5th Grade Vocal Music Assessment

Want your kids to have their cake and eat it too? Turn pop music into an engaging and fun lesson with "Identify Timbre in Pop Music!"

Before your begin this lesson, make sure your kids have an understanding of the four families of instruments, Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion, and Strings and know multiple instruments in each family as they will utilize their aural skills during this activity.

As we know, timbre is the quality of sound an instrument makes. Students will listen to 11 examples of popular music and be given 3 multiple choice answers of instruments in the song example. They will then have to choose answer 1, 2, or 3 after listening to the example.

Advance the slide to illuminate the correct answer (in light blue) and assess from there! You can play this individually, as a class, have students write it down, or even play it as a race to see who can get the answer correct first!

All mp3 files are embedded into the slides -- just extract right to your desktop and they should link up and play.

Song examples included:

• High Hopes, Panic! at the Disco

• Hotline Bling, Drake

• 24k Magic, Bruno Mars

• Believer, Imagine Dragons

• Perfect, Ed Sheeran

• Levitating, Dua Lipa

• Into the Unknown, Panic! at the Disco

• Old Town Road, Lil Nas X

• BANG!, AJR

• Don't Start Now, Dua Lipa

• Watermelon Sugar, Harry Styles

  Have a terrific time with this!

Listening to Popular music isn’t just for enjoyment. It contains critical pieces of musical composition that makes it sound the way it does!

In "The Elements of Pop", students will be given 8 short examples of pop music (about 30-45 seconds long all mp3s included and embedded into the powerpoint) and will be see a multiple choice selection of elements that described the pop music being played

It's mostly broad terminology you teach in your music class: Rhythm, Tempo, Major/Minor, Instrumentation, Vocal ranges, etc!

This is great assessment to do as a class, individually, or even through distance learning! Have your cake and eat it too!

Pair this with the Identify Form in Popular Music series and you got yourself engaging lesson material!

Let us know how it is goes in the comments :)

This resource Rhythm and Rest is terrific for your kids as an introduction to quarter and half rests or just as a warmup for whichever instrument you may be practicing (recorder, orff, handbells, voice, etc!)

30 slides with 3 different levels

1. Quarter Rests and Half Note Rests with Quarter Notes

2. Adding in Eighth Notes

3. Six beat patterns

In "Twos Company" students will see two 4-beat rhythmic examples on the powerpoint and will split amongs their peers as a duet and read the rhythms down, with instruments, vocalizing, or however you please!

Students can be the "1" part or the "2" part or you can call individuals to sight read, or split it up any way you wish.

There are 25 different examples with inflections, style, and background grooves to keep you going (at different tempi if you'd like)

In this resource, it encompasses quarter notes, quarter rests, half notes, dynamics (forte and piano), and repeat signs into a canon exercise (to be repeated 4 times)

You can play these on boomwhackers, classroom percussion, Orff, recorders, or whatever you'd like.

Part II coming soon with extended rhythms and more!

Listening to Popular music isn’t just for enjoyment. It contains critical pieces of musical composition that makes it sound the way it does!

In "The Elements of Pop", students will be given 8 short examples of pop music (about 30-45 seconds long all mp3s included and embedded into the powerpoint) and will be see a multiple choice selection of elements that described the pop music being played

It's mostly broad terminology you teach in your music class: Rhythm, Tempo, Major/Minor, Instrumentation, Vocal ranges, etc!

This is great assessment to do as a class, individually, or even through distance learning! Have your cake and eat it too!

Pair this with the Identify Form in Popular Music series and you got yourself engaging lesson material!

Let us know how it is goes in the comments :)

We're BACK and for 2022 in the follow-up to the #1 selling "Identify Form in Pop Music" series, we now bring you....

Part EIGHT!

Kids love their pop music, right? Want to integrate it into your classroom? This is great lesson to do with 4th and 5th graders that lets them listen to their favorite pop music (as always, kid friendly 100% CLEAN!) while learning about musical form!

The lesson begins with an introduction to popular music and how the music is formulated by the artists songwriters. We talk about the intro, verse, chorus, bridge, and outro, and include the collision and the channel and then go onto our activity.

I cut out cards... a whole bunch of intros, verses, chorus, bridges, outros, channels, and collisions (or you can do it with a whiteboard/marker, or even as a unison class response) and give them to each student, then have have the kids sit on the floor. I then play an mp3 of a song which has 10 second clips of each of the sections (there is about a 2-4 second gap in between each clip and all clips are safe for little ears -- no profanity!) and have the students identify them by spelling them out on the floor in front of them. This works great if you're putting kids into groups of 2 or 3 as they try to figure out the form of the song.

It's a great compromise to having your kids listen to their music and still satisfy a 4th and 5th grade standard in identifying the structure of music!

The 2022 hit list:

• Enemy, Imagine Dragons
• Something in the Way, Nirvana (from The Batman)
• Good 4 U, Olivia Rodrigo
• We Don't Talk About Bruno, Encanto
• Easy on Me, Adele
• Butter, BTS
• Cold Heart, Dua Lipa/Elton John
• Ghost, Justin Bieber
• Heat Waves, Glass Animals
• Bad Habits, Ed Sheeran

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment email me at jasonlitt@gmail.com

Have fun, kids LOVE this!

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All the previous versions can be found here:

Identify Form in Pop Music

Identify Form in Pop Music PART TWO

Identify Form in Pop Music PART THREE

Identify Form in Pop Music PART FOUR

Identify Form in Pop Music PART FIVE

Identify Form in Pop Music PART SIX

Identify Form in Pop Music PART SEVEN