As the kids and I have been studying black history, we’ve found so many incredible stories of great jazz musicians.

I knew of all of these music pioneers, but learning about their lives and experiences has been so enlightening and it’s been a wonderful lesson for our children.

So I thought it would be nice to put what we’ve learned together into a printable black history unit study that’s all about jazz, bebop, and scat!

We are very proud to announce the release of We Got Jazz! – Exploring the Pioneers of Scat, Bebop, and Swing! 

We Got Jazz! is a jazz unit study packed with jazz history, comprehension reviews, and listening activities for kids in grades 1-3!

Read on to see how to get your copy! And, if you need a digital version for distance learning – there’s one of those too.

If you’re looking for more black history lessons for kids, don’t miss our African Kingdoms unit study for elementary students!

We Got Jazz! Black History Unit Study

We have always enjoyed the sounds of jazz.

While we knew about all of these famous musicians, we didn’t know much about how they got started making music or the challenges they faced during their careers.

As we started exploring these figures with the kids, we found out so many interesting things.

Which is why I hope that your students find this black history unit enjoyable too!

We Got Jazz! features five biography units of jazz greats:

• Dizzy Gillespie
• Nat King Cole
• Ella Fitzgerald
• Miles Davis
• and Duke Ellington

The section for each artist includes a comprehensive, age-appropriate biography of their life and career.

This is followed by a question and answer review activity to see what students have learned from the biography.

Then there’s a crossword puzzle, a timeline sequencing activity, and a listening activity (with a link to where to find each artist’s music) to help students learn even more about each artist.

Depending on what your lesson plan includes, you could take one artist a week.

You might try covering the biography with the class. Then students can complete the activities on their own.

Or you could spend a week discussing them all!

Read the biography with the class and then assign them to complete the review activities for homework or independent work.

Plus, a full answer key is included for easy grading!

See the full product flip through below!

Digital We Got Jazz Black History Unit

Are you distance learning this year? Or just looking to save on printer ink?

We Got Jazz! is also available in a digital version!

The digital version, which is compatible with Google Slides, contains all of the information and just as many activities as the print version.

After reading about each artist, students can type their answers to the review questions – directly on the slides.

They can drag and drop the events in each artist’s life into the correct sequence.

Instead of a crossword puzzle, there is a word unscramble activity for each person.

And you can use the digital answer key (which is delivered in a separate file) to grade student submissions in no time!

See the video preview of the digital version of We Got Jazz below!

Scroll down to get the print or digital version of We Got Jazz for your students!

Check out more black history learning activities below!

Looking for the digital version of We Got Jazz? Pick it up in my Teachers Pay Teachers store!

>>> Digital We Got Jazz Unit for Elementary <<<

The post We Got Jazz! – A Jazz Black History Unit Study appeared first on Look! We're Learning!.

So this year, we wanted to develop a Harlem Renaissance unit study we could cover with the kids to help them learn even more about the people, movements, and ideas that sprang up in Harlem during the 1920s. I hope you and your kids love the books and activities about the Harlem Renaissance below too!

Don’t forget to check out our printable jazz unit study “We Got Jazz” to learn about the pioneers of jazz and bebop!

Harlem Renaissance Unit Study

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Harlem Renaissance Notebooking Pages

I wanted to have some printables that the kids could use to write down what they learn about the Harlem Renaissance, so I created these Jazz Journaling notebooking pages! Click the image or the link below to download yours free!

>>> Jazz Journaling Printable Notebooking Pages <<<

What Was the Harlem Renaissance?

Watch the video below to get an overview of the Harlem Renaissance and then let your kids answer the following questions.

1. What was the Harlem Renaissance? (Answer: A cultural and intellectual movement that occurred in Harlem, New York during the 1920s)

2. How did Harlem come to be a major African-American cultural center? (Answer: During the Great Migration, many African-Americans moved up north and settled in Harlem.)

3. What branches of thought and entertainment were included in the Harlem Renaissance? (Answer: Music, poetry, writing, art, and philosophy)

4. How did African-American fashion change during the Harlem Renaissance? (Answer: Men started to wear zoot suits, women wore low-slung dresses. Both men and women wore hats. Leopard-print became a popular trend, because of its connection to ancient African culture.)

5. How did the Harlem Renaissance affect the musical culture of the United States? (Answer: African-American art and music became popular with white audiences. White musicians began incorporating African-American musical rhythms and styles into their music.)

6. How did the Harlem Renaissance change the perception of African-Americans in the United States? (Answer: Prior to the 1920s, black people were often thought of as uneducated farmers. During the Renaissance, people came to see that black people were sophisticated, intelligent, and accomplished.)

Among the prominent writers of the movement was Langston Hughes (one of my personal writing heroes). This video is a good introduction to his work.

