Eighth Grade

ArtsAlive! Eight Grade is geared to ages 13–14 and aligns with select National Core Art Standards and Common Core English Language Arts Standards for eighth grade. The four Experiences in this level explore music, visual design, performance, and creative and persuasive writing, and they all focus on a very interesting person: the student! With a theme of Be Your Best, the lessons guide students as they learn to play a melodica, master skills to record music, develop and market themselves as a unique brand, research their favorite musician, and craft a meaningful autobiographical story.

Experience 1: Me Through Music

In this Experience, students will create an original melody and harmony for an instrument called a melodica and express something about themselves through the piece. They’ll learn about the melodica’s keyboard, get some basics on playing a wind instrument, and be introduced to eight different chords. They’ll compose a short piece and then learn how to lay down separate tracks for music using a simple digital program. Finally, they’ll explore the basics of graphic design to create their own album cover! 

Experience 2: Me As a Product

This Experience combines the visual arts, creative writing, and digital technology to help students learn about the concept of a “brand.” They’ll go through the brainstorming process to develop a brand for themselves create a logo and slogan and exploring merchandising. They’ll see how music can create a mood for a brand, research websites to learning more about branding, and learn the basics of video editing. Their final project will be a brand video for a very important product: themselves! 

Experience 3: Lunch with My Musical Hero

The third Experience gets students thinking about what it would be like to sit across a table from their favorite musician. They’ll learn about the history of the creative nonfiction genre and learn how to write interesting narratives based on facts. After gathering research on their favorite musician, they’ll learn about interviewing techniques and even create a unique portrait of their musical hero using Photoshop. The lunch with their hero is fictional, but they’ll learn real and applicable skills in this Experience.

Experience 4: My Own Scene

For the fourth Experience, students blend creative writing with theater studies to create an autobiographical scene. They’ll learn how autobiographical stories have been captured in books, on screen, and on stage. Students will then identify a personal anecdote that they can turn into a theatrical scene. They’ll learn about blocking and music, be asked to think like a director, and then—after recording their scene—they’ll do a critique to reflect on their work throughout the course.