For this lesson I started by having the students sing the song together several times and then aurally copy the opening ostinato, which is also prevalent throughout the song. We then covered the rest of the song using classroom instruments. The covering lessons took three, thirty minute class sessions. The final session was a performance of the song followed by activities in which students created their own riff or ostinato, that served as a launch pad to create a new original song.
This lesson was part of a larger research project that was published in the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education entitled, Informal learning processes in an elementary music classroom.
Click here for a link to the abstract.
Get the complete lesson plan here: Unwritten
Sharon G. Davis 