Billy Rueckert is 13 years old. And he likes to prove people wrong...Billy has cerebral palsy, and he was barely 10 when he peeked into the band room...and informed Miss Roggen he’d like to learn to play an instrument. Anything. He wasn’t picky.” I remember him coming through that door with his walker,” says Tammy … Continue reading Teaching Music To Special Needs Students
Music Education
A practical guide to planning, teaching, and assessing music instruction.
With An Eye To Differences in How Students Learn
Giving students meaningful choices can teach me quite a bit. Today, I was teaching hip-hop rhythms to a seventh grade class so that the students could perform a groove and improvise over it. One student was successfully playing the high-hat rhythm, while another student was attempting to play the back beats. Although I had introduced … Continue reading With An Eye To Differences in How Students Learn
Small Group Instruction in the Music Classroom
Small groups are all the rage these days in education. They are an effective way of differentiating instruction, and enable teachers to give students meaningful choices affecting their learning. A group leader who may be the teacher or a student can teach students in small groups, or students can teach students and collaborate in the … Continue reading Small Group Instruction in the Music Classroom
Components of Exemplary Teaching for Music Teachers
Exemplary teaching in today’s educational climate can be broken down into three areas each of which dictates to some extent what teachers do and what students do. While these nine areas apply to teachers in all disciplines, they can be discussed at the application level within a single discipline such as music. Today I will … Continue reading Components of Exemplary Teaching for Music Teachers
Four Pieces of Advice for Improving Music Teaching and Learning
Recently, Patrick McKenna published an insightful article on begin an effective leader. The main point was that good leaders understand the importance of relationships with those they lead, and take a genuine interest in their needs and wants. This is not only good for business; it is also good for teaching. Music teachers are in … Continue reading Four Pieces of Advice for Improving Music Teaching and Learning
Finding Quality Repertoire for Younger Performers
One of my values as a music teacher is to use quality repertoire no matter the age or level of the students I am teaching. This can be challenging, especially for the least advanced students. There is a wealth of “educational” music published, some of it of very high quality. Even so, there is more … Continue reading Finding Quality Repertoire for Younger Performers
Assessment Ideas for the Music Classroom
By now, most music teachers are familiar with and using some form of assessment in their classrooms. Directors of performing ensembles give periodic playing or singings tests and quizzes, and may also administer written tasks to assess knowledge of music reading and analysis. General music teachers have become accustomed to collecting written student work, and … Continue reading Assessment Ideas for the Music Classroom
The Star Spangled Banner and Young Singers
The Star Spangled Banner is arguably the most controversial song in the repertoire of songs for American music education. While American music educators nearly universally agree that, as the national anthem of the United States, it should be taught to American children, the pitch range, spanning an octave and a fifth, puts it out of … Continue reading The Star Spangled Banner and Young Singers
Varieties of Musical Dissonance
One of the fascinating things about music history is how people have gradually over the centuries changed in how dissonance is regarded. From the position that all dissonance was bad and even evil, to the twentieth century view that dissonance can be beautiful, we have accepted and embraced more and more dissonance in our art … Continue reading Varieties of Musical Dissonance
What Is Music Theory and How Does It Fit Into Music Education?
A casual survey of so-called music theory books used by piano and violin teachers reveals that music theory is frequently understood to be the body of knowledge needed to read music. When students using these materials “learn music theory,” they are asked to name notes and chords, identify and define symbols such as key and … Continue reading What Is Music Theory and How Does It Fit Into Music Education?
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