Cover Lessons for the Music Room
Cover Lessons for the Music Room
Music is the worst subject to leave cover work for. Instruments cannot be handed out, the room is arranged for performance rather than writing, and a puzzle sheet buys nobody anything. These lessons stand alone on paper, need no specialist and still cover material you would have taught anyway.
See the unit →Resources that fit
Units and bundles for this topic
Start with the unit that matches your next teaching block; the bundle is there if you need the whole strand. Tap any cover for the full contents, preview and price.
Film Music Analysis | Function, Diegesis & Dramaturgy of Audiovisual Music | Complete High School Music Unit
Music About Music | Quotation, Homage, Parody & Sampling | Complete High School Music Unit
Soundscape & Acoustic Ecology | Field Recording, Sound Art & Listening | Complete High School Music Unit
Minimal Music | Reich, Glass, Riley & the Power of Repetition | Complete High School Music Unit
Music, Media & Narrative Bundle | Program Music, Leitmotif, Film Music & Soundscape | 4 Complete Units | Grades 9–12
The teaching problem
Cover That Is Not A Wasted Lesson
Setting cover for music usually happens at seven in the morning on a phone, and the constraints are unusually tight. The person covering may not read music, cannot supervise practical work safely, and will be standing in a room full of instruments that are expensive and interesting. Anything requiring the teacher to explain a concept will not survive contact with the class. Anything requiring students to sit quietly and copy will produce noise within ten minutes, which in a music room is a worse outcome than in most. The lessons that work are self-contained, have a visible product at the end, and give students a procedure they can carry out without instruction. That last point is what separates a usable cover lesson from a worksheet, and it is why the tasks below are all things students do rather than things they read about.
A sequence that works
Five Standalone Lessons For A Sub
These are not sequential, so pick whichever suits the class and the day. Each is one lesson, needs printing and nothing else, and produces work you can mark or build on when you return.
- Score a scene on paperStudents receive a written scene description and plan the music for it: instrumentation, tempo, where the cue starts and stops. Choices must be justified in writing.
- Track a borrowed melodyA printed timeline shows one tune passing through four contexts across three centuries. Students identify what each borrower changed and argue whether it counts as homage.
- Map the sounds of a placeWorking from memory and a template, students chart the sound environment of the school day by time, volume and source, then write about what the map reveals.
- Phasing on grid paperTwo identical patterns shift by one cell per repetition. Students complete the grid, predict where alignment returns, and check their prediction against the pattern length.
- Annotate a printed extractA short marked score with a set of guided questions. Answers are closed enough to check against a key, so the person covering can tell whether work was done.
Where it goes wrong
Making Cover Work Worth Marking
The test of a cover lesson is what comes back. Tasks with a single visible product, such as a completed grid or an annotated page, get done; open reflection tasks return blank. Leave a printed answer key for the closed questions so the person covering can check progress mid-lesson rather than discovering at the bell that half the class wrote nothing. Avoid setting anything that counts toward a grade under cover, since conditions are not comparable and disputes follow. Collect the work, use it diagnostically, and reteach whatever the grids reveal. If you are covering rather than setting, the answer keys carry the musical content, so you can mark the closed tasks with no background in the subject.
What's in the download
Inside the files
Editable Word and PowerPoint plus print-ready PDFs, with answer keys throughout.
- Five standalone cover lessons
- Printable task sheets and grids
- Answer keys for closed questions
- One-page briefing note for the sub
- Extension tasks for early finishers
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
Will a sub with no music background cope?
That is what these are built for. All instructions appear on the student sheet, so the person covering reads the same page the class does and does not have to explain anything. The briefing note lists the timings, what should be on the desk at the end, and what to do with early finishers. Closed answer keys let them check work during the lesson, which matters more for behavior than for accuracy.
Do any of these lessons need audio?
No. Everything here works without playback, which is deliberate, because cover teachers frequently cannot access your accounts and the room speakers fail at the worst moment. The download contains editable Word and PowerPoint files plus PDFs, with no audio or video included. If your sub can play something, the film scoring lesson works well with a clip, but nothing depends on it.
How long does each lesson run?
Between 45 and 60 minutes, with an extension task for classes that finish early and a natural stopping point around the 40 minute mark for shorter periods. The phasing grid is the most elastic, since the grid can be extended indefinitely. The annotation lesson is the tightest, so print the extension questions if your periods run long or the class works quickly.
Ready Before You Need It
Print one of each now and leave the folder in your desk. Cover set at short notice is rarely the lesson you would have chosen.
See the money-saving bundle →