Who Stole the Cookie From The Cookie Jar?
Division 8 has been learning about jazz music and how to play the xylophone. This experience began with the song Cookie Jar, by Doug Goodkin.
The beginning part of song, called Part A, only uses four notes—A G F E. The students play this in a pattern three times in a row with mallet clicks in between notes.
The second part of the song, called Part B, is a challenging part that involves one student leading and the class repeating after that student.
Division 8 made cookies for this song and game, and every time their cookie was pulled from the cookie jar they had to play a solo in the song.
As jazz music was new for many students, their solos started out slow. The notes they picked and the order of them worked well, but it was challenging for many students to create jazz rhythms and get a feel for jazz music. To help with that, we began listening to jazz music. Ella Fitzgerald became a favourite for many of the students and they even began singing and learning about scat singing (making up words while singing). Many of the students enjoyed this and tried to sing and play scat while making up their solos on the xylophone.
Our learning experience:
- Some of us felt it was hard to get the right bounce when learning the xylophone.
- We enjoyed singing and making up scat. The scat singing helped with our solos.
- Many of us made up solos, some of us wrote them down and found this helpful too.
- We enjoyed learning how to make music together.
- Learning about jazz was fun and new for many of us.
- Getting a jazz feel and rhythms was hard.