Arts Integration Specialist
Richelle Putnam is a MAC Arts Integration Specialist whose mission is to help students, educators, and communities discover the power of the arts to transform learning. Through residencies, professional development, and community-based initiatives, she weaves storytelling, music, and writing into academic subjects to foster creativity, critical thinking, and cultural connection.
SONGWRITING - Music + Language Arts + (Core Subject)
Impacting students of all ages and grade levels
Critical Youth Social Issues
“I believe creativity is the bridge from foundational knowledge to deeper learning. When rhythm, language, and imagination are combined through creativity, students don't just learn "new" knowledge—they are transformed by it.”
LOCAL HISTORY: JIMMIE RODGERS
Skills Developed Through This Lesson
Critical Thinking Skills
- Analyzing historical context to understand the Great Depression and its social impact.
- Interpreting lyrics for meaning, tone, and symbolism.
- Identifying poetic and musical patterns such as rhythm, repetition, and rhyme.
- Making connections between art, history, and lived human experiences.
Creative Skills
- Using imagination to extend a historical narrative through original songwriting.
- Experimenting with word choice, rhythm, and sound to evoke emotion and imagery.
- Collaborating in brainstorming and refining lyrical ideas.
- Expressing understanding through performance, combining language and music.
Academic Skills
- Applying language arts concepts such as stanza, meter, syllable count, and rhyme scheme.
- Practicing historical inquiry and synthesis by connecting facts with creative interpretation.
- Enhancing literacy through listening comprehension, oral participation, and writing.
- Meeting National Core Arts and Common Core ELA Standards through integrated learning.
Life Skills
- Developing teamwork, communication, and collaboration through shared creation.
- Building confidence in public speaking and performance.
- Learning empathy by exploring another person’s story and struggle through art.
- Understanding perseverance and resilience—both historically and personally—through the lens of creativity.
Strategies:
In this 45-minute classroom demonstration, students will explore how music connects to history and storytelling through Jimmie Rodgers’s “Waitin’ on a Train.”
Students will:
- Listen to and discuss Jimmie Rodgers’s song “Waitin’ on a Train.”
- Analyze the lyrics to understand rhythm, repetition, rhyme, and meaning.
- Learn about the Great Depression and how it inspired artists like Rodgers.
- Collaboratively brainstorm and write a third verse to the song as a class, guided by the Teaching Artist.
- Perform their new verse along with the instrumental track to experience how words and rhythm work together to shape a song’s message.
Purpose:
This lesson integrates music, history, and language arts, helping students understand how songs reflect real events—in this case, the struggles of the Great Depression—and how lyrics can be used to tell stories of people, places, and emotions.
For more lesson plans related to Jimmie Rodgers, visit The Jimmie Rodgers Museum and Festival website
K-2
THE TEACHER/TEACHING ARTIST:
The teacher/teaching artist will build knowledge by having students choose new characters, settings and actions to put into a familiar music structure.
The teacher/teaching artist will model the experience through an example re-write of the song
INTERACTIVE:
The teacher/teaching artist will guide the students’ practice as they take the first letter of a word and replace it with another letter to make a new word or a new character.
STUDENTS:
Students will choose new rhyming words to fill in blanks on their storyboards.
Students will replace actions with new actions consisting of the same syllable count to maintain rhythm and meter.
Original line:
“Hey, Diddle, Diddle, the cat and a fiddle.”
New version:
“Zay, Kiddle, Kiddle, the rat and a riddle.”
What changed:
Hey → Zay (nonsense but zippy!)
Diddle → Kiddle (nonsense, fun to say)
Cat → Rat (real word, small but exciting change)
Fiddle → Riddle (real word, keeps rhyme and adds mystery!)
New version:
“Bay, Biddle, Biddle, the bat and a griddle.”
What changed:
- Hey
→ Bay (simple consonant change, still a greeting-style word) - Diddle
→ Biddle (nonsense but rhythmic) - Cat
→ Bat (real word, fun for kids) - Fiddle
→ Griddle (real word, and adds silliness!)
These versions keep the same pattern and meter, while
encouraging letter play and vocabulary exploration.
