Teaching Elementary Orchestra

For winter and spring concerts at my schools, we have a combined orchestra, band, and choir concert that ideally lasts about an hour.  ...

As I'm entering my ninth [edit: 14th!] year of teaching elementary orchestra, I'm starting to get a collection of beginning-of-...

Happy fall!  For this beginning-of-the-year bulletin board, a huge shout-out goes to my mom for coming up with the rhyme and to my sist...

Here is a very simple arrangement of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" that I used with my beginning orchestra last year.  Each in...

 As we near the end of the school year, I like to teach a round by ear to the second-year students.  Then in our final full orchestra r...

Throughout the school year, I take several pictures of students--during the first few weeks of school when the beginners are still plu...

Happy spring! A simple Google search for "spring music" brings up several titles, artists, and composers.  I selected a few ...

One of the strategies I use to teach the names of the notes on the staff is mnemonic devices ( Good Burritos Don't Fall Apart : bas...

Our annual district-wide String Fest is a big event for us to plan.  One part of the planning process is figuring out where each of th...