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Hardly Strictly Educational

Imagining Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, mixed media on paper, 8" x 10"

How Hardly Strictly Bluegrass can teach every subject Ideas for addressing 6 th grade Common Core standards We can assume that a majority of 6th graders in San Francisco won’t be fans of bluegrass music. Many might not even know what bluegrass music is. That doesn’t mean they won’t be able to appreciate it or won’t be curious about it – especially considering how popular the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival is. The kids will be excited to get out of school and into the park. They will also be excited to be at an event with their friends from elementary school who go to different middles schools, so they’ll be frustrated when they realize they won’t be allowed to leave their school groups to say hi. We should acknowledge their frustrations ahead of time and have them focus on the idea that they’ll be sharing an experience with those friends and can

Copyright Todd Berman 2014 ©

compare their experiences – and perhaps the art they make in response to that experience – over the phone or internet at a later time. Teachers are under constant pressure to teach students to the standards set by the state. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass takes away a day of classroom time while also occupying the time of their support system, the school’s administration. Let’s help teachers connect the event to the standards. They’ll feel more free to enjoy the event and everyone will have more fun.

A lesson for every subject What if students spent a day studying bluegrass in every subject? Math class Bluegrass music has some complex rhythm structures. Take a look at the written music and see how it can be interpreted as fractions. Listen to how many notes the banjo plays for every time the guitar strums. Notice the equivalent fractions embedded in the music.

Common Core State Standards with California Additions Mathematics: Grade Six Ratios and Proportional Relationships (6.RP) Understand ratio concepts and use ratio reasoning to solve problems. Visual and Performing Arts Content Standards, Grade Six Component Strand 3.0 Historical and Cultural Context Read and Notate Music 1.1 Read, write, and perform intervals and triad. 1.3 Transcribe simple aural examples into rhythmic notation Listen to, Analyze, and Describe Music 1.5 Analyze and compare the use of musical elements representing various genres and cultures,emphasizing meter and rhythm. Literature Listen, and read the lyrics to, a traditional bluegrass song with a story (Hardly Strictly Bluegrass organizers will provide you with lyrics from one of the songs that will be performed). Chart the story arc and study the song as literature. Compare the experience of listening to the story with the experience of reading the lyrics.

Common Core State Standards with California Additions English Language Arts: Grade Six Reading Standards for Literature Integration of Knowledge and Ideas 5. Analyze how a particular sentence, chapter, scene, or stanza fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the theme, setting, or plot. 7. Compare and contrast the experience of reading a story, drama, or poem to listening to or viewing an audio, video, or live version of the text, including contrasting what they “see” and “hear” when reading the text to what they perceive when they listen or watch


History - Social Science What do we know about the relationship of music to early human history? How might music have changed with the agricultural revolution? Note the role of music in story-telling. How did memorable story-telling help early humans survive? Hardly Strictly Bluegrass should be providing lyrics for one of the traditional bluegrass songs that will be played. Try singing together as a class. How does the experience make you feel like you are more a part of a community? How might this help humans with survival? Students may have the opportunity to have a group sing-along with all other sixth-graders at the event.

History–Social Science Content Standards Grade Six: World History and Geography: Ancient Civilizations 6.1 Students describe what is known through archaeological studies of the early physical and cultural development of humankind from the Paleolithic era to the agricultural revolution. Science What questions do students have about bluegrass music? Do they wonder why hundreds of thousands of people will flood into Golden Gate Park to listen to bluegrass? Listen to some bluegrass and see if students can describe what makes bluegrass different from other types of music. Try coming up with a list of words together to describe the music they hear. Below, I will offer ideas for how to use drawing and movement to better understand bluegrass. Other teaching artists will have their own ideas for ways of responding to music with their art.

Science Content Standards, Grade Six Investigation and Experimentation 7. Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations. As a basis for understanding this concept and addressing the content in the other three strands, students should develop their own questions and perform investigations.


