Recently, I offered suggestions for Preparing to interview for a Teaching Position. If you are looking for a teaching job, you can follow the link to read that article. Today I would like to follow up on that post and discuss how best to proceed once you are hired. When you begin in your new … Continue reading Starting Out In A New School
Instrumental Music
Getting Your Classes Off To A Good Start at Year’s Beginning
The beginning of a new school year is always a hopeful and exciting time. Students by then are happy to return to school and be reunited with friends they haven't seen all summer, and then there is the fresh start feel of a new grade, new teachers, and new classes. It is also a time … Continue reading Getting Your Classes Off To A Good Start at Year’s Beginning
Music Theory Tutorial: Chords and Voice Leading
Before I begin discussing chords and voice leading, I would like to make two points about music theory in general. Many have the misconception that music theory involves sets of rules from which composers wrote or write music. This is not the case. Music theory is not sets of rules, but rather sets of observations … Continue reading Music Theory Tutorial: Chords and Voice Leading
What Isn’t Music?
I read an interesting definition of music today. Music is "a pattern of sounds made by musical instruments, voices, or computers, or a combination of these, intended to give pleasure to people listening to it" (Mambo entertainment). The essentials are there, namely that music is sound patterns and there is an intent attached to those … Continue reading What Isn’t Music?
The Creative Process of Connecting
By now all music educators (should) have worked the National Core Arts Standards into their curriculum, instructional planning, and teaching. From the outset, we have all understood creating, performing, and responding to music, because these are things we have always had our students do. These actions were couched in new contexts, and given new objectives, … Continue reading The Creative Process of Connecting
Verbs for Instructional Objectives in Music
Over the years, one of the things I have found that often confounds music educators, is how to go about writing instructional objectives, or even what exactly are instructional objectives. One little piece of the confusion is the term instructional. These objectives can more accurately be called, as they once often were, behavioral objectives. Thinking … Continue reading Verbs for Instructional Objectives in Music
What Are The Answers To Music’s Essential Questions?
Music educators now have essential questions on which to base their instructional units and by extension the lesson plans within those units. These questions are meant to get at the heart of the discipline of music. They are not like questions students might be asked such as "what is binary form?" or "who was John … Continue reading What Are The Answers To Music’s Essential Questions?
What Are The Elements of Music?
For as long as any of you reading this have been alive, music has been taught in the context of so-called musical elements. Though one can find variations on just what is included in a list of musical elements, most will agree that it includes rhythm, dynamics, melody, harmony, timbre, texture, and form. Some of … Continue reading What Are The Elements of Music?
Essential Things To Consider When Writing Music Curriculum
Many school districts engage administrators and faculty in doing curriculum work over the summer. It is a good time for this type of work, because teachers are not encumbered with planning and providing instruction for and to students, respectively, and many teachers benefit from writing curriculum from a position of being able to reflect on … Continue reading Essential Things To Consider When Writing Music Curriculum
An Approach to Lesson Planning
Lesson plans are only as good as the learning they bring about. For that to happen, the lesson plan must be executed well by the teacher, and the students must complete the learning tasks that are part of the plan. This is a dynamic process, not a static one. In other words, teaching a lesson … Continue reading An Approach to Lesson Planning
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