Books About the Harlem Renaissance:

Share these books about the Harlem Renaissance to bring this historical period to life!

1. The Harlem Renaissance: An Interactive History Adventure

10. Take A Picture of Me, James VanDerZee!

11. Coming Home: From the Life of Langston Hughes

20. The Harlem Renaissance: Profiles in Creativity

Be sure to let the kids dress up in period clothing to match the style of the Harlem Renaissance! We hit up a local thrift store to find an outfit for our oldest daughter.

Many of the African-American jazz musicians who became famous during the 20th century either got their start during the Renaissance or grew up during that time and developed styles based on the modern jazz that came out of the movement.

Check out our unit study We Got Jazz for over 130 pages of activities about some of these artists!

Stop by to check out these other learning ideas!

And see more ideas for teaching history at home on my Living History for Kids Pinterest board!

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The ’20s were pretty great for black history. There were some horrible things happening, due to increased racial tension, but the Harlem Renaissance also took place that decade and that was a milestone era for African-American art.

So I was excited to try the book The 1920s in America: A Decade of Tensions from Kendall Hunt Publishing! It has units on both the racial tension of the 1920s and the Harlem Renaissance! Read on to see how we used this textbook to cover this fascinating period in black history!

For more black history learning ideas, don’t miss our Ruby Bridges unit study and our list of 31 African-American storybooks for kids, including several history picture books!

Disclosure: I received this product in exchange for this post and I was compensated for my time. All opinions are my own and I was not required to post a positive review.

Covering The Racial Tension of the 1920s with Kendall Hunt Publishing

Kendall Hunt is a curriculum company that offers textbooks and unit studies for grades PreK through 12th. There are a TON of resources to look through. Don’t believe me? Stop by and drool over the curriculum catalog.

The textbook The 1920s in America: A Decade of Tensions, which is part of the William & Mary Center for Gifted Education Social Studies program, is designed for public school education, but I found it to be an easy text to adapt to a homeschool unit.

One of the things I love about the textbook is that it contains a unit about the existing racial tension of the decade before embarking on a discussion about the Harlem Renaissance. We can only appreciate the importance of those artistic achievements if we understand what life was like for many black Americans at the time.

So we began as the unit does: with a look at the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s.

After we watched the video about the KKK, we talked a bit about life in the post-reconstruction South for black people. It was pretty grim. Poverty was rampant, jobs were scarce, and racism was everywhere.

As the textbook instructed, we took a look at the black nationalism movement next to discover the rationale for returning to Africa. And, of course, you can’t talk about black nationalism without discussing Marcus Garvey. After we watched a short video about Garvey, it was time to complete the point of view exercise in the textbook. (There are also two essays in the textbook: one written by a leader of the KKK and another written by a proponent of black nationalism.)

As we got a feel for the everyday life of the average black American in the 1920s, we were ready to explore the beauty of the Harlem Renaissance and why it was so important to African-American society.

Exploring the Harlem Renaissance with Kendall Hunt Publishing

We began by watching a short video about the Harlem Renaissance.

I asked my daughter to summarize why seeing the artistic accomplishments of the era would be so impressive to black Americans. Here’s what she wrote:

“The Harlem Renaissance gave the black folks a chance to make something that they would later be proud of. The black people who saw the art by other black people felt a ray of hope.”

Exactly.

To continue the unit, we read the poem I, Too by Langston Hughes, which is quoted in its entirety in the textbook.

Off-topic a bit here, but Langston Hughes is one of my very favorite writers ever in history. Ever.

After we read the poem a few times, we used the included Literature Web printout and the questions in the unit to help examine our feelings about the work.

I loved this exercise, by the way. It’s such a nice method for helping kids to think about the way a poem makes them feel and then analyze those emotions. It’s also a good introduction to recognizing symbolism, something that’s crucial to our understanding of literature.

As she filled in the Literature Web, my daughter started to find deeper meaning in the poem than she originally picked up. It’s amazing that a written work which consists of about 20 lines can say so much.

Of course, I couldn’t let a lesson about the Harlem Renaissance go by without dressing her up – just a little.

Women were extra sharp in those days. So we stopped by Goodwill and picked up a hat with feathers and a long necklace, then paired them with a dress she already had.

Fabulous!

This was a wonderful history lesson – one of my favorites ever in our homeschool. And I really appreciated how the textbook The 1920s in America: A Decade of Tensions helped me organize the lesson and structure it so that it would make the most impact on my daughter’s understanding of American history.

Want to learn more about Kendall Hunt Publishing? Follow the company on Facebook and Twitter for news about products and promotions!

Get more ideas for teaching history to your kids on my Living History board on Pinterest!

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