Here are some of the support materials we are using in the lessons:
Books by Chris Raschka:
- John Coltrane’s Giant Steps: A book which breaks down musical lines (Rhythm, Base, Harmony, Melody) into symbols to help young people visualize what layers there are in music.
- Mysterious Thelonius A book that shows melody on a grid, like a piano roll or the melody-maker below
- Charlie Parker Played Be-Bop A book which encourages onomatopoeic response to Night in Tunisia, using a cute story: Never leave your cat alone!
Chrome Music Lab
- Kandinsky Like Giant Steps above, this uses different symbols to make different kinds of sounds and is interactive.
- Melody Maker Like Mysterious Thelonius, this allows kids to play with how to visualize pitch by allowing them to make songs by putting marks on a grid
- Rhythm This one is a visualization of Rhythm, and while the onomatopoeia in Charlie Parker Plays be-bop is indirectly rhythmic, it does help us consider the rhythm of our words.
YPAR resources:
- An article by Jeff Duncan Andrade that parallels his TED Talk about “Hope Required, When Growing Roses in Concrete
- A description of the collective work done in Los Angeles with a youth research group affiliated with UCLA and the actions that they were able to carry out. Morrell, E. (2008). Six summers of YPAR: Learning, action, and change in urban education. In Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion (pp. 155–184). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203932100
Socially Engaged Art resources:
- A book by Pablo Helguera about ways of teaching and learning in Socially Engaged Art: “Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques Handbook”
Learning Theory resources:
Rinaldi, Carlina, Giudici, Claudia, Vecchi, Vea, Gardner, Howard, Krechevsky, Mara, . . . Reggio Children. (2001). Making learning visible : Children as individual and group learners (1st ed.). Cambridge, MA : Reggio Emilia, Italy: Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education ; Reggio Children, International Center for the Defense and Promotion of the Rights and Potential of all Children.
Freire, P. (1998). Teachers as cultural workers : Letters to those who dare teach (The edge, critical studies in educational theory). Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.