April is JAZZ Month

When I told my students that April is Jazz Month  - they cheered!! Gotta love that, right?
Last week, I taught a lesson about Charlie Parker and the saxophone and we all loved it! Here's how I broke it down...

Would You Rather (our SEL section of the class): catch a frog and enter it into a frog jumping contest OR make a kite and enter a kite-flying contest? LOTS of discussion here from loving frogs to finding them disgusting and more than I wanted to know. So much fun! I laugh ALOT!

Group Greeting: This month we are greeting each other in Chinese, "Ni Hau". The kids get a kick out these greetings and often greet me with one when I see them in the hallways.

Brain Hook-Up: to settle us down for the lesson. This is referred to in my post of  Teaching in a Pandemic part 1.

Songs for Humming: The kids chose 2 songs from a group I selected from MusicK-8. You already know I love that resource. The songs for this month are Play That Music, Jazz, Jazz Is On It's Way, The Blues and All Jazzed Up.

Rhythmic Reading: we reviewed that notes are measured by beats not seconds. We double checked the length of each note in the sight reading example and then performed it on the chairs or using body percussion (snap, clap pat legs, stamp feet).

Body Percussion: Because the lyrics in Sir Duke references jazz greats, I chose this Stevie Wonder youtube clip.

Read Aloud: Charlie Parker Played Bebop by Chris Rascha. I used this youtube clip.

This leads to a 

MITS (Musician in the Spotlight) discussion about Charlie Parker and Bebop. I played about 1 minute of this Charlie Parker clip. We had previously discussed George Gershwin and his Opera Porgy & Bess. This was a nice connection to make even though it wasn't bebop.

The Instrument of the Week was of course, the saxophone. We listened to this clip of Ed Sheeran's cover, The Shape of You. Throughout the video, there are alto, tenor, baritone and bass saxophones featured. Very cool! And if there was time, we watched the saxophone version of  This Is Me from the The Greatest Showman.

And finally the beloved Bonus Video High Hopes: Behind the Scenes

And that's a rap for the beginning of April. If you have any questions, please reach out to me. We are all in this together.

Hang in there, Ellen