The Street: World Music

What it is: I am currently working on a fun project for Starrmatica tagging and organizing websites and resources.  One of the resources that was new to me is The Street: World Music.  This is a neat interactive learning journey from BBC radio where students can learn about other countries and cultures through music.  The Street features five families from five different countries including India, Ireland, Brazil, Turkey, and Nigeria.  In each house students can learn more about the country, instruments, musicians, religion, and food from the country.  Students have plenty of opportunities to listen to the music.

How to integrate The Street: World Music into your curriculum: Music is a neat way to introduce students to other cultures.  It allows an inside look into the culture by sharing the sounds of the culture.  What I like about The Street, is the way the music is introduced along side religion, food, and information about the country.  This site gives students a wonderful overview of five countries where they can not only read about the differences, but they can see the differences (through photos) and hear the differences (through music).  The Street is a great site to introduce into any classroom, music teachers will appreciate the look at the instruments and musicians of the country.  As an extension activity, have your students create their own “house” for The Street. This can be done offline with paper and a collection of music, photos, and information.  Alternatively use a website builder like Weebly or Wix or a Wiki to collect the information in an online space.  Students can choose a country to learn more about or create a house for their own country, thinking about what is important to their culture.  Want to extend the activity even more?  Connect with teachers from different countries and have the students learn about different cultures together.  Use Skype or Wetoku to connect the classes and play music from each culture.  Create a wiki together to collect and  share information learned.

Tips: If you are looking for teachers to collaborate  with, use and search the #glolab hash tag to connect.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Street: World Music in your classroom!