My Edublog Award Nominations

Finding great on-line PD is really important. Reaching beyond the colleagues in your building to connect with teachers all over the world can challenge you to think differently and sometimes give you the support you need.  Check out these great websites and blogs!

Here are my nominations for the Edublogs Awards 2013 http://edublogawards.com/category/blog/

Best Open PD: https://www.musicalfutures.org

Best Group Blog: http://musicalfuturesblog.wordpress.com

Best Teacher Blog :http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.ca 
(Learning through Play and lots of great teaching philosophy)

Beatboxing 101

Students from Kindergarten to Grade 8 love to work at recreating the sounds of a drum kit. Even a little bit of knowledge about beatboxing on your part as a teacher can go a long way towards students  adding percussion parts to their singing.  I find that I just have to introduce the idea and then the students fly with it!

Here are a few videos to help:

Shlomo is a beatboxer from the UK who has done workshops for Musical Futures. You can play his videos for students and learn along with your class:

My students love to get inspiration from krNfx -  a Canadian beatboxer from Toronto. He has TONS of YouTube videos and students may recognize him from his work with Walk Off the Earth, etc. Here's one of my favs:

Ukes Rule!!

Ukulele chords on my bulletin board  - music "anchor charts"

Ukuleles are another affordable and accessible instrument for junior/intermediate classrooms.
They sound good right away and most students like the similarity to guitar - lots of what you learn on the uke can be easily transferred to guitar. Also, students can sing along when they play!

If you're new to teaching the ukulele in a classroom setting, I would check out a resource co-written by Canadian ukulele virtuoso, James Hill, called  Ukulele in the Classroom.  My favourite website to use with students is http://ukutabs.com



"The best thing about the ukulele is that it is surprising" (James Hill)

James also has a website where you can find out more about him as a performer.
http://jameshillmusic.com  I have attended his workshops at OMEA conferences and he also runs a teacher certification program for teaching ukulele which is worth checking out.

The first phase of the creative process is INSPIRATION:

Here's a sample of some of my favourite inspiring uke videos from James Hill, Jake Shimabukuru and Walk Off the Earth:

Bucket Drumming

Buckets are a cheap and fun way to get students exploring beat and rhythm in your classroom.  You can start out informally allowing students to be creative with the buckets.  I like to teach "matched" grip right away for the sticks so students don't develop bad habits and can easily transition to playing drum kit, drumline work, etc.  I found a great resource called Bucket Music by Olivier Cutz which you can order at most educational music stores in Ontario.

He uses a method to teach students about note values that calls two eighth notes "pizza" and the quarter note, "pie", etc.  Kids really relate to this and also his notation system for the various surfaces of the buckets (centre, rim, side and stick clicks)  I've known of people who have taught his pieces by rote as well and not used the notation with students.

Here is a video of my Grade 8 students a few years ago at Gordon P.S. playing "Taiko" by Olivier Cutz.  It's a good example of 4-part ensemble playing.