Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Gazette -- June 2013

JUNE 2013 VOLUME 11, ISSUE 10 Music in Slave Life Music helps people maintain their cultures, express themselves, communicate, and get through hard times. We have some written and oral records of the music of enslaved African Americans, especially in the American South in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This music incorporated African and European musical traditions, string, percussion, and other instruments, and was influential in the development of such styles as gospel, jazz, and blues. The PBS site "Slavery and the Making of America" offers recordings, lyrics, and commentary for a variety of different examples of the music of enslaved African Americans, allowing teachers and students to explore "the soundscape of slavery." Primary Source of the Month A Slave Song, Barbados, 1770s-1780s Musical transcriptions of early slave songs are very rare. This is the earliest one in existence. Although it was sung and transcribed in Barbados, similar songs were sung throughout the Americas. The Next Electronic Field Trip is The Bill of Rights October 10, 2013 New podcasts posted every Monday! This month's vodcast: Spring Gardening Free Electronic Field Trip Teaching News New, Lower Pricing for Electronic Field Trips As part of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's core mission objective to reach new and distant audiences, we have reduced the price of our Electronic Field Trip series to $250 for a series (a 50% reduction) or $50 individually. Our Emmy Award-winning Electronic Field Trips educate and inspire young learners across the nation. Each trip includes comprehensive online resources and live monthly interactive events. Engage today's learners with multimodal activities and visually rich content emphasizing American history. Learn more at www.history.org/trips. Share Your Thoughts on Distance Learning! Help us design distance-learning options for teacher professional development! The 10-minute survey can be accessed at this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GWDS9CC. The Idea of America A digital American history program that inspires and prepares high school students for active citizenship, developed by Colonial Williamsburg and distributed by Pearson Education. **Learn more in America: The Pocket Guide, a quick yet comprehensive look at our revolutionary framework for understanding and teaching American history.** Contents "Music in Slave Life" Primary Source of the Month Teaching Strategy Colonial Williamsburg Teaching Resources Teaching News Quotation of the Month Our next live webcast, American Ideas: Looking to Yorktown, will be on Thursday, June 27th from 3:45–4:45 p.m. Eastern. Host Cathy Lewis will discuss the preparations, possible outcomes, and implications of the upcoming battle at Yorktown with General Washington, Marquis de Lafayette, General Cornwallis and Colonial Williamsburg historian Taylor Stoermer, live from behind the Governor's Palace. Engage with us via the chat room or on Twitter at connect.history.org. Teaching Strategy: Work Songs of Enslaved African Americans Work songs played a vital part in the lives of enslaved African Americans. The songs provide insight into the daily realities of slave life, with lyrics, melodies, and rhythms reflecting death, the master's whip, their lack of food, and the rhythm and pace of exhausting field work. In this lesson, students learn about and journal on enslaved African American work songs, and then analyze the lyrics and structure of the work song "Shuck That Corn Before You Eat." Colonial Williamsburg Teaching Resources for Your Classroom Colonial Williamsburg offers a variety of quality American history instructional materials, including: Ear to Ear CD-ROM Stories Under African Skies Slave Bag Hands-on History Kit Slavery in Colonial America Lesson Unit Quotation of the Month "Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears." — Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Chapter 2. London: H. G. Collins, 1851. pg. 20. Colonial Williamsburg for Teachers 21st Century Award for Best Practices in Distance Learning, preK–12 United States Distance Learning Association, 2010 Distinguished Achievement Award Finalist 2011 Association of Educational Publishers NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS: The Teacher Gazette will return in September with a new look! The new format will make it easier to manage your subscriptions to Colonial Williamsburg emails. Please make sure that teachhistory@cwf.org is on your "allowed senders" list and that your email address is updated for the new school year to continue receiving the Teacher Gazette! Thanks for subscribing, and see you next semester! The Colonial Williamsburg Electronic Field Trip Series is supported in part by the William and Gretchen Kimball Young Patriots Fund. If you would like to subscribe to the Teacher Gazette, please send an e-mail to teachergazette@cwf.org with the subject heading "subscribe." If you would like to be removed from future Teacher Gazette mailings, please send an e-mail to teachergazette@cwf.org with the subject heading "unsubscribe."