Music Workshop resources are flexible enough to integrate into any curriculum. The courses can be used in many ways: to introduce a unit, supplement a unit, as a special treat day, a post-concert rest day or grouped together to make a unit of their own. Music Workshop also makes an exceptional lesson plan for a substitute teacher.
No, Music Workshop’s programming can be integrated into all classrooms. Music Workshop integrates into general education classes easily, especially social studies, humanities, and foreign language classes. When studying geography, cultures, and literature from around the world, our culture series shares food, geographical locations, map animations, music, and traditions that enhance your lessons. Our careers courses are a great addition to a Career Day/Week at your school. Our genres courses add engaging context to lessons about certain time periods in American history.
Each Music Workshop course includes relevant, exciting, and culturally responsive music and artists to inspire your students to live a musical life. The lessons are divided into four video sections which are around 5 minutes each. Each video section is followed by prompts for a teacher-led question and answer period (around 3-5 minutes long). For virtual learning, a pre-loaded Google Form quiz is available to attach to your lesson in the learning management system of your choice. Courses include a Music in Life Lesson, which is an active listening exercise, and a Musical Movement Minute, which is a chance for K-5 students to stand up and get their wiggles out (this section is not included in the grade 6-8 version). Courses are interspersed with “Fun Facts” engaging the students with unique information on the course topic.
Courses contain supplemental materials with optional activities like word searches, coloring sheets, and fill-in forms of the questions from the video. Also included in the course materials is a document called “Sound Bites” that is a recap of the course for students to share with their families or caretakers.
All classroom lessons are free of charge. Music is for everyone!
We fundraise to support our free of charge lessons through foundation grants, private donations and our fee-based professional development program. We have wonderful donors, foundation and corporate partners that are passionate about supporting music-empowered education.
You are required to set up a unique user account to access all the materials. Once you have your own account, the only requirement for the program is that you provide feedback after teaching courses. Your feedback is vital, because we use it to ensure the quality of the program and to secure the funding that brings these resources to you free of charge.
No, you can access any part of the program, in any order, at your own pace and timing.
We offer a wide variety of courses and programming. Check out the Our Program page for highlights of the different types of material – from musical genres and musical cultures to Ida’s Adventures and Soundwaves Concerts. If you would like a listing and information about each of our courses, see the Explore Topics page for a listing with information.
The Music in Life lesson in each course is an active listening exercise that is one of the most important elements of the Music Workshop program. Active listening involves listening with intent and no distractions. It is an important component in life and learning and is a valuable “soft skill” like problem-solving, leadership, or teamwork. Like any skill, it takes practice and effort – and music class is a great opportunity to teach this to students.
Young students today live in a world of visuals and screens. Taking a moment during a Music Workshop course to quietly and purposefully engage with what the music makes you feel, think, and experience is vital to understanding that music is a profoundly personal experience.
Music Workshop is designed for overall use in grades K-8. For most courses, the videos and materials are segmented into three grade groupings: K-2, 3-5, and 6-8. The courses in the Culture Series have the same video for all grades, but they do include grade-segmented supplemental materials. The Careers in Music courses are recommended for grades 3-8.
While our primary audience is K–8, many educators successfully use Music Workshop with grades 9–12. The content is rich, relevant, and engaging -offering high school students valuable insights into music, culture, and career pathways that deepen their understanding and spark meaningful discussion.
Each course includes all the essential components, with adjustments made for different grade levels. For our youngest learners in grades K–2, we are currently revamping the content to include movement breaks and interactive activities. The current K-2 versions of the videos, for most, are currently abbreviated to better match shorter attention spans. They are presently being updated – one at a time – to include more movement and interactive elements. In the grades 6–8 version, the Musical Movement Minute has been removed based on teacher feedback that this age group is less receptive to movement activities.
Grades 9–12 educators can also use Music Workshop successfully. While the program was designed primarily for K–8, the content is rich, relevant, and adaptable for older students, offering meaningful insights into music, culture, and careers.
You can download any version of the videos and materials that you find appropriate for your classroom. We recommend reviewing the materials beforehand to choose the version best suited to your students.
