Creative Arts & Humanities

Creative Writing, Music, and History Arts Integration

6th Through 8th Grade • History & Music, Spoken Word

Lesson Overview: This lesson provides a robust framework for integrating creative arts and humanities, with a particular emphasis on spoken word, poetry, and creative writing within historical contexts. The lesson encourages educators to develop interdisciplinary learning experiences that blend artistic expression with academic content, specifically highlighting the potential for students to explore their personal narratives and community histories through creative thinking. By combining arts integration strategies with historical analysis, the lesson aims to amplify student voices, foster engagement, and create meaningful connections between creative expression and academic learning. The framework supports teaching artists and classroom teachers in developing collaborative approaches that allow students to explore poetry, spoken word, and creative writing as powerful tools for understanding historical narratives, family and community heritage, and personal identity. Through this arts-integrated approach, seeks to transform student learning by positioning creative arts as a dynamic method of academic and personal exploration.

Learning Objectives | Students Will:

  • Practice relating artistic ideas and works with societal, community, and historical context to deepen understanding by exploring the evolution of African-American Music.

 Lesson Process: In this lesson, a history teacher and a music teaching artist partnered to create an immersive learning experience that explores historical narratives through spoken word and musical expression. The lesson aims to amplify historical learning by integrating arts-based pedagogical approaches to engage learners through creative writing. By combining historical content with spoken word performance and musical techniques, the teacher and teaching artist developed activities that allowed students to deeply analyze historical events, understand local community traditions/ contexts, and express their interpretations through artistic performance. The collaborative planning focused on identifying specific learning objectives that met both State history standards and national arts standards, ensuring that students develop critical thinking skills, research capabilities, and creative communication techniques. Through carefully designed classroom and teaching artist activities, students will be guided to research historical events, craft original spoken word pieces, and potentially incorporate musical elements that reflect the Chicago landscapes of the studied historical periods.

Time Required:

  • 40 Minutes

Materials List:

  • Instrumentals

  • Drums

Assessment : Assessment for this collaborative history and spoken word lesson is comprehensive and multidimensional, focusing on both content knowledge and artistic expression.

  • Students are evaluated through performance-based assessments that measure their historical understanding, research skills, and creative communication techniques, potentially including spoken word performances, research portfolios, and presentations that demonstrate their ability to synthesize historical information with artistic interpretation.

  • The assessment approach incorporates multiple methods such as teacher and teaching artist observations, peer feedback, self-reflection, and formal rubrics that assess both academic content mastery and creative skill development.

  • Grading considers students' historical accuracy, depth of research, creativity in spoken word composition, performance skills, and their ability to connect historical narratives with personal and cultural perspectives.

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Lesson
Activities & Instructions

The Activities & Instructions section provides a structured sequence of learning experiences, guiding educators through engaging, interactive lessons.

Lesson Activities

    • Introduce history across different eras

    • Can start with a “Do Now,” using critical thinking skills to relate the artist’s message to societal, community, and historical contexts

    • Introduce poetry and musical elements of melody and rhythm

    • Increase context and knowledge by showing the relationship between words, melody, and rhythm.

    • Listening, positive critique, peer feedback responses.

    • Students participate in a small activity that requires active listening and some critical thinking.

NATIONAL CORE ARTS STANDARDS

  • Anchor Standard 6
    Convey meaning through the presentation of artistic work.

  • Anchor Standard 7
    Perceive and analyze artistic work.

    Anchor Standard 8
    Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work.

  • Anchor Standard 11
    Relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural and historical context to deepen understanding.

Key Themes & Ideas

Arts Integration:

  • This lesson focuses heavily on arts integration as a means to enhance learning.

  • It stresses the importance of demonstrating multi-dimensional awareness of arts-integrated classrooms, recognizing the importance of a well-balanced curriculum, and amplifying the "student voice" and stories of excellence.

  • The integration of arts into other disciplines is seen as a way to change the learning experience and foster high-quality teaching and learning.

Collaborative Lesson Planning:

  • Defining clear goals and measurable learning components that create a holistic instructional environment.

  • Acknowledge that teachers and teaching artists play a specific role in the development of arts-integrated teaching units.

Addressing Diverse Learning Needs:

  • Engages all learner perspectives, including those of English Language Learners (ELL), students with accessibility needs, and considerations accessibility.

  • Implements educational frameworks and teaching practices and programs as a catalyst for change that engage all learners.

  • Incorporates high expectations of quality in curriculum to foster the students' vision, health, and wellbeing.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL):

  • Creates arts learning environments for all students.

  • UDL principles aim to provide learning for individuals with diverse abilities, including visual, hearing, motor, or learning/cognitive disabilities, as well as able-bodied users.

  • Promotes principles that emphasize flexibility, simple and intuitive design, perceptible information, tolerance for error, low physical effort, and appropriate size and space.

      Data-Driven Instruction and Intervention:

  • Uses data to inform instruction and identify students who are not making expected progress.

  • Applies universal screenings, ongoing problem-solving, and the delivery of research-based instruction and evidence-based practices with fidelity.

  • Recognizes the importance of differentiated = instruction to meet individual learning needs and providing professional development and coaching to support effective instruction.

Success Criteria:

  • The students will able to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of local community musical history through a multidimensional exploration of how words, socialism, melody, and rhythm intersect across different historical eras of Chicago. 

  • The students articulate the historical and local contexts of musical expressions, tracing how musical forms like jazz, blues, gospel, and spoken word have been powerful tools of social commentary, resistance, and community preservation. 

  • Students will show an ability to connect musical genres to broader social narratives, demonstrating how rhythm, melody, and lyrical content have been used as forms of local community/family storytelling, and personal expression throughout different historical moments. 

  • Students will demonstrate ability to synthesize historical research, artistic creativity, and critical social analysis, showcasing their understanding of music as a complex and dynamic form of communication.

Overall Significance

This lesson uses arts integration to illuminate the rich, complex narratives of Chicago's South Side through the mediums of music, history, and community storytelling. By leveraging rap, spoken word, and historical research, the lesson plan creates a dynamic learning environment that not only teaches historical content but also empowers students to see themselves as active interpreters of history, capable of using creative arts to decode, critique, and reimagine their community's past and present narratives. Through this collaborative, interdisciplinary method, students develop critical thinking skills, research capabilities, and artistic communication techniques that transform passive learning into an active and meaningful exploration and engagement. Ultimately, the lesson plan serves as a pedagogical model that demonstrates how arts integration can turn classrooms into spaces of community preservation, societal understanding, and youth participation in civil discourse.

– REACH –

Thank you to our Educators, Artists, and Collaborators.

School: Art In Motion

Teacher: Ryan Yates

Teaching Artist: Matthew Wilson

  • Resource 1: link