Lesson plan for science classes going to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass An artistic investigation into bluegrass music. Science Content Standards, Grade Six Investigation and Experimentation 7. Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations. As a basis for understanding this concept and addressing the content in the other three strands, students should develop their own questions and perform investigations. Aim: Students will conduct a scientific investigation of bluegrass music using tools from the arts. Students will learn how to use artistic practice as a tool for inquiry. Students will explore scientific methodology as a means to The lesson below is presented as a script for the teacher. Of course, teachers should use their own voice and alter the story in any way that will help them connect with the experiences of their students. Framing the lesson Bluegrass is a type of music that has stayed popular for over one hundred years. Hundreds of thousands of people will come into Golden Gate park to hear some pretty old-fashioned tunes. Why do so many people love bluegrass music so much? This is a difficult question to answer because people love music for how it makes them feel, and that’s not something we can measure with a ruler. Gathering evidence about how something makes us feel can be tricky for us as scientists, but we can use some art techniques for our investigations. Learning to use the tools Before the day of the festival, the class learns how to use art to measure how music makes them feel. The teacher should also try these drawing exercises. Make it clear that no skill is needed to make awesome drawings using these techniques. Drawing technique We can use free-drawing techniques to capture our mood. Experiment with scribbling – how many different ways can you scribble? Try scribbling by just moving your fingertips, your elbows, your shoulders. Try scribbling lightly and intensely. Swirly and sharply. Keeping your crayon on the paper, lifting it and making lots of marks. Notice all the different ways a scribble drawing can look. Once you scribble all over a paper, there will be many random shapes. You can color these shapes and see how that looks. After about five-ten minutes of experimental scribbling, take a look at the results. As a class, come up with a list of words that can describe the different types of scribbles (squiggly vs. straight, curvy vs. angled, nervous vs. calm, etc…). Notice how each student has their own style. Try scribbling to music. Notice how the music makes you feel and try to express that directly onto the paper. Try drawing in response to different styles of music (maybe the students will have suggestions). Try using the word list you came up with to describe the drawings.


More ideas Try listening to just one instrument or singer and scribble based on the notes you hear. Bluegrass has a lot of instruments playing at once, each taking a turn to carry the melody. How can you represent that in your drawing. Try the art technique called ‘asemic writing’. Make marks on a paper that kind of look link your are writing words, but is actually nonsense. You can pretend like the music you are hearing is some alien language and you are taking notes using a completely made-up alphabet. When you listen to the music, you might feel like doodling patterns or drawing pictures. That’s okay, too. The important thing is that you are drawing in response to the music. If the music makes you think of flowers, go ahead and draw some flowers. You can also try adding words or symbols. So long as you are responding to the music you are hearing, any experimentation is okay. If you are doing a science experiment to see how tall a plant will grow, and you measure your friends’ thumb instead of the plant’s stem, that data won’t be useful. Likewise, if you’re drawing something based on what your friend says, or based on a cartoon you saw, then that data won’t be useful for our investigation. Field work Bring paper, drawing supplies (any mix of colored pencils, markers, and crayons will do), and something to lean on for each student. Each student should complete at least one drawing based on the music they hear. They should make a record of which song(s) they were drawing to, what time they started and finished the drawing, and whatever other data might be relevant. Examination of field notes art show On the Monday after the festival, hang all the art made by the students up on a wall to see what they discovered. What did they notice while they were drawing? What do they notice in the finished drawings? Does looking at their drawings help them remember the music they heard and how they felt listening to it? Connected classrooms Photograph and upload the pictures to flickr or twitter with the hashtag #HSB14art so that students can all see each other’s work. See KQED Education’s explanation of hashtags at http://bit.ly/EduHash to learn more. Other ideas Use movement The classic way to respond to music is through dance. Listen to the songs and see how they make you want to move. Try out your different body parts and see how they each want to move to the music. See what combinations of movements feels like the most fun way to react to the music. Draw a series of stick figures with arrows to diagram the dance move you have created. Teach your dance move to two class mates. Learn the dance moves of two other classmates. Try doing those moves together.


Any art You can use any art form to measure the emotional response to music. Free write some poetry or sculpt with pipe cleaners. If you have the resources, invite a teaching artist to demonstrate their art process for students to experiment with. Resources Music online: One classic bluegrass song about bluegrass music is “High Lonesome Sound” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ6jMBvt99E Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys defined bluegrass music. Here is a playlist of their songs: http://grooveshark.com/#!/profile/Bill+Monroe+and+His+Blue+Grass+Boys/22204417 The Carolina Chocolate Drops won some Emmy’s showing the world that ‘old-timey’ music is not just for white people. https://www.youtube.com/user/ccdrops/videos Education tools Expeditionary Learning offers many examples of arts-based research approaches to learning. http://elschools.org/ Making Thinking Visible stresses thinking routines that can be used in the classroom such as the “See, Think, Wonder.” These routines are very helpful for discussing the arts. http://www.visiblethinkingpz.org/ Visual Thinking Strategies is a method of facilitating discussions about pictures with students that provides students with skills for group problem-solving. http://vtshome.org/

Layered Bluegrass Doodles, marker and crayon on tracing paper attached with scotch tape to paper, 9" x 12"
