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Education Standards

Utah core english language arts (2011).

Learning Domain: Speaking and Listening

Standard: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led)with diverse partners on grade 4 topics and texts, building on others'۪ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

Standard: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience in an organized manner, using appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace.

Learning Domain: Writing

Standard: Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information.

Standard: Introduce a topic or text clearly, state an opinion, and create an organizational structure in which related ideas are grouped to support the writer'۪s purpose.

Writing & Project Rubric

Cat vs. dog opinion writing project.

This lesson plan is a 4th grade opinion writing project. This project is planned to take 2-3 weeks to fully complete. Students will complete various assignments online to help guide them towards their opinion of the prompt, "Which makes a better pet: a cat or a dog?" Students will be using Google Docs to write their opinion paper, Lucid Charts to organize their writing in a graphic organizer, and Adobe Spark to create their final product on this opinion project. Througout the lesson students will engage with the whole class, with partners or small group work, and complete individual work. 

Background for Teachers

To teach this lesson you will need an understanding of opinion writing and how to guide students to a finished essay. You will need to know how to use Lucid Charts for the graphic organizers and Adobe Spark for the final product of the project. 

You will also need articles about cats and dogs as pets. You may search Utah's Online Library  or use the following articles Cats vs. Dogs Opinion Articles .  

In addition you will need to know digital citizen skills, such as copyright, citation, and responsible posting. (ISTE Standard 3c). 

Education World - The Educator's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use

Copyright Basics for Educators (video)

BrainPOP - Citing Sources

Education World - Who Said that? How to Cite Electronic Resources

This lesson is an opinon writing lesson beginning with articles to read, Lucid Chart graphic organziers, and Adobe Spark final digital photo project. 

• Writing Grade 4 Standard 1: Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a poing of view with reasons and information. 
• Writing Grade 4 Standard 6: With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others: demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum one page in a single setting. 
• Speaking and Listening Grade 4 Standard 1: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 4 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly. 
• ISTE Standard 3 Knowledge Constuctor: Students critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts and make meaning learning experiences for themselves and others. 
• Time frame: 2-3 weeks 
• Format: synchronous, asynchronous, face-to-face, virtual, etc. This lesson works for all learning modalities. 

Title Photo Credit:  "cat-and-dog"  by  Katlene Niven  is licensed under  CC BY 2.0

Step 1 - Goals and Outcomes

Learning Intentions:

• Students will be able to understand how to form and write an opinion essay using text evidence to support their opinion. Students will use the acronyms of HIT, RACES, and TIE to write an opinion essay. Students will create a video project using their essay and creative common photos. 

Success Criteria:

• Students are successful when they can write an opinion essay using the writing strategies of HIT, RACES, and TIE using text evidence to support their opinion.  

Step 2 - Planning Instruction

Student Background Knowledge

Prior to this lesson, students will need to have an understanding of the acronyms HIT, RACES, and TIE to complete their graphic organizers. They will also need to know how to cite text evidence and its use to suppor their writing. 

Strategies for Diverse Learners

Students will be able to use collaborative groups to help them formulate an opinion and cite text evidence. Students will able to use anchor charts to guide their thinking as they formulate their opinion. 

Step 3 - Instruction

Week 1: 

• Students will be asked to think about "Which animal do you think is a better pet, cat or dog?" 
• Students will move to one side of the room if they chose cat and the other side of the room if they chose dog. Students in those groups will discuss why they'd prefer to have that animal as a pet than the other animal.
• Students will return to their desks and a group disucssion will take place on why one is better than the other. 
• Students will begin filling out the Venn Diagram with their ideas and thoughts on cats and dogs. 
• Students will then read the two articles on cats and dogs and add to their Venn Diagram. 
• Students will begin choosing their top reasons why one animal is better than the other.  
• Students will use their Venn Diagram and then begin completing their RACES graphic orgranizer. 
• Students will review their Venn Diagram and their RACES graphic organizer. Students will work on their introductory HIT paragraph. 
• Students will review their Venn Diagram and their RACES graphic organizer. Students will work on thier conclusion TIE paragraph. 
• Students will type their essay into their Google Doc in their Google Classroom. 
• Students will begin looking through the Creative Commons for photos they'd like to use in their video project. 
• Students will begin their video project in Adobe Spark. 

