These are some lessons that I did as a unit on a 4 week school week in a middle school music appreciation class. We discussed the timbres of instruments, different ensembles, and different genres. The recorded music can all be found using either Spotify or YouTube. For the first two lessons the students took notes (I did not require them to know specifics about composers) and the third lesson they had a “close” worksheet to follow. The fourth day was the test. I took the ideas for the first two lessons from the Silver-Burdett Making Music curriculum. The PowerPoints are my own. You could easily explore more of the music and add a fifth day for review or more listening.
1. PP: Timbre Lesson Plan PowerPoint – Music Appreciation
2. PP: Ensemble Timbres Lesson – Music Appreciation
3. PP: Musical Styles Lesson – music appreciation
4.Testing
Music Appreciation Test – Timbre, Ensembles, Genres
(If you’re not sure of the answers I can send you the key.)
About Lady Fair
Lady is a musician with a bachelor's degree in music education. She plays multiple instruments and has participated in numerous musical ensembles, giving her a wide variety of experiences and knowledge to use in her teaching career. Of her ensemble participation, she has fifteen years of band experience, nine years choral, and four years in orchestra. Éowyn's primary instrument is clarinet, with voice and piano being close secondary instruments. Throughout her musical education career she studied voice and clarinet simultaneously. In addition to clarinet, piano, and voice, she has also studied violin and oboe at the college level, and also plays recorder, tin whistle, and other instruments in the woodwind family.
If you ask her, she will say, "I chose to major in music education because I have a desire to use my knowledge and experience in music to share its beauty and foster a love of music in the hearts of my students. I hope to encourage my students to try their hardest, feel like they have accomplished something, and give them a life long passion for music."
Lady currently teaches private lessons on clarinet, sax, flute, oboe, piano, and voice, and recently gained a position teaching orchestra and chorus at a local middle school. She is also a member of the Once Upon a Dream woodwind ensembles.
Adventures of a Music Teacher 
On the powerpoints it says “listen to…” and there is nothing attached…is it supposed to play?
For copyright purposes I can’t include the recordings on the PowerPoint. You can purchase them or acquire them and add them on your own. It also is difficult at times to share a PowerPoint between computers (from home to work, for example) without also transferring the mp3 files and then having to point the link in the PP to those correct files, so I often use Spotify instead. 🙂
It also states “read page 68”, what is that from??
For the recordings, can you tell us which pieces you were having students listen to?
That was from the Silver Burdette “Making Music” books. These can be used as stand alone or with the books. The pieces should be labeled on the power point. 🙂