Spirituals
http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=318
A lesson plan for Grades 9–12 General Music/All Other High School Electives and African American History
About this resource
- Appropriate grades
- 9–12
- Subjects
- arts (music), social studies (African Americans, religion, United States history)
- Provider
- National Endowment for the Humanities
Legal
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This lesson plan introduces students to the role that spirituals have played in African American history and religion.
The lesson begins with a review of factors that contributed to the development of the spiritual, which reflects the influence of African religious traditions, Christian traditions, and the conditions of slavery. Students explore the community-building power of this combination by listening to a performance of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” perhaps the best-known spiritual. They then turn to the 19th-century biography of Harriet Tubman to examine how she used spirituals as a secret signal to fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad.
Finally, to conclude the lesson, students collect spirituals by interviewing family members, friends, and acquaintances in order to investigate how deeply this African American religious tradition has woven itself into American culture and share similar songs that reflect their heritage.
The goals of this lesson are:
- to learn about the role spirituals have played in African American history and religion
- to examine Harriet Tubman's use of spirituals in her work for the Underground Railroad
- to explore the continuing power of the spiritual in the Civil Rights Movement and as a shared American heritage
- to gain experience in working with oral tradition, biography, and song as types of historical evidence.
North Carolina Curriculum Alignment
Music Education (2001)
Grades 9–12 — General Music/All Other High School Electives
- Goal 6: The learner will listen to, analyze, and describe music.
- Objective 6.01: Identify musical forms representing various historical periods and cultures.
- Objective 6.04: Show respect while listening to and analyzing music.
- Goal 8: The learner will understand relationships between music, the other arts, and content areas outside the arts.
- Objective 8.01: Apply rules of standard written English to explain the uses of characteristic elements, artistic processes, and organizational principles among the arts areas (dance, music, theatre arts, and visual arts) in different historical periods and cultures.
- Objective 8.02: Identify and explain ways in which the concepts and skills of other content areas outside the arts are related to those of music.
- Goal 9: The learner will understand music in relation to history and culture.
- Objective 9.01: Identify representative examples of music using distinguishing characteristics to identify genre, style, culture and/or historical periods.
- Objective 9.02: Examine situations to determine conflict and resolution in relation to music in history and cultures.
- Objective 9.03: Recognize and identify ways that music reflects history.
- Objective 9.04: Examine the role of music/musicians in at least two different cultures and/or time periods.
- Objective 9.05: Show respect for music from various cultures and time periods.
Social Studies (2003)
Grades 11–12 — African American Studies
- Goal 3: The learner will demonstrate an understanding of African American life and cultural contributions through 1860.
- Objective 3.04: Identify the contributions of African Americans in science and the arts.
