Music Ice-Breakers for the Beginning of the School Year
It is mid-August right now and the beginning of the school year is quickly approaching. We as music educators know how important it is to cultivate a positive community at the start of the year. This includes setting a positive and…
7 Pieces Students Love for Intermediate – Middle School Orchestra
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…
Celebrating and Fostering Orchestra Leadership Skills
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…
A Quick and Effective Method for Tuning Your Orchestra – Cross Tuning
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…
Incorporating Finger Patterns In Orchestra
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…
Be A Part Of The Orchestra – Helpful Tips for Recruiting For Your Orchestra
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…
Tips for Effective Classroom Management
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,…
For Teachers: Fostering Student Leadership
Each year we have an award ceremony at my school where we nominate students who have demonstrated leadership qualities. I have to say that every year this award causes me to stop, think, and ask some questions. What does leadership look like? How…
Favorite Christmas and Holiday Collections for Orchestra
I’m sure most school orchestras and music directors are in the midst of preparing music for a winter concert. Undoubtedly, we push and put so much energy and work into that winter performance. Following the performance, we might have a…
6 Practice Tips for Students Part II
In last week’s post, we explored 6 simple tips for effective practice. In this week’s post, we will continue to talk about practice and share some helpful practice tips. These are in no particular order, but are some thoughts on…