The month of February is Black History Month. In its honor, we celebrated by learning about the music genre that originated in the African American communities of New Orleans. We learned about the history of jazz from its birth in New Orleans, to the music we hear on the radio today.

Students loved hearing samples of Jazz from the genre’s finest, including: Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and Charles Mingus. The next day, we created word clouds with the feelings, inspiration, and vocabulary we learned. It all created a fun bulletin for our classroom.