How to Adapt Musical Intelligence Into a Prepared Lesson Plan

Integrating musical intelligence into a prepared lesson plan offers the opportunity for students to understand and appreciate music. Musical intelligence is the degree to which a students exhibits the ability to comprehend musical concepts such as rhythm, musical form, melody and pitch discrimination, and develop performance-related skills. When working from a prepared lesson plan, you must look at the nature of lesson and decide which element of musical intelligence should be incorporated.

Step 1 Provide context in a social studies prepared lesson by playing examples of speakers from different countries. Ask the student to analyze the similarities and differences between pitch, the rise and fall of the voice, and any rhythmic differences between two or more cultures.

Step 2 Assign students in a math lesson, to plan the task of relating mathematical relationships to the system of rhythm in music. Play a steady beat and ask the students to find the approximate tempo in beats per minute. Tell the students to use the second hand of a stopwatch or clock and count how many beats occur in 20 seconds. Multiply that number times three, since a minute is 60 seconds, to get the total beats per minute.

Step 3 Provide a history class with in-depth understanding of cultures by playing examples of different instruments various cultures use. Ask the students to listen to the music and provide specific examples of how the music between two or more cultures differs. One may be exciting and rhythmic, while another may be melodic and slow.

Step 4 Give students in an English class a poem to read, then ask them to analyze the rhythmic accents within the poem. Have them explain the accents in terms of strong and weak beats, also known as stressed and non-stressed syllables.