Sigma Alpha Iota

MUSIC MEDLEY T PAN'S CORNER his column is for all SAIs who would like to ask a question about music education and/or give advice or write a short lesson or give a great tip to teachers in a mini format. Please send all suggestions, lesson plans and advice to: Dorothy Kittaka at: dkkittaka@ frontier.com. We are featuring a mini lesson by Diane Barton, Music Specialist from Fort Wayne, IN, who is also on the SAI Music Education Committee. Her subject: Charlie Parker Played Bebop. This can be used with introduction by The Jazz Fly, which is reviewed in this column. Grade Level: 3 Title: Jazz-Charlie Parker Objectives: 1) Students will recognize and perform in the Jazz genre. 2) Students will create their own jazz composition. 3) Students will learn to make a connection between word rhythms and instrumental jazz music. Materials/Equipment: • Charlie Parker Played Bebop by Chris Raschka ISBN-10: 0531059995 • Teacher-created word sound cards from the story • Non-pitched percussion instruments • Night in Tunisia CD (Dizzy Gillespie) Process: 1) The teacher will read the book Charlie Parker Played Bebop in a jazzy word rhythm. The goal is to use word cards and non-pitched percussion, and following their exploration of non-pitched percussion. Students will read the book and insert sounds to the jazz words in the story. 2) The teacher will lead students in a discussion about non-pitched percussion timbre, and students will begin to think of choices of instruments to represent the jazz words in the story. 3) The teacher will divide the class into 11 teams. Teams will meet to practice their jazz words, and to decide instruments that "sound" their words. 4) The teacher will choose half of the teams to collect their instruments, and then the other half. 5) The class will perform the book, and will be assessed by rubric. 6) The teacher will play Night in Tunisia. Students will recognize the instruments in a jazz group. 7) The teacher will sing the main parts of the Charlie Parker book to the tune of the melody of Night in Tunisia. Students will repeat. 8) The teacher will play Night in Tunisia again, allowing students to discover the connection. BOOK REVIEW Jazz Fly an 'emotional book' for students M usic educators look for multiple resources to jump start a subject that they will be teaching. An "emotional hook" can be introduced by the teacher to entice interest in a new genre of music. Using a book on the subject can be an excellent opener. I found The Jazz Fly by Matthew Gollub to be quite engaging. I hope you might consider it a fun way to begin a lesson or unit on improvisation, scat singing and of course jazz. It is a children's book with audio CD that delightfully introduces scat singing and jazz on a level which will be appealing to students from pre-school to adults. Just what is scat singing? Gollub uses the buzzing of The Fly, who is lost and looking for the location of his next gig. He encounters many animals who all speak a different language, Z A-baza, BOO-zah RO- ni? RRRIbit, Oink! HeeHaw! etc. who give him directions to the 4 PAN PIPES WINTER 2012 sai-national.org The Jazz Fly by Matthew Gollub. Tortuga Press, May 2000, 32 pages with CD nightclub. They do this mostly in rhyme, but not always and it is very catchy and fun. The music at the nightclub is hip and people are having a great time, but the Queen Bee insists on a new beat or the band is out. So, the clever fly incorporated the many sounds of all the animals and insects that he met on the road into a swinging new beat. In the author's note he compares trying to understand a foreign language to understanding jazz. This calls for using the "3 i's": ingenuity, improvisation and interpretation. The jazz phrasing throughout the book by the fly is based on scatting. African-American musicians first used scatting in jazz and "Scatting picks up where language leaves off, communicating feelings and nuances that words alone cannot express." (Gollub) I would recommend this delightful book to get your students of all ages excited about Jazz. An initiate of Iota Chi Chapter at Ball State University, Diane Barton is an active member of the Fort Wayne Alumnae Chapter. An awardwinning music educator, she will be an asset to the SAI Music Education Committee.

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