Week 3: 

• Students will complete and finalize their Adobe Spark video projects. 
• Students will edit their Google Doc essay and turn in when complete. 
• Students will present their Adobe Spark video project to other students during our times video sharing time. 
• Articles on cats and dogs for students to read
• Google Doc  Students will type their essay into this blank Google Doc and submit in Google Classroom. 

• Creative Commons for Digital Photos
• Google Search for HIT, RACES, TIE writing strategies

Step 4 - Assessments

Student learning will be assessed using the attached rubric. The rubic focuses on each part of the opinion writing essay as well as the final video project. Students will alwso be assessed during their learning in the first two weeks through class participation, group collaboration, and individual work time. 

Students who need an extension or finish early can create another animal video project to share with the class. 

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Guest Essay

Same Old Song: Private Equity Is Destroying Our Music Ecosystem

By Marc Hogan

Mr. Hogan is a freelance writer, reporter and music critic.

Does that song on your phone or on the radio or in the movie theater sound familiar? Private equity — the industry responsible for bankrupting companies , slashing jobs and raising the mortality rates at the nursing homes it acquires — is making money by gobbling up the rights to old hits and pumping them back into our present. The result is a markedly blander music scene, as financiers cannibalize the past at the expense of the future and make it even harder for us to build those new artists whose contributions will enrich our entire culture.

Take Whitney Houston’s 1987 smash “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me),” which was bought in late 2022 as part of a $50 million to $100 million deal by Primary Wave, a music publishing company backed by two private equity firms. The song was recently rebooted into our collective hippocampus via a movie about the singer, titled, naturally, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” which helped propel streams of the song and her hits collection. Primary Wave — which has entered into a variety of deals with artists or their estates that could include publishing rights, image rights and recorded-music revenue streams — has also helped introduce a Whitney Houston signature fragrance and a nonfungible token based on an unreleased Houston recording.

Buying up rights to a proven hit, dusting it off and dressing it up as a movie may impress at a shareholder conference, but it does little to add to a sustainable and vibrant music ecosystem. Like farmers struggling to make it through the winter — to think of another industry upended by private equity — we are eating our artistic seed corn.

Private equity firms have poured billions of dollars into music, believing it to be a source of growing and reliable income. Investors spent $12 billion on music rights in just 2021 — more than in the entire decade before the pandemic. Though it is like pocket change for an industry with $2.59 trillion in uninvested assets , the investments were welcomed by music veterans as a sign of confidence for an industry still in a streaming-led rebound from a bleak decade and a half. The frothy mood, combined with a Covid-related loss of touring revenue and concerns about tax increases, made it attractive for many artists, including Stevie Nicks and Shakira , to sell their catalogs, some for hundreds of millions of dollars.

How widespread is Wall Street’s takeover? The next time you listen to Katy Perry’s “Firework,” Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” on Spotify or Apple Music, you are lining the pockets of the private investment firms Carlyle, Blackstone and Eldridge. A piece of the royalties from Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito” goes to Apollo. As for Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” — hey, whoever turns you on, but it’s money in the till for HPS Investment Partners.

Like the major Hollywood studios that keep pumping out movies tied to already popular products, music’s new overlords are milking their acquisitions by building extended multimedia universes around songs, many of which were hits in the Cold War — think concerts starring holographic versions of long-dead musicians , TV tie-ins and splashy celebrity biopics . As the big money muscles these aging ditties back to our cultural consciousness, it leaves artists on the lower rungs left to fight over algorithmic scraps , with the music streaming giant Spotify recently eliminating payouts for songs with fewer than 1,000 annual streams.

The grim logic that shuttered the big-box store chain Toys “R” Us and toppled the media brand Vice is also taking hold of our music. Historically, record labels and music publishers could use the royalties from their older hits to underwrite risky bets on unproven talent. But why “would you spend your time trying to create something new at the expense of your catalog?” asked Merck Mercuriadis, the former manager of Beyoncé and Elton John who founded Hipgnosis.

