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Musical Me – An Easy Back-To-School Tech Lesson

Musical Me An Easy Back-to-School Tech Lesson
Musical Me - An Easy Back-to School Tech Lesson

Getting to know your students

Discover their “musical me”

Whether you’re starting a new school year, or would just like to get to know your students better, this Musical Me lesson is an effective and easy option with lots of flexibility.

In this lesson, students will tell you more about their musical background, interests, likes, dislikes, instrumental skills and more by choosing prompts to respond to. They will gather images, icons, write text, find videos or links to websites to illustrate their musical me facts and then present them in a digital format.

The software or app that students use to present their work is totally flexible. Use whatever you have! Using a digital format is ideal for those of you that are being encouraged to go paperless, and/or you want a format that can involve multimedia or sharing options.

Whenever I’ve run this activity in the past, it has uncovered a range of surprising skills and interests!

Musical Me Prompts

Here’s the list of prompts that you can give to students. You can download a copy at the end of this post.

Students don’t need to answer every single question – 5-10 work well, and they can do more if they have time.

  • The first concert I went to….
  • Memorable live music performance 
  • Favourite composer and/or songwriter
  • Performer that I would like to see live
  • My favourite performer 
  • I am a total fan of…
  • A musician I am in awe of is…
  • A musician I would like to meet one day is…
  • The instrument/s I play 
  • I love learning from…(name a music teacher, a music Youtube channel or a musician friend)
  • An instrument I wish I could play
  • An instrument that’s played by someone in my family
  • A song/piece that calms me down
  • A song/piece that motivates me
  • The song that always gets stuck in my head
  • My favourite musical genre (you can list more than one!)
  • My least favourite musical genre
  • Share a funny or inspirational music quote
  • Did you know…? Share an interesting piece of music trivia
  • The song that always gets me on the dance floor
  • My favourite non-musical sound (birds, my baby brother/sister laughing, the wind in the trees, the ocean, a sports car, my cat purring, something else?)
  • An inspiring musical TED talk
  • Your go-to karaoke song/s
  • An artist you’ve discovered recently 
  • A favourite musical place
  • Your secret musical talent or skill
  • Before I was a music teacher I was…
  • Share a funny music joke
  • Favourite musical experience/s
  • Something else? Be creative!

Choose a tech tool

There are LOTS of tech tools you could use for this lesson. Students can submit their Musical Me responses in any of these ways: 

  • as a simple static image that includes text, icons and pictures
  • as a digital “poster” that features images, text, video, music and links
  • as a video which features the student speaking to camera
  • as a simple website which shows images, video, text and links
  • as a presentation file which includes images, video, text and links

Take a look at the software and apps you already have access to as a starting point and select an option that gives students the most flexibility. Here are some ideas:

  • Padlet – students create an interactive digital poster which includes written text, images, embedded videos and links. Padlet is a great option for this lesson since viewers of the Padlet board can click through on included links and play videos and so on. See my Padlet example below!
  • 2 ways to use Flipgrid:
    1. Set up one Musical Me Flipgrid topic and students create a single video in which they talk through their 5 Musical Me facts
    2. Set up a Musical Me Flipgrid grid and then set up 5 Musical Me topics of your choosing on the grid. Students can then create a video response to each of the individual topics. 
  • Adobe Spark Post – students create a static poster which pulls in icons, pictures and text
  • Explain Everything – students can create an Explain Everything presentation with one slide for each Musical Me prompt. They can include video, images, audio files, links, text and drawings. A great option for iPads.
  • Powerpoint, Keynote or Google Slides – students can create a presentation file with one slide for each Musical Me prompt. They can include video, images, audio files, links and text
  • Google Sites or Adobe Spark Page – create a mini website that includes videos, images, audio files, links, text
  • Then there’s also Book Creator, SeeSaw, Thinglink, Canva and many others!
Musical Me using Padlet

Example Musical Me using Padlet. View the interactive version here.

Instructions:

  1. Download the Musical Me Prompts list
  2. Choose a tech tool for your students to use (or let them decide!). See the options in the Choose A Tech Tool section of this blog post
  3. Give the students some parameters: let them know that they need to choose a minimum of 5 prompts from the list to respond to (adjust that number to suit your students and the class time you have available). If you’re working with younger students, you may like to choose just a handful of prompt that all students will respond to
  4. Give them a time frame to work to, or assign the task for homework
  5. Students can then gather multimedia resources to create their Musical Me assignment (images, icons, written text, links to existing videos on Youtube, links to websites
  6. Set aside some class time so that students can share their Musical Me facts with each other. 

Try this out yourself during our free challenge!

Join us for the free 5 Music Tech Lesson Plans in 5 Days challenge and you’ll get to test try this assignment yourself. The challenge is totally free and you can sign up here.

Download a copy of the Musical Me lesson

Would you like to take a copy of the Musical Me lesson with you? Click on the download button below and we’ll send a copy straight to your email inbox. You’ll also receive weekly music tech tips and news (if you don’t already). You can unsubscribe at any time.

Click here to download

Download a copy of the Musical Me Prompts

If you’d also like a copy of JUST the Musical Me prompts, click the button below and we’ll send a copy straight to your email inbox.

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6 Comments

  1. Billie Giese May 6, 2020 at 11:32 am - Reply

    Thank you.

  2. Julie Olson August 4, 2020 at 1:03 pm - Reply

    School starts next week for us (ugh!). This is a fantastic lesson, and I know my students will love doing it! Thanks!

    • Katie August 31, 2020 at 10:18 pm - Reply

      Thanks Julie – hope it goes well!

  3. Eunhee Kim August 22, 2021 at 9:29 pm - Reply

    Our students loved it! Thank you 🙂

    • Katie November 29, 2021 at 1:03 pm - Reply

      You’re welcome! Good to hear they enjoyed it!

  4. MTT152: Spice up your music classes with Wheel Of Names | Midnight Music September 27, 2023 at 5:10 am - Reply

    […] Musical Me lesson plan […]

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