Silent Cacophony is a sounding board for Chase March. Here you will find his podcast, book reviews, skatepark tours, teaching-related articles and resources, and much more. Please use the buttons on the home page to navigate to the topics that interest you.
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Hip-hop Love from the Junos
The list of nominees was just released for this year’s Juno Awards. There is a lot of hip-hop being represented this year. Classified is up for Single of the Year with this patriotic jam “Oh Canada” Eminem is up for International Album of the Year. It would be nice to see him win. He’s up…
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Teaching Tip – Guided Reading
A good reading program is absolutely essential for your classroom. Without one, your students will not improve as readers. Having DEAR – Drop Everything And Read or SSR – Sustained Silent Reading where your students read quietly at their desks, does very little to help them become better readers. What you need is a guided…
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Chasing Content – February 2010
Image via Wikipedia The chase is on! It’s time to hunt down that elusive content that tries to leave us in the dust and tuck away into the archives. We do this at the start of each and every month here at Silent Cacophony and highlight the best posts of the previous year at this…
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Know Your History: Season 1
Know Your History is a half radio program I produce for DOPEfm that focuses on the rich history of rap music and hip-hop culture. As a hip-hop historian, I wanted an outlet to celebrate this music that I hold so dear to my heart. This show allows me to play some classic material and discuss…
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Know Your History – Gangsta Rap
Rap music comes in many different shapes, forms, and styles. To the casual listener though, there may only appear to be two distinct categories of rap. First, we have artists like Solja Boy or The Black Eyed Peas. These artists put out music with commercial and mainstream appeal. Like the pop artists before them, such as…
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Ten Intentions for a Better Classroom
I found this on Tumblr today and my first thought was, “Wow! I’d love to adopt this for my classroom.” I like how it uses the word intent. These aren’t rules. These are ideals, and while we might not always be able to live 100% by them, they are something to strive for. Of course,…
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Teaching Tip – Visual Prompts
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I don’t expect my Grade 3 students to write a thousand words but I do want to see them writing. Perhaps with a little encouragement, they will write longer and more detailed compositions. This is one of the picture prompts I have used in my classroom…
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Rap Calls Attention to Real Issues
Image by 216 wear via Flickr In the 1980s rap exploded in popularity. This allowed a brand new voice to be added to popular discourse, the voice of the black man. Rap groups started to call attention to issues such as racism, freedom of speech, police brutality, racial unity, and countless other issues that affected…
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Know Your History: Episode 11 – Political Rap
Some people think hip-hop is totally devoid of a message. Granted, there are songs that are meant to be fun and pointless, but you will find this in any genre of music. Likewise, you will also find plenty of songs that carry a deep message to them, no matter what genre of music you listen…
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Hear This – Cradle Orchestra
I came across this amazing album by Cradle Orchestra quite by chance. Sometimes all it takes is a name or a creative album cover to catch my attention. This one certainly did that. It’s called “Transcended Elements.” As I scanned the tracklisting, I was intrigued to see the line up of notable emcees featured on…