The humble slinky. Who would've thought it could be a crucial teaching tool in the music room? How so, you ask? Well! Vocalisation Slinkies can be a fantastic tool for vocal exploration, encouraging students to widen the range of their voice with the movement of the slinky. You can model for your students (like in the video below) and have them copy in a number of different sounds and voices Songs Props to the wonderful Kerryn Vezos for introducing this one to me recently. Th

One of my ongoing missions as a classroom music teacher is to introduce my students to a wide variety of musical styles and genres. In particular, Art music. I once had a student teacher ask me why I didn't play more pop music in my classes. I answered that it's not my job to show students music they already hear on a daily basis. The Top 40 is everywhere. They hear it in the car on the way to and from school, in advertising, in movies... Art music, however, most of them don'

So you've just made conscious taa and ti-ti. Now what? Instead of charging full speed into the next rhythmic discovery, it's important to give your students the chance to put their new knowledge into practice and play around with their newfound rhythmic friend. It's also important for you as a teacher to be able to assess that they have in fact fully understood this new concept. There are 6 broad forms that this practice may take: Performing, Reading, Writing, Composing, Impr

I'm sure many of you are familiar with Haydn's Symphony No. 94, the "Surprise Symphony" - especially the 2nd movement. If you're not, indulge yourself for a few moments and check it out below: Now that you've calmed yourself down from the heart attack that would have occured around 34 seconds in, you might be thinking (much as I did) "wow, what a great piece of music to analyse with my kids" and you'd be right! This piece is great for looking at form (both the overall form of