Students will explore the various ways that sound is transmitted in musical instruments. The Eyewitness book Music, by Neil Ardley (Dorling Kindusley Limited, London, 1989. ISBN 0-394-82259-5) should be helpful for this exploration.

Students will use the exhibit to suggest ways they can create such an instrument.

Students will use natural resources to create banjos.

Students will develop hypotheses to explain the different sounds created by their instruments.

Students will create compare/contrast statements relative to the merits of each construction type and its resulting sound delivery. From these statements, they will develop conclusions or inferences.

Using computer technology, students will create a one- or two-page document explaining how to make a banjo.

Science: 5.2

C/T: 5.4

Listen to the children's story When Uncle Took the Fiddle by Libba Moore Gray (Orchard Books, NY 1999. ISBN 0531-30137-0).

Students will make notes of the descriptions of banjos to use in the story each will create.

Students will draw from their experience and imagination to create a story about a particular banjo or banjo player. The story will be illustrated.

English: 5.7

Obtain and read slave narratives mentioning the banjo. (See Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves. Indiana University Press, 1980.)

Review historical accounts of slave life in Virginia.

Ask students to make notes from the text indicating the role of the banjo in the lives of slaves.

Students will develop a story or a descriptive writing based upon the skills of a banjo player from the point of view of a slave and/or a slaveholder.

History: 5.9

English: 5.7