In my middle school class the chapter of the textbook was music so I thought I would do some activities related to songs / artists. There are some short comprehensions on videos on young musicians: Christian Li (violinist from Australia), Anke Chen (pianist from China), Lydian Nadhaswaram (pianist from India). In a separate resource I added a Mozart comprehension (obviously on the theme of young musicians!) so I will add it here too for ease. For this exercise the students have a ‘running dictation’ to do. Then there is a comprehension text on the wonderful story of Nandi Bushell and her drum-off with Dave Grohl. Finally, as Nirvana are mentioned in the Nandi Bushell text I created a gap fill for a parody song (for some humour in class) for Weird Al Yankovic’s “Smells Like Nirvana”. My teenage students liked it! They also asked to hear the original so I have added this link. All of the links for the songs are supplied in a separate Microsoft Word document for you.

Here is a comprehension text on the life of Mozart. It can be used for native speakers but has also been designed for learners of English (B1-B2). It will be fine for B1 given that the vocab activity will help them with some of the more advanced vocab. Firstly there is a running dictation that can be done in lesson one then students can read the definitions and translate. In Lesson 2 they can read the text on Mozart’s life and answer the True or False exercise and then rewrite the false sentences. The answers for the exercises are given at the end.