Okay friends, it’s that time of year where we’re starting to feel some burnout and fatigue with our lessons and activities. I start to feel like my old lessons just aren’t cutting it and my students need something new and fresh to reel them back in before the sprint towards summer!
If I just described your exact feeling, then I’ve got a whole new Reggae Unit that I’m SO excited about! It includes four lessons (one of them being a FREEBIE) that will get you and your students excited about music again! This blog is the cliff notes version of everything my new unit includes, and I go more in depth on my YouTube channel.
The 1st lesson is the freebie that I’m going to link below! You’ll get to join my email list to receive my freebie, but I PROMISE it’s worth it. There are three components and it’s about Bob Marley and Reggae Music.
We’re first going to do “Wonder Walk”. This is where we have a bunch of pictures posted around the room that represent Reggae music, and I tell the students I’ll play some music from my “Reggae Playlist” while they walk and look at the pictures. When a picture resonates with them, they can talk with a partner or friend about what they connected with.
After a few minutes we come back together as a class to discuss what they saw. They start to discover that they saw several pictures of Jamaica, and some students even recognized Bob Marley!
After the Wonder Walk, we read the book “One Love” which is by Bob Marley’s daughter. It’s probably too young for the older students, but the biggest part I love is the letter that Bob Marley’s daughter writes to him at the end.
To wrap it up, I created a Boomwhacker playalong that goes with One Love and it’s in the key of C! You could also add in some C, F, and G bass bars or xylophones if you have them. That’s the first lesson!
The 2nd lesson in my unit is all about Johnny Nash! It’s a big deal because he isn’t Jamaican, he’s an American from Texas. He’s actually one of the very first artists to record in Kingston, Jamaica and crossover from another type of music. He started as a pop artist and actor but wasn’t super successful. When he went to Jamaica to record, he met with Bob Marley and was inspired and influenced to record his popular song “I Can See Clearly Now”.
There’s a movement activity and body percussion activity to “I Can See Clearly Now”, and although some of the older kiddos might be too “cool” for it I’m convinced they secretly enjoy it. It’s a great way to connect to the Winter Olympics that just happened and it’s cool to connect that this song was later recorded by Jimmy Cliff, whose version was used in the Jamaican bobsled movie “Cool Runnings”. It’s such a funny movie about Jamaica’s first Olympic bobsled team!
Lesson three was so relatable to my students because it was about a current artist named Koffee. She has just recently become popular but has a style that’s a mix of hip hop and reggae. She won a Grammy for Best Reggae Album in 2020, and Honda did a great spotlight commercial on her that I’ve linked below.
After learning about Koffee, we play the game “steady beat tag” with the song called “Toast” which is one of her hit songs. It highlights gratitude and being grateful for her success and her musical career.
When we play the steady beat, they walk around with their eyes closed while I pick two people who are chosen to be “it”. I stress to them that they HAVE to walk to the steady beat in order to play the game. I’ll usually give them one reminder and then if it happens again I’ll ask them to sit out. The fun part is the kids don’t know who is “it”! We play for a minute or two and it’s so funny to see them try to figure out who the taggers are. Once we’re very familiar with the song, we sit down and learn some instrumental parts that go with the song.
We start with the drum part that fits into our 8-beat groove. Of course we first say it and then play it, and once it’s pretty solid we move that to tubanos and hand drums. After that is settled in we start to add in the maraca/shaker part; these two parts fit together really well! If a class is crushing it and is ready for a challenge, I’ll also add in some claves.
The fourth and final lesson wraps up our whole unit. This is where we go more depth into Bob Marley and his background. The whole “finale” is listening to “Three Little Birds” and discussing how music can create change in the world. For a fun activity, we write our own verse to “Three Little Birds”!
They first pick a topic, and then decide on a statement. For example, they pick the “ocean” as their topic and then use “the ocean is pretty cool” as their statement. I have this whole activity outlined for you in a resource! You can also add this over a karaoke track and have them sing it.
I really hope you and your students enjoy the Reggae Music Unit as much as I enjoyed creating it. I think that Reggae music is such a fun genre and it has such untapped potential! Because it’s so fun and upbeat my students always enjoy listening to it and it really brings some excitement back into the classroom during that last sprint towards summer. I go more into depth on my Reggae Unit on my YouTube channel, and don’t forget to download my freebie lesson!
If you enjoy the lesson, the entire Reggae Unit is now available on my TPT store!
