My students are awesome! Our high school offers vocal (choir), beginning orchestra, and piano labs I, II, and III. Having been a private and public school piano teacher for over 30 years, I have lots of games and theory activities to engage my piano class students, but I do not have as many theory games and activities as I would like for my choral classes.
My students are in a STEM school, and many have missed a few years of music between elementary and high school.
Most of them have the desire and the talent to sing, but have either forgotten or have never been taught to read music unless they have taken private lessons. The majority of our class time is spent learning our repertoire for All-Region, Winter Program, All-State, college auditions, performances in the community and our Singing Valentine fund-raiser. We certainly also work on rhythm and sight-reading, primarily using solfege and warm-up activities.
My Project
In our vocal program, we spend the majority of our time working on repertoire, but I would like to add bell-ringers or brain break activities that are fun to do and also help them learn more music theory.
Music is truly another language and we learn by hearing, repeating, reading and writing.
I am excited about using the reproducible lessons in the "101 Music Activities" curriculum as they will help reinforce listening and music literacy. The students will not only learn from, but will also enjoy the exercises found in "Hear It, Read It, Write It", "30 Days to Melody", and "Choir Builders" by Rollo Dilworth.
As their instructor, all these activities are great measurable assessments for each student so I will know on which concepts or areas they need to focus. I will be better able to meet each student's needs. I am so thankful to the donors to have about half of this project funded already from surplus money from my last project.
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