Lesson Plans

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Day One:

Pre activity:  Introduction to Jazz

• Bring in CD of Louis Armstrong Music and have it playing when students get into the group
• Have students listen to at least 5 minutes of music and have them write reflections on what they are hearing.  They will concentrate on personal response and technical (musical).  Write the following on chart paper to prompt students:

1.  Personal response:

• How does the music make you feel?
• What images or pictures does the music create in your mind?
• Do you like this music? Why or Not?

2.      Musically:

§         Is the tempo (speed of music) fast or slow?

§         Is it always the same tempo (speed)?

§         What instruments do you hear?

§         Is there a steady beat?

§         Can anyone tell me what type of music they think it is?

*When students are finished: Discuss by going round robin, allowing students to share two things they have written.

During Activity:  Introduction and Literature circle Guidelines

• Pass out books and ask students who they think was playing on the CD (desired response - Louis Armstrong)
• “We will be doing a unit where we will be learning about Louis Armstrong and the type of music he played. Can anyone tell me what type of music that Louis played? It was the music we were just listening to.”
• Introduce genre of music:  Jazz

• Literature Circle And Guidelines:
  1. We will be learning about Louis Armstrong and Jazz through a Literature Circle/ Guided reading
  2. Read aloud round robin or silently for each of the five sections of Louis Armstrong:  Jazzing up the Music
  3. Each section we will learn how to do different jobs as a group.  With other units each of you will be doing a separate job.
  4. Before we begin learning jobs, we will go over Guidelines for our group reading
     • Read sections and then discuss
     • Explain how asking questions will guide our discussions
     • “Wait time” when answering questions
     • “Wait time” before we help a fellow group member with a word when reading aloud
     • It's ok to disagree: as long as done respectively (give an example)
     • Listen: eyes on speaker
     • “Passing the pen” during whole group writing exercises
     • Attention getters: “One to three- eyes on me- freeze.”

Post Activity: K.W.L

• Explain concept of K.W.L (Know, Want to learn and Learned)
• K.W.L will guide unit
• Use chart paper to fill in K (What students know about Jazz and Louis Armstrong)
• Pass the pen:  Each student will write one thing about what they know (or think they know).  Remind them to think about the Jazz music we heard earlier.
• Instructor will also put one thing on the chart that they Know.
• Tell them to be thinking about what they want to learn, because next week we will fill out W.

Day 2:

Pre Activity:  Artifacts and L of K.W.L

• Take out chart paper with K. on it and review
• Pass out different artifacts (in this case I will use pictures of: Jazz clubs, Jazz musicians, Louis Armstrong and anything else jazz or Louis related)
• Have students look over the pictures and talk with one another about what they see.
• Take out chart paper with Reading Group Guidelines on it and tell them to remember these when discussing
• This will be instructor’s time to make notes on each student: How students interact with one another and how they discuss the pictures.   This will serve as a pre-assessment: part of ongoing assessment of each student.
• “Since you have had time to think since last week and after looking at these pictures about Jazz and Armstrong, we will now fill out the W of our K.W.L chart”.
• Using chart paper and passing the pen, students will write down what they wish to learn.  *It will be the instructor's job to find ways of incorporating these desires across the curriculum in and outside the Literature Circle.
• Read over what is on W of K.W.L

During Activity:  Reading and Question Creator: Learning how to ask questions in a Literature Circle

• Explain that questions that they will ask one another will guide the discussions of our reading
• Model:  chart paper with 3 questions you have created: questions = on what we have done so far: fat and one skinny question
  • Possible questions: 

1. What does the K in K.W.L stand forf?

2. What type of music did Louis Armstrong play?

     3 .Why is it important to learn about all kinds of music?

• Model how you would ask these questions.
• When answering questions, you must go back and refer to text.
• Explain difference between “fat” and “skinny” questions: will be aiming for as many “fat” questions as possible to lead discussion.
• “Skinny question can be words you do not know!”
• Keep these in mind when reading text: You will be responsible for creating at least one question today.

Post Activity: Familiarizing ourselves with the non-fiction text

• “Looking at the title, front and back cover, what can me predict about this book?’

Possible guiding questions:

            What time period was Louis a jazz player? Explain.

            Do you think he was famous? Why?

What instrument did Louis play? How do we know this?

• “Open book to page 2: What is a table of contents? Its purpose? How can we use it?”
• “Turn to page six: Does anyone know the name of for the box with words in it below the picture?”
• “What is the purpose of a caption?”
• “Turn to page 24: What is a timeline? What is it used for?”

Day 3:

Pre/During/Post Activities:  Read aloud and Question Creator 

• Put up chart paper with examples of questions from yesterday.
• Quickly review and go over “fat” and “skinny” questions.
• “As we read this aloud be thinking of possible questions you could ask, because when we are done reading you will be responsible for going back ton the reading and creating one fat and one skinny question.”
• Read aloud: Round Robin.
• Give students 5 minutes to come up with two questions.
• Write down questions on chart paper.
• Pick two of the questions: students must answer these two questions on paper by referring back to text: write page number(s) where answer is located (allow 5 minutes).
• Go over any vocabulary words the students did not know by writing them on chart paper as group re-reads; try to extract meaning: look up in dictionary and come up with child friendly definitions for these words.

During Activity:  Character Sketcher

• Explain that another job that they will later being doing independently is called a Character Sketcher
• Job = Draw a picture of the character and somewhere in the picture write words/phrases/draw small pictures/designs, that tell about the character
• Post chart paper with suggestions of what to look for and write down as character sketcher:

Likes/Dislikes

Family

Friends

Personality

Talents

Happy times

Bad times

Physical description

• Model:  Show a character sketch you have made of a character from a different book

• Draw a picture of Louis Armstrong.
• Provide at least two things that you have learned so far about Louis that describe who he was (allow at least 15 minutes:  provide drawing paper and various art supplies: encourage creativity)
• “Throughout this book: For each section we read, we will be adding at least two new things about Louis to add to our character sketch.
• “At the end of the unit we will put all these sketches into a book and show the rest of the class!”

Post:  Internet Investigator

• “The last job we will talk about today is the job of the internet investigator.  This person's job is to get onto the internet and do some research and come back and share that research with the group”
• “Today we will be doing this together in the computer lab”
• “We will be going to a website all about Jazz and doing some fun activities.  Today we will just be doing the activities and will not need to record any information, but with our next unit when you will be doing this by yourself you will be required to share what you have found with the group”
• Go to the following site: http://www.pbs.org/jazz/kids/
• Click on Repeat the beet and have a go at this fun musical game! Or click here http://www.pbs.org/jazz/kids/repeat_beat/

• Click on Time Line and travel throughout time learning about the history of jazz

http://www.pbs.org/jazz/kids/time/