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Movement Activities for Older Students
I frequently teach older students (17 and 18 year olds) for long periods of time at a stretch. I want to break up these sessions with activities to keep their concentration levels up, but don’t want to let them take a real break as they tend to take twice as long as I allow (“I […]
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Musical Games and Movement Activities for Instrumental Groups
“We should see the child as the musician and the instrument as the expression of the inner musician”. The use of musical games and movement activities in instrumental programs of any kind enhances our students’ enjoyment of music. It also fosters a positive attitude within the classroom. It can be an introduction to singing for […]
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do re mi songs that are NOT Hot Cross Buns
Tired of the same old do re mi songs? Me too. So here are four you may not know for your song collection. Girl with clock and pirate images courtesy of photostock Bored teacher image courtesy of saphatthachat Flea image courtesy of debspoons All available at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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Why Teach Music?
We are being bombarded by articles in the press, on the internet and everywhere in between, about why music is such a valuable subject to teach our children. There are reasons both musical and non musical for including music as a core subject in our very crowded curriculum. Plato said “I would teach children music, […]
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How to Extend Your Most Musical Students
Something I love about teaching music literacy, musicianship, aural and theory using the Kodály method is how easy it is to create extension ideas and activities suitable for the HUGE range of student abilities within our classes. As any music teacher who has taught the first year of high school will know, our student’s abilities […]
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Teaching Key Signatures by Jeremy Howard
Sound before symbol! Welcome to our very first guest post, kindly written and shared by Jeremy Howard. Jeremy is a Kodály teacher in Kentucky, USA. You can follow Jeremy’s fantastic Kentucky Kodály Classroom blog here.Thanks so much Jeremy! Teaching key signatures can be difficult since there is no associative “sound”. How does one then teach key […]
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Great TED talks for music educators (and students)
As we head into our school holidays I thought it might be a great opportunity to enjoy some inspirational speaking via some amazing TED talks by musicians and music educators. Here’s what I consider to be the pick of the bunch. Enjoy! PS Do you have a favorite TED talk? Share if you do! Richard Gill: […]
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Jumbala Lyala – a new game for 3 metre
Have you noticed that, in Western cultures, we don’t sing a lot of songs in 3 metre?This means our students find it hard to use 3 metre for composing and improvising, as well as transcribing, as it is not part of their regular music language. I originally created these actions to highlight the accents in […]