April is Jazz Appreciation Month and in the elementary music classroom, there are wonderful ways to incorporate the theme. I researched various groups, networks, and websites to create this shortlist of resources in the form of a free Wakelet.

Wakelet (https://wakelet.com/)

What is Wakelet? Wakelet is a free, digital, organizational tool that gives you the ability to share links, digital manipulatives, YouTube videos, pdfs, and so much more in one place. When you list a YouTube video, the video will play within the Wakelet app so that no ads, comments, and other videos appear.

Categories

Wakelet lets you create a board with categories so you can organize your materials well. For this Wakelet, I used four categories: Music and Interviews, Play-Along Videos, Lessons and Activities, and Read-Alouds and Books.

Activities

You can use this wakelet to find lessons, play-along videos, activities, and more, to have your students experience and study various styles of music during the month of April. However, as with any focused theme, I continue it throughout the year. Though a monthly theme helps the students focus, there are many ways to differentiate instruction and use retrieval practices to use the theme throughout the school year.