Need fun ways for your students to demonstrate what they know? Try Musical Post Office, Meeting on the Street, or using your mascot as a rhythm eater. At the beginning of the year, I try to ease my students through reviewing concepts while assessing new students. Playing Musical Post Office…
Rounds for Singing and Playing
Someone recently asked if I could recommend a round for the beginning of the school year. Don’t get me started, because I could go on and on. But, the start of school is a busy time, so I’ve only had time to prepare visuals for a few: Toembai, One May…
Corralling Kindergarten
Kindergarten can be a lot of fun, but it’s easy to lose control. The 4 C’s below are the concepts that help me keep my cool while corralling Kindergarten. 1. Containment through circle games and controlled space It’s all about containment. Unruly students are like a virus that spreads. That…
Winner of the contest!
Congratulations to Holly K. of Austin, TX! She won the bulletin board headers. Thank you for playing!
Resources 
The Encounter Newsletter
The Encounter is a free quarterly newsletter published by Kodály Educators of Texas (KET). If you’ve never read the Encounter, wonderful information is included, from book reviews, special topics, tech time, upcoming workshop announcements, training program reports, and more. It’s free, and if you share it with a friend, you’re…
Bulletin Board Giveaway!
The new school year is upon us and I’ve been crafting new bulletin board headers to spice up the area outside my door. You can enter to win a set of your own scrap-booked bulletin board headers. It’s in 2 pieces, 6″ x 12″ each. I’ll include a few pieces of coordinating…
More Listening Lessons – Schubert
The spring semester was very busy and I completed Orff-Schulwerk Level III right after school finished (Orff Certified!), so it’s taken me longer to follow up on listening lessons than I had planned. I’ll try to address the specific questions I received by email with one of my favorite listening…
Listening Lessons
All of my listening lessons tie into my regular lessons in some way. Sometimes they relate to a rhythmic element, a related pitch or scale, or even form, such as rondo. The very best listening examples have a clear melody the students can sing. Need examples? Certainly. 1. Mozart’s “Allegro”…
Tongo – Polynesian Canoe Song
This awesome folk song has multiple uses. Its pentatonic range of low la up to la (la, do re mi so la) allows teachers to use it with multiple grade levels. The syncopated rhythms and dotted quarter note and eighth note rhythms make it engaging for upper elementary as well….
Sub Plans for Music Class
I’m heading to TMEA later this week and my substitute teachers are not music teachers. In fact, there are only a handful of “music substitutes” in the area and I think they were booked for TMEA before the first week of school! What to do? Show videos to every class?…