The process of music making requires continued personal reflection in order to keep growing. As music teachers, we understand this process and so we work to help our students understand it too. Several years ago I began creating resources for my students…
Practice. It’s the only path to improving in music and really anything in life. The challenge is learning how to do it well so that we are making progress rather than spinning our wheels. We as teachers spend countless hours helping our…
For many music directors, the winter concert season has come to a close. While concert season may be done for some, it’s good to reflect on selections that went well and were enjoyed by students and audiences alike. In light…
It can be challenging choosing the right music for an ensemble. It’s a balancing act finding music that will suit a developing orchestra – music that will both develop their technique and musicianship as well as capture their interest and…
As music educators we are all striving to help our students grow into confident learners. We are trying to sow into them a spirit of discipline, motivation, and build them up to be leaders in our ensembles and in their…
Time is precious in our classrooms.A common lament among many music educators is that there is never enough time in a period to cover all that we want or need to cover during class.In order to maximize time in our…
For the past several years I have been incorporating the teaching of finger patterns in my string orchestra. This method of building the fundamentals for playing a string instrument was developed by the string educator, Dr. George Bornoff.Working on finger patterns…
The goal for any music educator at the end of the year is celebrating our students and their many successes. We are also thinking about building our program for the following year and making sure students continue or feed into…
Learning key signatures is extremely useful, but can also be challenging for young musicians. We teachers spend a lot of time reviewing, checking in, and assessing students’ knowledge of key signatures. If you are working on learning your key signatures and…
Music educators know the importance of classroom management. We often have ensembles and classrooms filled with students. There are a lot of moving parts to running an ensemble and everyone has to work as a team to make the music happen. However,…