Beginning, Middle and Ending
1st Grade

Lesson: Beginning, Middle and Ending

Grade: 1st grade

Concept: Students will experience the idea of beginning, middle, and end in a variety of situations including literary and musical.

Objectives: Students will identify the beginning, middle and end of Where the Wild Things Are

Students will listen to an excerpt of music and identify the beginning, middle and end of the song.

Materials needed: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.

"Jingle Bell" (or any other short riff of music)
Spankin' Rufus
Spankenstein @1994
CD Player

Preliminary Procedures:

1. Teachers reads Where the Wild Things Are to the class. The teacher should stop after "... so he was sent to bed without eating anything." and discuss with the children what might happen next.
2. The teacher should also discuss with the children that this is the beginning of the story.
3. The teacher should continue reading until "...so he gave up being king of where the wild things are."
4. At this point the teacher should again ask what the children think might happen next.
5. The teacher should also introduce the idea of "middle."
6. The teacher should finish reading the story and then have the children discuss how the story ended.
7. The class should review the beginning, middle and end of the story.

Music also has a beginning, middle and end.

1. The teacher plays the intro to "Jingle Bell" (or any other short riff) and tells the students to listen carefully for the beginning, middle, and end.
2. The teacher plays the music again and asks the students to raise one finger during the beginning, 2 fingers during the middle, and 3 fingers during the end.

Evaluation: Evaluation occurs while students are discussing beginning, middle, and end (are they understanding the concepts enough to talk about them?) as well as during the playing of "Jingle Bell" (do they raise the appropriate number of fingers?)

Follow­up: Students can incorporate the idea of beginning, middle and end into their own writing and story­telling.

Musical concepts: I would discuss timbre with this music. The song features horns, guitars, drums, keyboard, and vocals coming in at different times which creates an interesting layering effect. The students would be able to clearly hear the different strata and identify the changing timbre of the song.

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Member of ©1997
Dennis W. Mills, Ph.D.