Rap Builder

developed by Teresa Jennings and Paul Jennings

A Creative Construction Kit

Kids love raps, so we designed the ultimate resource for creating and performing them with groups of almost any age. This is a versatile, practical toolkit to help you use raps to teach and reinforce lessons with your students. And the thousands of teachers who have already purchased it are using it in more ways than we ever imagined.

The core of Rap Builder is a carefully prepared recording that features "shells" for six completely different raps in a variety of styles. Some are recorded at different lengths and tempos, for a total of 14 different backgrounds to work with. All of the recordings are up to date so that students will feel that they are rapping to "the real thing," and each rap "skeleton" is well thought out and constructed to give you the most options for teaching. The different lengths and rhythm structures let you use these with virtually every age group, and while most have implied key centers, some are built on just percussion so that you can work in any key.

The Teacher's Handbook is chock full of information. It begins with easy-to-follow "road maps" and descriptions of each recorded track to help planning. There are reproducible arrangements for classroom instruments that will work with the recording or by themselves. These include parts for Orff instruments, recorders, unpitched percussion, body percussion and even ideas for adding autoharp and recorder to your rap ensemble. To assist the creative process, there are lesson plans that show different approaches to group composition, an ideal opportunity for cooperative learning. There are several sample raps that work with the tracks as well as a handy section entitled "101 Ideas For Rap Subjects."

Some of the tracks included are: