Sight Singing Assesments… ideas?

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Someone recently asked me how do I effectively assess my students’ ability to sight sing?

Well I must confess I don’t do any formal assessments but I definitely try to do in class assessments of my students abilities regularly. We have a sight singing book and some single line exercises from past regional auditions. Everyday we try to do a few examples before we get to the “meat” of the rehearsal.

The problem with the tests in my opinion is it takes too much time. After we have done an example as a class I try to have different students do the examples either by themselves in front of the class or if they are really struggling then with another student. So all the while I am assessing my students but not in any official way.

So I am asking for suggestions on a better way to do this and yet still not spend a ton of time on it either. All ideas are welcome 

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Technology and Classroom Distractions

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I have heard from more than a few people that we have to be careful whattechnology we allow into the classroom so they do not get distracted by youtube or Facebook or other distractions that can be readily found on computers.

Wow what an absurd thought that we try to shelter kids from ever being susceptible to a distraction. Why don’t we change this way of thinking to teach are kids that some distractions are ok if used properly and at the right time. In fact some of these so-called distractions could actually be great learning tools if used correctly.

So I for one say lets start teaching students and not shelter them. If we don’t teach them how to harness the internet then who will?

Besides I can have a kid turn off his monitor but I can’t make his home life better with the flip of a switch, which is more distracting than Facebook will ever be.  The student needs to be engaged to do that.

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Snow Days

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Why do we love snow days so much? In my district the school plans a day towards the end of the year that if we haven’t yet taken a bad weather day then we get the later date off.

I love it! We are guaranteed a day off whether we have bad weather or not. 

But today as its snowing I look out and wish for a snow day. I would think I would rather have the day when its warmer and being able to plan for it but today  I am longing for a snow day.

Maybe I just love surprises like waking up to find out there is no school I don’t know.

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Broadway/Pops Concert

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How did I not think of this idea earlier. In fact I was given the idea in college but didn’t try it myself until this year.

I am hooked this will become a yearly tradition. Our First Concert will be a Broadway/Pops Concert.

I found that the kids get more excited over this style of music. I can still have them work on solos or even small groups and contrary to some peoples beliefs their is some really quality literature in this genre.

If nothing else the kids seem to buy into the program a lot faster this way and are willing to work hard because they get to have input. Later through the year I have added in different styles of music but the kids are hooked now so they jump right into it as well.

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Loosing Students? Work them harder! It works :)

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If your school is like mine which I am betting it is, I am sure that your students are not only music students but they are also stars of sports teams in clubs and many other activities that demand part of their time each week if not day.

How do we compete with this?  What can we do to make sure that our students are there for us when we need them?

I am a Huge proponent of letting kids make decisions and not always making compromises to help them supposedly do multiple activities. The problem with that way of thinking in my opinion is if they try to do too many things they never really get good at any, or they get really good at one and don’t care very much about the other. I am sure we all have students like this and when you are simply looking for bodies I guess it’s ok.

I have found the answer on how to make your group the one that is most important to them.

It’s simple.

Work them harder.

If you work them harder than the oher things that they are in they will appreciate it more. Don’t misunderstand me I am not saying to work them harder just for the sake of working them hard I don’t believe that will work either. What I am saying is we can’t be afraid to work them as hard as neccesary. We will not scare students off by working them hard in fact I belive the opposite to be true.

Its the same principle my Dad used when teaching me to work for things that I didn’t take care of. When I have to work to get that new “bike” I take a lot better care of it.

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End Of The Year Reflections

Well I fell off the end of the earth well at least the blogging world. For most experienced music teachers I am sure they are well accustomed to the end of the year hecticness. This being only my second year I am still figuring out how much stuff I can and should plan. Is it easier to plan more because there are more opportunities or because you are more willing to show off a more experienced group.

In my first year I did a musical review with my choirs and a movie review with my bands. These were both fairly easy endeavors to tackle. Basically we prepared for them like we would any concert and then a couple days before we did a couple of dress rehearsals and the show was a success. Then we h

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ad our final concert at the end of the year. So basically we had 3 performances in our spring semester.

