Woodland Elementary teacher Jennifer Jarvis and her first-graders follow Imani Gonzalez’s lead as they create vocal rhythm patterns. If the windows in Jennifer Jarvis’s classroom had been open Monday morning, residents near Woodland Elementary School would have wondered what they were hearing.
Imani Gonzalez, a teaching artist from Washington, D.C., had 16 first-graders in a rhythmic motion, chanting and clapping in an exercise related to reading comprehension. Divided into three groups, each made up their own sounds to a four-beat cadence.
Kacka kacka uumm uumm
Hum hum hum-a-ma
Aideo-a-o
“Each group will share its own vocal rhythm pattern,” Gonzalez told the students assembled in a circle. “When I point to your group, you will start only your sound pattern. You really have to focus because others will be making different sounds. When all three are together we will make beautiful music.”
Gonzalez
started the first group, then a few moments later cued the second group, then
the third. Sure enough, their combined sounds had a rhythm all its own.
Kacka kacka uumm uumm
Hum hum hum-a-ma
Aideo-a-o
“Wonderful! Give yourselves a hand,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez, a teaching artist in the Partners in Education program of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, will lead a free workshop for area teachers Monday evening at the Renaissance Theatre. Her topic: “Building reading comprehension through sound and rhythm.”
She spent
much of the day in three different classrooms at Woodland.
“I’m here to introduce you to sounds. Sound is music. Did you know that?” Gonzalez asked Jarvis’s first-graders. “If you use sound, it will help you to understand and retain what you read.”
Gonzalez, a renowned
jazz vocalist who as performed with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln
Center Orchestra, made it clear to her young listeners that sound and noise are
two different things.
“Sometimes it’s good to make sounds if they are purposeful. We have to have a reason to make sounds,” she said. “Silence is a sound too. Sometimes silence is good.”
Monday evening’s workshop, which includes dinner, is free to all teachers who have registered. It is sponsored by Charles P. Hahn of Cleveland Financial Group and the KeyBank Foundation with additional support from the Ohio Arts Council.
In addition to her work as a professional vocalist, Gonzalez has taught music in public and private schools. Her voice is featured on many of the National Geographic Television’s Explorer Series soundtracks, include the Emmy-nominated film “The Jane Goodall Biography.”
Mansfield City Schools, Renaissance Performing Arts and the Mansfield Art Center have been together in the Kennedy Center’s Partners in Education program since 2010.