Many music teachers plan their instruction in units. A unit on playing recorder, a unit on composing, a unit on African drum circles, or what have you. This is a good practice. What makes it good is that it gives teachers a structure for a sequence of lessons. The end goal is stated at the … Continue reading Seeing the Forest in Lesson Planning
Supercharge Your Music Lesson Plans
While lesson planning is essential to delivering quality instruction, I must admit that I often don't enjoy writing lesson plans. The task often becomes more time consuming than I would like as I search for materials that will be just right for a particular class and objective. While there is a certain flow from one … Continue reading Supercharge Your Music Lesson Plans
Music Literacy is More Than Reading Music
I saw this post recently on Facebook. "What do you teach?" "Music." "Oh, okay. So, do you read music?" "You teach English, right?" "Yes." "Can you read English?" My first reaction, as a Music teacher, was probably similar to the author of this post. I was irked, maybe even offended. Of course I read music. It seems so obvious … Continue reading Music Literacy is More Than Reading Music
Issues With Expressive Intent in the Core Arts Standards
One of the pervasive threads that is woven through the national core arts standards under the artistic processes of performing and of responding, is the idea of interpreting based on an expressive intent. The pertinent anchor standard for responding is "interpret intent and meaning in artistic work." For third grade, the performance standard is to … Continue reading Issues With Expressive Intent in the Core Arts Standards
Rethinking Music Making
For most if not all classical musicians, the phrase "making music" means to perform music and to do so in an expressive way, with a high level of musicianship. We spent 4 or more years in music conservatories or university music departments developing our performance prowess on our instruments so that we could make music. … Continue reading Rethinking Music Making
Planning Instruction Part 3
If all has gone well up to this point, your students have followed well-practiced routines to enter your room and show you that they are ready to get to work, your room is arranged in a way that contributes to a good learning environment, and you have explained, demonstrated, modeled, and built value for the task … Continue reading Planning Instruction Part 3
Planning Instruction Part 2
In the first part of this series, I discussed classroom management strategies. Classroom management includes everything under the teacher's control that affects the learning environment, and ranges from arrangement of furniture, to routines and procedures, to student behavior plans. All of these things must be part of the planning process. Effective teachers think through the … Continue reading Planning Instruction Part 2
Planning Instruction, Part 1
Today I am starting a series of articles on planning instruction. These articles will include lesson planning, unit planning, classroom management, assessment, and student engagement. Each of these areas is critical to student success. Making classroom management and strategies for student engagement part of lesson and unit plans is particularly important, and sometimes overlooked. Unit planning … Continue reading Planning Instruction, Part 1
Listening to Music With Your Whole Body
One of the things my students hear from me frequently is to look at the person who is (supposed to be) speaking. I tell them that I want eyes on me when I'm speaking, and eyes on the student who is asking or answering a question. The reason for this, I explain, is that we … Continue reading Listening to Music With Your Whole Body
Observing Music: Going Beyond Aesthetics
When I go to an art museum, I take in the art in one of two ways. If there is a collection of works by the same artist, I like to give each painting a short glance, and get a sense of the mood and tendencies of the artist. I like to speculate on how … Continue reading Observing Music: Going Beyond Aesthetics
mister a music place 
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