Let's talk about a surprise of the century.
My fourth grade students have never been more engaged in anything! They are eating up this unit on Black History Month songs, fighting and begging to sing solos and asking if they can take the booklets home.
I am fortunate, my school has a decent collection of the Music K-8 songs and magazines so I spent some valuable time with their song index, compiling all the Black History Month songs that I had available to me. These songs included:
Get On Board (Vol 17 No 3)
Yonder Come Day (Vol 25 No 3)
Michael Row The Boat Ashore (Vol 15 No 5)
Down By The Riverside (Vol 15 No 3)
Go Down Moses (Vol 22 No 3)
This Little Light Of Mine (Vol 8 No 3)
For each song, I did a little research and printed up some song histories which I included in the front of each booklet. Before we learn a new song, we spend time reading about it and discussing it as a class. Teaching these six songs took about 4 50-minute classes, of which we would go back and review older songs before learning new ones (and letting different people try the solos). There were some other things that I included as well. With Yonder Come Day, we talked about the Gullah Sea Islands, and showed this documentary clip on Gullah Culture. This Prezi presentation gave us a nice lead-in into that. After we worked our way through Down By The Riverside, I ended class with this clip, as to how this song has made its way around the world [they thought it was the coolest thing].
A fun way to end the unit was talking about gospel choirs, how they are often only SAT instead of SATB, and the use of expression and repetition in gospel songs/gospel choirs. I used this clip for Go Down Moses, and this one for This Little Light Of Mine, which a lot of my students could relate to (as they are familiar with America's Got Talent).
As a teacher, I've learned to never underestimate the power of singing, and how sometimes just simply singing can be "enough." It is rich with history, and things to discuss, and the students have things to share. This will most definately be a unit to repeat next year!
