Renai Elementary School, Da'an District, Taipei City—Emotions in Music: Telling Stories with Ethereal Drums

This class is an interdisciplinary course that combines musical instrument playing, story reading, and SEL (Sentence Emotional Education).
Fourth-grade students face the challenges of peer interaction and the development of self-awareness in their school life. Appropriate expression of emotions can lead to better interpersonal communication and mental health. This lesson plan, based on the arts curriculum and incorporating the five SELs (Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Interpersonal Relationships, and Responsible Decision Making), aims to provide students with more experiences exploring emotions in formal music classes.

The course design begins with the unique and healing sounds of the handpan and ethereal drum as a guide, allowing students to find the connection between sound and emotion through listening, and to discover that everyone has different ways of expressing rhythm and percussion force. It then integrates language arts, exploring the emotional shifts of the characters in the story "The Big Fool" through group reading.

In the hands-on art phase, students attempted to convey abstract emotions through the percussion techniques of ethereal drums and rhythmic instruments, designing background music for the storyline. Finally, through collaborative performances and reflective sharing in small group "emotional theater," students reconnected with self-awareness and social awareness from SEL education, thereby learning to communicate, listen to others, and demonstrate respect.