Tuesday, February 20 - AM Advanced

It’s a new term! I began by asking students what they liked most about classes at ACE. Answers: group discussions, learning new vocab words, listening to songs. I plan to implement all of these into my class this term.

We began a unit on hip hop. Groups had discussions on the following questions: What is rap? How does it differ from other music? What are the lyrics often about? What is the difference between rap and hip hop? 

After these discussions, we turned to an article on the history of hip hop. We learned about the origins of hip hip, how rap evolved from MC’s and DJ’s. We learned about early rap and listened to “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the first socially conscious rap song. We talked about socially conscious music, and I learned that my students don’t know nearly as much as they should about music from the United States!