One of the most important concepts we teach is communication through music, or what we might call musical expression. Music, I emphasize to my students, is not just here to entertain you or fill the silence at the grocery store.
Teaching with Halloween Songs
Although I’ve found myself acknowledging fewer holidays in my classes over the years, many students are still looking to make connections to some of the more popular holidays. Halloween is one. Last year I wrote about a silly song you
Using Music to Develop Critical Thinking
For many teachers, making the change to PYP can be overwhelming, not only with all the jargon, but the complete shift in thinking. It’s not that the concepts are strange—it’s not even that we weren’t already doing these things. The
Composing with Body Percussion
It’s a frustrating thing the day you realize that your Grade 4 students are still confusing beat and rhythm, and that they don’t read rhythms quite as well as you imagined they should. I dare say—and feel free to challenge
In the Audience: A How-To
We often spend so much time composing, practicing, and performing in Music that we overlook the role of the audience. After all, music practiced for a performance is generally prepared and performed for an audience. And though music as a
Halloween listening (in any subject)
Yes, Halloween is very North American, but it seems that the tradition of costumes, candy, and spooky things is seeping into many other places as well. And if you want to weave a bit of Halloween fun into your lessons
The Listening Walk, Part I: Exploring Sounds Around Us
My Kindergarten classes have been exploring sounds, and an unexpected discussion led us in an interesting direction: How do the sounds in our environment inspire us as musicians? Cue The Listening Walk by Paul Showers, illustrated by the fantastic Aliki.
Settling In
I have been in schools before where the classroom teacher quietly leads their class, single file, to Music. But more often than not, my classes now come running in, still engrossed in the conversation they had started on their way
A Halloween Tone Poem
My last post catered to those who are trying to teach to a classroom full of tiny pirates and princesses. If you want to give a nod to Halloween, but you are fortunate enough to have classes that aren’t bouncing
Halloween Fun
Halloween as a fun, dress-up, skeleton-filled holiday is a pretty American phenomenon, but I’ve found that many international schools embrace the fun side of it as well. (Others, bear in mind, find Halloween to be a negative thing, so you’ll