Playing Recorder - What to Teach First?

If you've never taught recorder before, it can be quite a hair-raising ordeal. You imagine the beautiful dulcid tones that your students will make under your instruction, and then you start only to hear the shrill squeaks and squawks they make. What happened??? Or you start learning Beethoven's heavenly, "Ode to Joy" ruined by the unmusical sound of staccato-like ra-ta-tat-tats!

This school year I finally carried through with my intention to learn a band instrument. When I was in high school I thought it better to focus on piano only, so I passed up the opportunity to learn one and regretted it ever since I became a music teacher. My adult band teacher, Nina Falcos is wonderful! She is very fun and excited about passing on her musical knowledge. She even let me do a stint as the conductor and coached me. One night in rehearsal when she was trying to get us to play more musically, and not just note-by-note she said, "Music is what happens in-between the notes."

Well, the next day I tried it with my beginner recorder class. What a difference! Their playing became much more legato. We worked on dynamics and phrasing. Afterwards, I wished I had recorded them playing at the beginning and the end so they could hear their own transformation!

My conclusion: Don't forget that we are teaching musicallity first, the instrument is simply the vechile through which we blow! :)

Elementary Music Blogs That I Follow

There are so many wonderful bloggers out there with a wealth of knowledge and experience that I wonder what I am doing throwing my hat into this ring! :) Here are a few that I think are incredibly helpful and generous:

Beth's Notes

O for Tuna Orff

Creative Music Classrooms with Tom Borden

Handbells and Handchimes Fear!

I'm not very comfortable with teaching handbells, so when some colleagues showed me this book, I was thrilled. It covers all the basics and makes it easy for elementary kids to move from a more iconic reading to standard notation. It's definitely on my "must have" list! :)

Beginning Busy Ringers (for Handchimes or Handbells)

by Kirtsy Mitchell

Classroom Management

This is something that I continue to work on. Today, working in a Kindergarten class I had my share of challenges. It's so easy to forget that they need to practice and practice and practice how to behave. They're not little adults in small bodies! On another blog I read today they said teaching Kindergarten was like herding cats!

So, as I got sucked into the nether regions of the internet, (aka. finding a lot of neat things, but not actually accomplishing anything on my to-do list), I came across something called "Interactive Modeling" by "Responsive Classroom. What I really liked was watching the videos and seeing how the teacher modelled and had the children model the behaviour or skill. The other thing that is great is that they show how to establish routines in areas that unless you have a lot of classroom experience with each particular age group. There are videos showing the following:

Sitting in a Circle
Choosing a Partner
Talking to a Partner
Working with a Science Partner (Doing an Experiment Together)

I'm really interested in the book.

The videos are on Youtube and the link for the website is:
Interactive Modeling

Monday I'm in a Grade 1 class and looking forward to it! :)

Well, I've finally started to work on my dream of producing the kind of games and worksheets that I wished I could have bought when I worked as a full-time music teacher. There was never enough time to create all the pages that I wanted and needed for my students. Putting the pages together takes a lot longer than I thought, but I'm having fun and I hope they'll be a great resource to others.

Many of the pages I have used with my past students. The game described below works very well. The kids are completely engaged in a rhythmic activity and it gave me time to assess whether or not they could identify rhythms with ta, ti-ti and the quarter rest.

Below is a picture of a rhythm game I've made for Grade 1. To play, students match the first four beats of a song with the correct rhythm card. I've designed it so that it is self-correcting. Also, there are multiple sets of each game, and each set has a distinct picture so that students can easily tell if they've gotten a set mixed with another. I have four different versions for Grade 1. I've been using the rhythms listed in "The Koda'ly Method" by Lois Choksy to decide on which songs and rhythms to use for each level of the game. A few of the songs are from "Musicplay 1" by Denise Gagne.

Here's a practice page using "Engine, Engine #9" for identifying so-mi on a two-line staff. I was always frustrated whenever I tried to find theory sheets that were simple enough for very young students. The other problem was that the pages would be very "dry" visually. I try to make the pages more fun by using illustrations for the notes instead of simple circles. I think that using "picture notes" gives a better transition from iconic representation to placing sounds on a staff.

Below is the simple circle page. Do you think it is better than the previous one? (Sorry for the line. My printer is having issues!)

My main dilemma at the moment is deciding on which versions of some songs to use. Some scores write "Starlight, Starbright" using mi, so and la while others only use so and mi. This is the same for "Rain, Rain" and a bunch of other songs. Any ideas on what to do?

I'll try and post a free sample of one of my pages, just as soon as I figure out how to make it downloadable for you! :)