How to Teach Jazz History
Teaching jazz history is your opportunity to instruct students on one of the most underappreciated musical art forms. You can introduce students to a wide variety of jazz styles and teach about the history of the different musicians who shaped the music. They will learn what jazz is, write a short biography of a famous jazz musician, listen to jazz musicians play music and design a jazz collage for a specific style of jazz music.
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Instructions
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How to Teach Jazz History
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Pass out pencils and paper for students to begin writing a biography of a jazz musician. If you have biographies or reference books available with jazz musicians' life stories, students can use those resources for the short biography they will write. You can also have them use the Smithsonian Jazz Website (see Resources). Instruct them to click on the "Jazz Class" link under "Learn." They should click on the "What Is Jazz" link, reading the information and taking some notes. Students might choose Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter or Ella Fitzgerald. Under "Oral Biographies," students can choose one of the musicians like Dave Brubeck or James Moody for their written biography.
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Give students at least 20 minutes to write notes about the musician for the biography . Then have students write at least a three-paragraph biography about the musician they chose.
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Instruct students to listen to a few of the musicians under the "Grooving to Jazz" link. Have them choose at least two of the jazz musicians listed. After listening to the musical selections, they should write about their feelings when they listened to the music: what the music seemed to be saying to them. Jazz is about feeling, so the music often conveys an emotion or a message. Have the students share their biographies and impressions about the music with each other.
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Direct the students to design a collage to represent a jazz style. Jazz has many styles. Go to the A Passion for Jazz website (see Resources). Students should click on the link "Jazz Styles," and choose a style of jazz for designing a collage. Among the options are Ragtime, Classic Jazz, Hot Jazz, Chicago Style, Swing, Kansas City Style, Bebop, Cool, Hard Bop, Free Jazz and Soul Jazz.
Students can read about the styles for ideas about the collage/poster they are designing. Students can include musical instruments, sheet music, musicians, words and other images in their collage. They can click on the "Poster Art" section to look at posters to get ideas. -
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Tell the students that they should make sure their collage/poster has a title and relevant images. Hand out scissors and glue for students to cut and paste photos for their collages. Students can print out images found on the website and cut them to form a collage. They can use photos from the photo gallery of the musicians, or they can draw their own images. Have students share their collages with the class.
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