Jazz Band Rehearsal

Name _Elaine Snowden__________

Standards: MU:Pr4.2.E.5a Demonstrate, using music reading skills where appropriate, how knowledge of formal aspects in musical
works inform prepared or improvised performances.
MU:Pr4.3.E.IIa Demonstrate how understanding the style, genre, and context of a varied repertoire of music influences prepared and
improvised performances as well as performers’ technical skill to connect with the audience.

Lesson Objective (what do you want the students to learn and be able to demonstrate?) 2 or more

Students will play their lines with correct notes and rhythms while accurately emphasizing the ands of notes. Students will also transfer
the swing style (including articulations and the previously-mentioned emphasizes to measure 22 when they vocalize their
parts._____________________________________________________________________________________________
Prior Knowledge & Skills Expectations (what the students must already know and are able to do):

Students are already familiar with the emphasizing concept and jazz articulations such as “doo, dah, daht, and dit.”_____
Musical Concepts Addressed in the Lesson:

_Stylistic emphasizes and articulations.__________________________________________________________

Must Include: Detailed procedures of Instructional Strategy and Assessment for successful achievement of goal

Opening: Teacher begins by asking students to clap swung eighth notes as a group with little instruction. After this is
done for about one or two measures, teacher asks them to lay back and emphasize the “and”s more then try again. This
will help focus students on the swing style.

Materials of Instruction: Minnie, the Moocher arranged by Ralph Ford (target measures 1-9 and 22-29), instruments

Sequence:

1. Teacher begins by having ensemble start at the very beginning and stop at measure 9.
a. This is to remind the ensemble of how the piece feels
b. Check to make sure students transferred the concepts from clapping into their articulations
and playing
c. Fix and have ensemble repeat as needed
2. Now, teacher directs the ensemble’s attention to measure 22 where there is call and response.
Before having them sing the parts, have the ensemble play the notes on their instruments (sans
rhythm and soloist)
a. Chunk this out so that the ensemble plays measure 22-23 note-for-note and have them sing
their parts as written before doing the same with 24-25.
b. 26-27
c. 28-29
d. As this goes on, teacher continues to listen for style (articulations, correct swing emphasis,
laying back the slow swing)
3. Teacher has the ensemble return to measure 22, this time with the soloist.
a. More things to keep in mind: balance of ensemble vs. soloist, do the two groups match
stylistically?
4. Now starting at 22, have ensemble go on to check the transition from singing to playing again,
making sure the singing isn’t sacrificed as the instruments come back up to the ensemble’s faces.
a. Continue through 38-45 for the same transitional purpose and concept transfer.
Assessment: Teacher listens for audible change in how students are articulating according to the markings in their
music, emphasizing ands, or laying back in the slow swing style. Teacher can also look for visible confusion on students’
faces if concepts are not making sense.

Closing: The ensemble will play through from the top until measure 29. If time allows, they could run the entire chart.

Lesson Reflection (5 points)

After watching a video of your teaching episode, compose a response for each of the following prompts. In general, the more detail
you provide in your response, the greater number of points you may earn.

1. To what extent were the “students” actively engaged throughout the teaching episode? What evidence might you provide to
support your answer?
a. Students sometimes looked “zoned out” in between playing and during instruction. By this, I mean there was little to
know expression on their faces as they just absorbed what I told them. They did as I told them to, but there wasn’t
necessarily a lot of reaction. I think some of this could be chalked up to an early morning, but I also think that it’s
partly my responsibility to get students excited about music making.
2. Discuss your verbal and nonverbal communication throughout the teaching episode? How did your mode(s) of
communication potentially impact student engagement?
a. I feel that I communicated verbally fairly well. I didn’t talk for too long—because there gets to be a point where
there’s too much information or that the teacher has stopped saying something interesting so that students stop
paying attention. I also wanted to provide constructive feedback so I tried to explain what students did to contrast
what I wanted them to do. However, I feel that my nonverbal communication was lacking. One issue that some
conductors think is that you can’t conduct in jazz band. Regardless of whether I’m holding a baton, I still think I can
do more with my body language to convey what I want. Body language is a major component of selling the music
and I think that helps students want to be involved in the process.
3. Did the students learn what you had intended? In other words, were the instructional goals and objectives met? What
evidence might you provide in support of your answer?
a. I believe that the objectives were met. I could have spent longer going over concepts but that’s probably a common
thought. Overall, the concepts I introduced were not new to the ensemble, so rather than teaching something foreign,
my goal was to reinforce a new (ish) habit in the ensemble. And I believe that this goal was met because once I
explained—reminded—students, they played in the stylistic manner that I intended.
4. Describe and discuss the overall musicality of both you as the teacher as well as that demonstrated by your “students.”
a. I emphasized the musicality of the lesson by going over techniques that could be used to achieve musicality. It
would have been better, in my opinion, to give students ownership on musical choices, but in this lesson, I mostly
told them what I wanted them to do to make the music grow and ebb, lead into parts, and contrast itself. For
example, at one point I told students to lean into the fourth beat some more. If I had discussed this with students,
they probably could have come to that conclusion theirselves but to save time, I sacrificed student-initiated
musicality.
b. So overall, a lot of my musicality was teacher directed but the students did as I asked them to.
If you had the opportunity to teach this lesson again, what might you do differently? Why?

• If I could teach this lesson again, I would prioritize differently. This is because while I like what I went over and how I
rehearsed in the first part, it wasn’t my main focus of the lesson initially. So my pacing my lesson the way that I did, I didn’t
really get to dig into the second part that I originally planned to work on. I had some time, but I should have portioned it
differently.
• I would have also wanted more discussion, but I was afraid that if I asked too many questions, I wouldn’t get much more than
blank, tired stares.