PBS
Pbs: Defining Jazz Music
In this lesson, students will develop a definition of jazz. Through biographies and interviews of jazz musicians, students will learn what jazz music is about.
PBS
Pbs: Jazz Music and the Crisis Over School Desegregation
Working in cooperative groups, your young scholars will learn how jazz musicians expressed the Civil Rights era in their music. This lesson focuses on the Civil Rights movement in Little Rock, Arkansas. Also, they will learn to about the...
PBS
Pbs: Black and Blue: Jazz in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison was a musician who later became a writer. His book Invisible Man is written like a jazz composition. In this lesson, students will interpret key themes and concepts in Invisible Man that are also found in jazz music.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: A Brief History of Jazz!
A lesson plan that helps learners explore the roots of jazz music and some of the important jazz musicians in history.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: Jazz and Ww Ii: A Rally to Resistance, a Catalyst for Victory
Lesson plan that teaches the roles that jazz music and jazz musicians played in the war effort and that demonstrates the effect that the war had on jazz in America.
PBS
Pbs: Jazz Is About Collaboration: Jim Crow Laws: Segregation
Engage your students in discussion about segregation and the Jim Crow laws with this in-depth lesson plan. Using jazz music, you will contrast the ways in which America's most significant contribution to the arts depended on...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: Learning the Blues
This lesson plan introduces students to the blues. The origin and development of the blues is explored as well as its distinctive structure.
Other
Visual Jazz Publications
This company produces educational materials to help you succeed in jazz improvisation and sight reading. Of note on their site is "The Art of Improvisation," a free download that guides you through the improvisational process.
John F. Kennedy Center
The Kennedy Center: Musical Harlem
The Kennedy Center's ArtsEdge offers a great unit for introducing jazz to young scholars. Its use of Harlem as the "glue" which binds together elements such as jazz history and jazz terminology, makes it particularly effective for the...
Other
Jazz Improvisation Primer
An info-packed lesson on jazz improvisation and jazz history. Very useful for musicians aspiring to play in the jazz idiom.
PBS
Pbs: Transcending Poetry, Jazz, Rap & Hip Hop
The objectives in this lesson plan will have students describing the characteristics of poetry, jazz, rap and hip hop music. Students will also analyze how poetry, jazz, hip hop and poetry reflect the culture of the time.
PBS
Pbs: Jazz and Math: The Beat Goes On
This lesson will require students to collect data through listening, counting and timing. They will use ratios, rates, and proportions to report data. They will also demonstrate an understanding of the concepts of rhythm and tempo in music.
PBS
Pbs: Jazz and Math: Improvisation Permutations
This lesson deals primarily with the number of rhythmic combinations that can be found in a four beat measure of music. Students will learn through trial and error and derive a mathematical formula to calculate the number of possible...
PBS
Pbs: Jazz and Math: The Fibonacci Keyboard
Teach a lesson about the piano keyboard using the Fibonacci Sequence. Explore with your students the various relationships the Fibonacci Sequence has with music.
PBS
Pbs: Jazz Is About Freedom
One of the objectives in this lesson plan focus on how jazz contributed to the political awareness of the American public concerning lynching. Using Billie Holiday's anti-lynching song Strange Fruit, young scholars will learn about...
Georgia Department of Education
Ga Virtual Learning: American Literature and Composition: The Harlem Renaissance
This lesson is an introduction to a unit on The Harlem Renaissance, the period between the end of WW I through mid 1930s when African Americans were recognized for their literature, music, and art. It discusses their themes and lists...
PBS
Pbs: Improvise a Short Story
This lesson incorporates the art of improvisation with writing a collaborative short story. Middle schoolers will learn the relationships music has with other disciplines outside of the arts.
PBS
Pbs: Cole Porter: You're the Top
A high school lesson plan designed to delve deeper into the life of Cole Porter and the meaning in his music.
Yale University
Yale New Haven Teachers Institute: How to Blues
This site has ten lessons to teach about the blues in which students learn the geography, historical events and performers associated with the blues. The unit has been recognized by the American Music Education Initiative as one of the...
Other
Harmonica Info and Tips
Gives basic information about the harmonica in addition to tips for purchasing and playing one