Crossing Borders/Breaking Boundaries 2000:

A Multidisciplinary Institute for Arts Educators

Teacher: Michelle Reilly, Frederick High School
Arts Discipline: Visual Arts
Grade Level: High School
Team: A
Topic: Jazz & America

Click here to view the lesson plans of other Team A members.

Jazz, the Big Communicator Lesson Overview

Power Point Presentation

Examples of Michelle Reilly's presentation and student work

Big Idea: Communication

Essential Understandings:

• Communication requires a form of language.
• Communication requires a form of sensual exchange.
• Communication is one of the building blocks of relationships.
• Communication can yield growth.
• Communication can build resources through which students make appropriate choices.
  

Topic: Jazz

Essential Understandings:

• How does Jazz help students communicate?
• What is Jazz communication?
• How does it use music to relate emotions to others?
• Is there a need for communication this way and why?
• Can an individual use Jazz communication to build knowledgeable growth within themselves and through society? How?
• What forms does Jazz communication take?
  

Introductory Questions for Communication:

1. Why is communication important?
2. What are the ways that people communicate?
3. What effect can communication have on relationships?
4. Is there a need for communication and why?
5. How is communication perceived?

Visual Art Overview

Learner Outcomes and Expectations:

• Perceiving and Responding-Aesthetic Education.
• The student will demonstrate the ability to perceive, interpret, and respond to ideas, experiences, and the environment through the visual arts.
• Historical, Cultural, and Social Contents

  The student will demonstrate an understanding of the visual arts as a basic aspect of history and human experience.

• Creative Expression and Production

  The student will demonstrate the ability to organize knowledge and ideas for expression in the production of art.

• Aesthetic Criticism

  The student will demonstrate the ability to identify, analyze, and apply criteria for making visual aesthetic judgement.
   

Essential Questions:

1. Through the art form of "Jazz," what forms of communication are used?
2. Does Jazz help build relationships between individuals through communication?
3. How does Jazz communication yield growth for continuous life long learning?
4. What makes an art form an example of Jazz communication?
   

Assessment Criteria:

What should students understand and be able to do as a result of this unit?

• Students should be able to identify and relate the art form of Jazz and Jazz vocabulary.
• Students should be able to portray Jazz visually, musically, and theatrically.
• Students should be able to interpret the historical influences on past communities and themselves now.
• Students should be able to create and explain communication through their own personal Jazz.
   

 Art Lesson 2

Big Idea - Jazz, the Big Communication

Essential Questions:

1. Through the art form of "Jazz," what forms of communication are used?
2. How does Jazz communication yield growth for continuous life long learning?
   

Lesson Objectives:

1. The learner will be able to express with colored chalk on paper what Jazz music looks like to them.
2. The learner will be able to discuss with others in class the similarities and feelings in the chalk drawings.
3. The learner will be able to explain visually and written what the Jazz music communicates to them.
   

Task Analysis:

Step 1. Lecture on music and how it may be represented in color and shape on paper.

Step 2. Students practice of music portrayal.

Step 3. Group discussion and comparison of music portrayals.

Step 4. Journal entry and assessment.
 

Warm Up:

Word for the day: Rhythm- a continuance, a flow or a sense of movement achieved by the repetition of regular visual units, the use of measured accents.

1. Students will write down the definition of rhythm.
2. The teacher will present a musical piece (2-3 minutes long.) Students will be asked to write down what rhythm the music portrays and what colors the musical instruments' sounds may be. How would you show on paper what music sounds like? What if you really liked a piece of Jazz music and wanted to share it with a person that could not hear? Could you communicate to them the rhythm, feelings and sounds that were playing using paper?
    

Input and Discussion:

1. The teacher will lecture on the music just played, explaining how he or she would portray the music on paper. The music will be replayed and the teacher will do a drawing in front of the class of what it looks like to him or her.
2. Group discussion on their thoughts about the teacher's drawing and how it may be similar to what they wrote down.
3. The teacher will instruct students to do musical drawings on black construction paper with colored chalk. Colors are to represent what they believe the instruments sound like or the feelings they are creating. Example: white or yellow used for high clarinets, but deep purple or red used for sax. Use repeats of shapes or shading to represent rhythm and how music overlapped to create a complete composition.
   

Guided Practice:

1. Students will illustrate their ideas of the musical pieces selected. The teacher may select four or five songs, each with a different emotional illustration. Examples: Early Jazz- Louis Armstrong, Big Band- Duke Ellington, Modern- Jimmy Hendrix. This will be determined by time and how involved students become.
2. Class discussion: the teacher will ask students to hang up their drawings. Discussion and critique on similarities in the drawings. Define rhythm, shapes and colors to instrument sounds and how they create a composition, and what it communicates in 2-dimensions of music.
   

Final Closure:

1. The teacher will present the class with an art print by Wassely Kandinsky. Students will write a short paragraph explaining what music they could see in the painting. What color does it express? Is there a defined rhythm? How does it relate to the Jazz music they listened to?
2. Journal entry answering the five communication questions and including chalk drawing and short paragraph.
   

Journal Questions

1. How does the music make you feel?
2. Document what instruments you heard, what color did you represent them with, and what shape?
3. What story do you think the artist is expressing in your favorite Jazz piece?
4. What word comes to mind about the music heard and the drawing you created?
5. Do you see any similarities between your drawing and other students' drawings?
   

Improvisational Assessment

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Sponsored by The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, The Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies, and the Maryland State Department of Education.