This year feeling more brave after gaining you know "so much" experience I decided I should try a few more things in the spring semester. I think at first I felt like my kids needed to be challenged more and that they were getting bored with such a light load and thus I was loosing students and discipline was even slipping. Then it became a learning experience for me where I wanted to see what exactly I could do.

My plan for this years Spring Semester was to do a musical and a music tour. Too much? Go big or go home right?

Well lucky for me I believe I have some of the very best students to work with. The problem with deciding to do both of these things in one semester was that I decided late. In fact I don't think I officially committed myself until right before Christmas.

We decided on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and I found a script to do auditions with before

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we even ordered it so that I could give the leads a jump on memorizing there lines over the Christmas break.

When we got back from break we started rehearsals. I had many great people from the community pull through and help me out in amazing ways. Being the only music teacher in my district there is no way I could have pulled this off without a ton of community support which we had.

While all of these preparations were going on we had to start fund raising for our MusicTtour that was happening 3 weeks after our production closed. Luckily AZ has tax Credits which helped us a lot and great principal who paid for all of our Musical including costumes so that everything we profited at the door we could turn around and use on our trip. This proved to be essential. We also hosted a Jon Schmidt concert to help raise money and sold Discount Cards. In the end about 2 days before we left we were able to scrounge up the final money we needed for our tour.

Jon Schmidt via last.fm

When I say tour I don't mean anything extravagant just a trip to Mesa, AZ where we watched Singing In The Rain at the Broadway Palms Dinner Theater, worked with Dr. Glenn Bennett at Mesa Community College, performed at an assisted living center and a mall, went to Golfland where we played minature golf, go carts, and laser tag, and swam in the pool at the resort we stayed in. Overall a great experience and one that I think will do wonders for recruitment.

By the time we were done with these two major events my kids were exhausted and uplifted. I had many great and encouraging talks witht the stud

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ents about how they realized how hard they worked to get ready for these things and how they also realised that this kind of hard work and preperation was neccessary for a successful event and most importantly how much fun it was when we could be proud of what we were doing.

Is this not one of the most important aspects of Music Education. If all kids and even adults could learn that one lesson do you think we would have such a sense of entitlement today. Personally I don't.

Well this last week we finally had our last concert of the year and I have to say in my to two years it was hands down our best concert performance wise. Every group showed remarkable and even noticable improvment from my fist year and the beginning of this year. The kids all had a great time and were proud of what they accomplished.

While I will admit that it is laughable to think that after two years we have made it, I know we still have a long way to go but I am glad to see that in my opinion we are headed in the right direction.

Now to make year three as memorable as years one and two. I have ideas on how I need to start now to assure that this happens but I will save this for a later post.

Congrats Graduating Class of 2009 you will be missed!

Piano Wizard gives gift of music without a stern teacher

Posted Apr. 24, ’08, 2:15 PM PT by David Dahlquist

Category | Software

Until not so long ago, the best way to learn an instrument was to buy or rent the real thing, and then commit to regular lessons from a real life teacher. Things have changed, especially for piano, as a full size MIDI keyboard can run you less than $100 these days. Combine that with a cool program like Music Wizard Group’s Piano Wizard, and you can get yourself on the path to the concert hall for a fraction of what it used to cost.

Piano Wizard is a customizable and complex piano program that can take you from beginner to pro through a series of exercises and games. They even include stickers to put on your keys to help remember which key is what. The program earned a 4 star rating at MacNN, so if you’re an aspiring keyboardist / pianist but don’t have the scrilla to lay down for weekly lessons, this could be an effective, fun way to hone your skill.

(Via MacUser)

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I Miss The Students

As I was thinking about my last post I realized that I rarely had thoughts of changing careers during the year. Was this because I didn't have time to think about it?

No I believe it is becasue when things got hard or just annoying the students made it worth while.

I am in it for the students!