Instead, self-styled disrupters can strip mine old hits and turn them into new ones. Nearly four years ago, the publicly traded Hipgnosis Songs Fund bought a 50 percent stake in the funk star Rick James’s catalog, which includes his irresistibly catchy 1981 hit “Super Freak.” To monetize its prize, Hipgnosis found a lightly modernized update of the “Super Freak” track, had Nicki Minaj assemble a songwriting crew and voilà: In 2022, Ms. Minaj’s “Super Freaky Girl,” essentially the pop-rap superstar rapping over “Super Freak,” became her first No. 1 single that wasn’t a joint release. Hipgnosis trumpeted the win in its annual report .

This creative destruction is only further weakening an industry that already offers little economic incentive to make something new. In the 1990s, as the musician and indie label founder Jenny Toomey wrote recently in Fast Company , a band could sell 10,000 copies of an album and bring in about $50,000 in revenue. To earn the same amount in 2024, the band’s whole album would need to rack up a million streams — roughly enough to put each song among Spotify’s top 1 percent of tracks . The music industry’s revenues recently hit a new high , with major labels raking in record earnings , while the streaming platforms’ models mean that the fractions of pennies that trickle through to artists are skewed toward megastars.

Fortunately, some of the macroeconomic forces that have brought us that Whitney Houston perfume (forged from a deal between Primary Wave, Ms. Houston’s estate and a perfumer) and a Smokey Robinson wristwatch (via a partnership with Shinola) are shifting. As interest rates have risen, the surge has faded. In February, word surfaced that the private equity behemoth KKR was beating a quiet retreat from the music space. More recently, Hipgnosis Songs Fund, the owner of “Super Freak,” cut the value of its music portfolio by more than a quarter in the wake of a shareholder revolt. Long-hyped deals to sell the catalogs of Pink Floyd , for a proposed $500 million, and Queen , for a reported $1.2 billion, have yet to bear any public fruit.

And that’s probably fine. All music is derivative at some level — outside a courthouse or a boardroom, music has a folk tradition in which everybody borrows ideas from everybody — but it’s hard to argue that already wealthy artists should receive 1990s-level compensation for the type of flagrantly recycled fare that the private equity cohort demands. A music world without, say, a “Dark Side of the Moon” theme park ride or a “Bohemian Rhapsody” film sequel seems like one where fresher sounds could have a little more room to breathe.

And subscription growth for streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music seems likely to slow, as the finite number of possible customers hits its limit. With less growth, values for music rights are expected to level off . Perhaps that will leave more money in the pool for musicians just starting their careers.

Music is invaluable, but to the music industry and the technology companies that now distribute its products, songs are quick dopamine hits in an endless scroll — and musicians are paid accordingly. The presence of Wall Street didn’t start the systematic devaluation of music, but it did bring this dismal reality into stark relief. Private equity’s push into music rights may have proved to be less a sign of a gold rush than yet another canary in a coal mine.

Musicians’ groups have been fighting for fairer pay, and this month, Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Jamaal Bowman of New York, both Democrats, introduced a bill intended to increase artists’ streaming payouts. Though such efforts seem sure to face stiff opposition, it’s long past time for the music industry to try something new. We need to make the making of music important enough again for that future John Lennon to pick up a guitar.

Marc Hogan is a freelance writer, reporter and music critic.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], April 2 (ANI): Actor Rajkummar Rao, who is all set to essay the role of visually impaired industrialist in Srikanth in his biopic, took to social media to congratulate the latter as he and his wife have been blessed with a daughter.

Srikanth Bolla shared the good news on his Instagram account with a cute post.

Rajkummar shared the same post on his social media handle with a message that read, “Heartiest congratulations to #Srikanth and Swathi on the arrival of their little princess! Sending lots of love and blessings your way.”

The Rajkummar starrer narrates the story of Srikanth Bolla, who did not let his visual impairment come in the way of eventually finding Bollant Industries. ‘Srikanth’ film is directed by Tushar Hiranandani and will hit the theatres on May 10, 2024.

The movie was earlier titled ‘SRI’. The update regarding the change in the name was shared recently by the team.

Sharing the update, Rajkummar Rao on social media wrote, “A remarkable true story that will open your eyes! #Srikanth, earlier titled SRI, releasing on the auspicious occasion of Akshaya Tritiya, 10th May 2024.”

Jyotika and Alaya F are also a part of the film. (ANI)

This report is auto-generated from ANI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.

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