Some courses have fewer than three grade-level versions. For example, Careers in Music courses have two versions (grades 3–5 and 6–8) because they are not recommended for K–2 students. The Culture Series has one version of the video for all grades, as the information is too valuable to abbreviate for younger learners. For younger or less advanced students, you can break these lessons into multiple shorter sessions to ensure the content is accessible.
Some of our courses are recommended for grades 3-8 (Careers, Culture Series, and Soundwaves).
We currently offer several courses in our genre and culture series, and will continue to add more until all are updated. In the portal, you will see a red flag across the course video thumbnail denoting the K-2 updated course availability. Our current offerings include K-2 Pop, Hip Hop, South Asia, and Latin American/Caribbean music; our upcoming K-2 courses are Musicals, Native American Traditional Music, Music of West Asia, and more!
Music Workshop teachers are very creative with how they use the program as part of their curriculum. One teacher told us she has “Music Workshop Wednesday” as an activity to break up the week. Others use Music Workshop for a substitute teacher plan or treat day. Many teachers use the program to supplement or introduce a unit – if they are doing a keyboard unit, they select the Piano course. We have also heard from teachers who use the courses corresponding to the sections of the orchestra – strings, brass, percussion, and woodwinds – to create a unit. Versatility is at the heart of Music Workshop, allowing it to fit seamlessly into a wide range of teaching styles and settings.
Each Music Workshop account is attached to a singular email. If you teach at multiple schools, we encourage you to set up an account for each school (you can use a non-school email address to sign up for multiple school accounts) so that you can track which courses you are using for each school and we can track which schools our program is taught in. If you are uncomfortable doing this, let us know which additional schools you teach at and we will add it to our records manually.
This is not uncommon, as school districts sometimes block emails from outside sources. Please email us at amyh@musicworkshopedu.org or imani@musicworkshopedu.org and we will reset the password for you.
Your feedback is crucial to our program quality and funding. Keeping Music Workshop programming high quality, relevant and up-to-date is our highest priority. We need to hear how the program functions in your classroom so we can continually improve the materials. Plus, Music Workshop is funded entirely by grants and donations. We do not charge teachers for the program. We use the information gathered in the feedback form to help procure the grants and donations that are critical to ensuring the growth and survival of Music Workshop. We thank you for your time and insight.
You are allowed to check out three courses at a time. After that, you will need to check in a course by filling out a feedback form before you can check out another course. On occasion, you may need to progress to another course before you have presented a course to your class. You can simply indicate that fact on the form, fill out the rest to your best ability and submit it to move onto another course. We ask that you return later and fill out the form after you have taught the course. You can fill out the feedback form as many times as you like, but are only required to fill it out once per course.
We have tried many ways to collect the feedback that we need to improve and fund the program and have found that the only way to ensure we receive it is to require feedback as teachers move through the program.
It is so convenient! Select a course to download the video, Q&A, Sound Bites and any supplemental materials you would like to include. Leave the video on your hard drive or thumb drive, where the substitute can access it, and leave printed materials for students (or leave PDF files for the substitute to print out). There is a document called “Instructions for a Substitute Teacher” included in the supplemental materials. Print these directions and leave for the sub.
Yes. In response to COVID, we modified the program so it can be used for distance, individual or blended learning. We produced a lower-resolution version of the video that is upload friendly, and amended or created other course materials to support individual and distance learning. You are able to assign a lesson via learning management systems like Google Classroom, Canvas and Seesaw. Students can access the lesson, go at their own pace and work independently from any location.
The Sound Bites document is a recap of the course contents that students can take home and share with their family or caretakers. It also gives them a record of everything they learned, so they can research further and continue learning on their own. Music Workshop strives to inspire students to lead musical lives and find their own musical paths, and we want to support their ongoing curiosity and excitement about the artists and music they experience in Music Workshop courses.
The fill-in sheets are an optional exercise that is great for students who like to take notes as they follow along. For other students, this distracts from their concentration. We encourage teachers to offer it, but not to require it.
Check out the FAQ for our Professional Development. If your question isn’t answered there either, contact us.
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