Every year you tell your students how important scales are and every year they still don't practice them. In my experience students don't practice their scales until its time for an important audition and then they cram their scales and the audition music in and learn them all in a panic. Once the students get up to high school it becomes obvious that they're on B-Flat Default mode because they always play the notes of the B-Flat concert scale (even in G Major, yikes!)
If you're like me and teach all the things then you definitely have a lot of "inventory" in your classroom. It's taken me well into my third year to figure out how to organize all of my stuff so that I have a more functional classroom, so today I am sharing how I organize all the things so that you hopefully don't take as long as I did to get organized.
So you have a set of rhythm flashcards. When you teach students how to read rhythms you might start with the flashcards and chanting so that students only have to focus on one thing at a time. You only use your flashcards for group sightreading. The students are getting tired of flashcards, you’re getting tired of flashcards. What do you do?Â
If you’re reading this then I bet that you’ve heard of long term planning and want to know more. That was me a few months ago and I came to the conclusion that no matter what I needed a long term plan for each of my classes for the next school year. I teach middle school band, choir, and music history at my school. I knew my first year of teaching performing ensembles at this school that my students would have a very minimal, if any knowledge of music.
Hello! I teach middle school band, choir, and music history. I also teach music lessons to my band students Monday-Thursday after school. I started this blog to help other teachers like me.
Displaced Pedagogy 