This plan will introduce students to 12-Bar Blues progressions that include Slow Change, Quick Change, and Turnaround options. Students will use the Blues Scale to improvise over the 12-Bar blues progressions.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
In this video (7:06), a Virginia Music Educator shares strategies for reinforcing note learning and string technique. The foundational skills identified focus on correct hand position, finger placement and positions, and finger patters.
Material Type: Lesson
Students identify a specific advocacy message regarding music programs. Students create or remix a short video/audio clip to support that advocacy message. Examples may include “Join Music” “Come To Our Concert,” and “Why Music?”
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
This game provides accountability and some fun when it comes to rehearsing your ensemble. Using a digital whiteboard or slidedeck, create a Battleship board game that represents each instrument group (can be applied to Band, Orchestra or Choir). Students then take turns “firing” at different sections. Teachers and students are encouraged to provide feedback to sections after each “hit” or “miss” to encourage growth and improvement.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
Students actively listen to a practice or performance track to practice and improve their individual part. Students are able to listen and learn the various sections of the song, and develop a deeper understanding for how their individual part fits into the larger ensemble sound. Practice and performance tracks can be stored on a students’ learning management system for student practice.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
Students exercise creative thinking skills including, but not limited to, identifying and testing solutions, developing multiple solutions to problems, and participating in an interactive design process through the use of music applications. Students will create and explore interactive experiences designed to facilitate learning in a game-like environment.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
This lesson will introduce students to proper posture, rest position, and playing position for their instrument. Students will demonstrate understanding of these concepts and their ability to teach them to others.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This lesson guides students through the beginning stages of articulation. Focus is limited to producing clear, focused tone, and clean legato articulation.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This plan will allow percussion students the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of how to properly hold a drumstick and approach the drum. The teacher will be able to model exactly what the students describe, resulting in classroom discussion and a pedagogical experience.
Material Type: Binder
Students will learn and practice skills to adjust intonation and pitch. Students will use a short music example to practice the skills learned for adjusting unison notes in real time.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This instructional plan will take an instrumental ensemble through the process of learning or improving their ability to follow the conductor. This process will include demonstrating different conducting patterns and playing as an ensemble in response to the conductor’s gestures.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This plan will provide students with the resources to clean, restring, and tune a classical guitar. Students will also learn about different string types and which kinds of knots are used to string guitars.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This plan is designed to reinforce students’ ability to recognize and apply whole step/half step patterns to the guitar and foster a deeper understanding of how pitches are organized on the guitar fretboard. Understanding the whole step/half step concept and the ability to apply it are important precursors to successful sight reading and navigation of the fretboard.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This plan introduces rhythm guitar chart reading using open and barre chords. Students will review how to read basic chord charts in order to accompany songs and perform with ensembles.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This plan combines rote learning with a simplified, one-line tab staff to introduce tablature. Elements of passive learning are included (major and minor scales, triads, common rhythmic figures, etc.) that can be referenced later when pedagogically appropriate. The plan is meant to eventually function as a flexible warm-up that can be expanded according to the ambitions of the instructor.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Students will identify basic parts of the ukulele and learn to sing and play a simple folk song utilizing the C major chord with proper strumming technique.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This instructional plan will help teachers guide students’ composition of rhythmic variations. In this lesson, students will listen to musical examples of variations, discuss the aesthetic and artistic value of musical arrangements, and write their own rhythmic variations on scales and melodies.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
In this lesson, students will use a recording platform to layer tracks and produce a small ensemble piece as the only performer. This process encourages individual accountability and emphasizes the importance of ensemble performance skills.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Students will experiment with and compose rhythmic grooves to use with their warm-up exercises. Using an online tool, students will create their own backing tracks to put the “fun” back in fundamentals!
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Students will record themselves and use a provided rubric to evaluate growth in their playing. This lesson can be used with individual or ensemble performances.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
