgia Public Broadcasting
Resource Type: Video
We talk with the people at Meddin Studios in Savannah to learn why film and television are responsible for Georgia’s fastest-growing job markets. We also find out what kinds of jobs are available, how to get started, and why the folks at Meddin love what they do.
Skill: Relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural, and historical context to deepen understanding.
Georgia Standard: MA4.CN.1
Behind the Scenes of a Theater Company | Drama Arts Toolkit
Subject: Theatre
Source: PBS Learning Media
Resource Type: Video
With a behind the scenes look at the production of Mary Poppins, Jeromy Smith and Lyndy Franklin Smith, founders of the Lexington Theatre Company, describe their partnership, goals, and how they put a show together.
Skill: Explore how theatre connects to life experience, careers, and other content.
Georgia Standard: TA4.CN.1
Subject: Theatre
Source: PBS Learning Media
Resource Type: Video
J. Daniel Herring of Stage One introduces this scene from the production of Pinocchio, telling viewers to pay particular attention to the costumes.
Skill: Explore how theatre connects to life experience, careers, and other content.
Georgia Standard: TA4.CN.1
Anansi's Rescue from the River | African/African-American Culture
Subject: Theatre
Source: PBS Learning Media
Resource Type: Video
In this video, storyteller Nana Yaa Asantewaa performs the story “Anansi’s Rescue from the River.” The Anansi tales are told by the Ashanti people of Ghana, West Africa, and have been passed down through the generations by oral tradition.
Skill: a. Identify and build media arts skills to address social, cultural, or societal issues while examining related careers, higher order thinking, problem-solving, creativity, personal beliefs, imagination, and lifelong learning opportunities in a local and global context.
Georgia Standard: TA4.CN.2
Subject: Visual Art
Source: PBS Learning Media
Resource Type: Video with Project
Truman Lowe, a contemporary sculptor, works with students to create a collaborative art project at Wickliffe Mounds. Wickliffe Mounds, located in western Kentucky, was the home of a now-vanished Native American society—the Mississippian culture—from about 1000 to 1300. Lowe, who is from Wisconsin is of Native American heritage, a Winnebago/Ho-Chunk. The student art installation was intended to honor the legacy of the Mississippian culture.
Skill: Investigate and discover the personal relationships of artists to community, culture, and the world through making and studying art.
Georgia Standard: VA4.CN.1
Subject: Visual Art
Source: PBS Learning Media
Resource Type: Video with Project
Artist Thomas Freese shows how to make a tessellating stamp and use it to create an interlocking pattern. The lesson integrates mathematics and art as the process involves using geometry, measurement, repetition, and patterning to create unusual, appealing designs.
Skill: Understand and apply media, techniques, processes, and concepts of two-dimensional art.
b. Incorporate printmaking processes to create works of art (e.g. monoprints, collographs, Styrofoam prints, editions).
Georgia Standard: VA4.CR.3b
Subject: Visual Art
Source: PBS Learning Media
Resource Type: Video with Supplemental Essay Assignment
An avid recycler, Pauline Proffitt of Paint Lick, Kentucky, turns rags to riches as she transforms old clothes into rugs and quilts. Taught as a child not to waste anything, she uses whatever material is available. One of her favorite materials is old blue jeans, which she weaves into her popular rugs.
Skill: Understand and apply media, techniques, processes, and concepts of three-dimensional art.
c. Create works of art using traditional and/or contemporary craft methods (e.g. weaving, stitchery, jewelry, puppetry).
Georgia Standard: VA4.CR.4c