I designed this lesson for my Grade 2 High School Girls. We use the song "Seasons of Love" from the musical Rent to discuss how you measure your life and find happiness. They loved the song, one class requested to stay in at break time to listen to it again. You could use this song in any number of ways, but this is how I did it:

Materials: "Seasons of Love" lyrics handouts, equipment play audio/video of the song.

Procedure:

1.   Write: 'Units of Measure' on the board. Ask the students 'what are units of measure?' Review units of measure for various things like WEIGHT (kilograms, grams, pounds, ounces), DISTANCE (kilometer, meter, centimeter, inch, mile, feet, etc), LIQUID, MEMORY on a computer and so on, and finish with TIME (hours, days, seconds, minutes).
2.   Tell the students today we are going to listen to a song from a musical. Review ‘musical’ quickly with the students. Explain: Rent is a popular American Musical about 8 friends and what happens to them in one year. Write 3 questions on the board (the students should be listening for the answers to the questions in the song)
A.   What question are they asking? (How do you measure your life/a year in your life?)
B.   What answer do they give? (Measure in love)
C.   How many minutes are in a year? (525, 600 minutes)
3.   Play the song (without lyrics). Afterwards, solicit the answers to the three questions. I explain, the song is about measuring your life by more than just how much time has passed. The singers give many answers to the question “How do you measure a year?” in the song.
4.   Hand out the lyrics to the song. Tell the students to listen to the song again, and look for different answers to the questions in the song. Play the video again.
5.   Solicit the other answers from the students: daylights, sunsets, midnights, cups of coffee, inches, miles, laughter, strife, truths learned, times that you cry, bridges burned, the way someone dies, love. I also explained ‘strife’ and the idiom of ‘burning a bridge’.
6.   Write the days date on the board with 2008-2009 on the board. Ask the students what did they do in the last year. At first students may only list big events like school festivals, holidays and things. Encourage the students to talk about smaller or more personal events, things that make them happy (lunchtime, sleeping, watching movies, etc). (If you’re students are shy/lazy you may want to have stickers or candy ready to reward the students who give answers).
7.   Repeat Step 6, but with the date 2009-2010. What are some things that will happen in the next year? What are something things that you hope will happen? Again you will get some big events, and because the students are in Grade 2, they will talk about the University Entrance Exam and studying all the time. At this point, I again ask the students for smaller more personal things that they will do to keep themselves happy/help them relax. I end the lesson asking the students if they will do all these things alone. No, of course not, they will have friends and family with them. I tie it up by talking about measuring the year in love/friendships/bridges between people and to make sure that next year they remember to do little things they enjoy to make it a happy year.
8.   Watch the video again, sing along if you/the class are into it!

Some classes are quieter than others, so I also did up a worksheet for the students to make lists about the last and next year. Give the students 5 or 10 minutes to write down some answers and then take them up together on the board. This gives them something to read from when they answer.

That’s it. Here’s the link:

Sure thing - here it is! I really didn't use the actual worksheet very much, it's very basic. But the lyrics are also attached. Good luck!

(This coding on this site is smarter than me so I couldn't get the link to post without embedding the video, but just youtube search "seasons of love" it should the first video that appears in the list)