Every year it almost feels like a rat race to get a new wave of students interested in joining band, choir, or orchestra. It feels like all the stress is on impressing the young elementary students on your recruitment concert tour. Or maybe you’re a high school director and you’re stressed about making the pep music and the concert band music sound good to get those middle schoolers to become freshmen in your program.Â
Teaching our beginners new notes is so important, but also so challenging. If they're brand new then they might still be learning to read a fingering chart and maybe they're still learning which colored in circles mean which finger get pressed down. It's hard. So keep reading and I'm going to tell you my no frills tips for making sure students know their notes and fingerings.
Student recognition is quite literally what it sounds like. It’s praising a student for doing the right thing and making an effort to go above and beyond. I’m not saying to praise students for doing exactly what is expected of them, because I disagree with that too, but I am saying to look for students going the extra mile and make sure that they know you see them and value that.Â
An opening routine is a set of procedures that students do at the beginning of class to get prepped and ready for new instruction. They can either be simple or they can be elaborate. If you have an elaborate opening routine I suggest writing it down and displaying it somewhere in your room for students to see.
A classroom snowball fight is a novel experience to have with your students before the holiday break. You can practice many skills during a snowball fight to reinforce and review previously learned content. And honestly, it’s just a fun way to spend a few minutes during class.Â
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!)
Displaced Pedagogy 