http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw&feature=player_embedded

Here is John talking about augmented reality and the first music video to use the new technology:

Hello music ed blogging community. I have the opportunity to speak to several wonderful music volunteers this next weekend. They are mostly high school aged music students who will be tutoring with Seattle Music Partners, a non-profit that provides after-school music lessons to underserved elementary and middle school students in Seattle’s Central District.

I have 30 minutes to give them some tips about how 4th-6th grade instrumental students, mostly beginners, can be successful. I plan to talk about-

• What you can expect when teaching beginners- their developmental abilities.
• How to structure an hour long lesson
• Practice tips
• Ways to keep beginners motivated between lessons
• Resources for teaching (books, websites, games, etc)

I would be grateful for your input on any of these items. Leave a comment and I’ll be sure to give you credit in my notes. Any “this has worked for me” gems you can provide to help and inspire these wonderful volunteers.

I will also make my presentation available in a future blog post. Thank you blogging colleagues! I look forward to your ideas.

But before I begin this review, in light of the recent FCC ruling that bloggers must disclose payments for reviews, I would like to make the following disclosure about this review:

Music is Not for Insects in no way received compensation or a “freebie” from Roland for this favorable review. Even though the blog owner wished he would have received some free stuff from Roland, perhaps a shout out or even a keychain, this review of the Roland RMP 5 Rhythm Coach was made out of my own experience (and sweet frustration) using this awesome tool for percussion students.

Ok- now that is out of the way, let me tell you about my experience with this cool rhythm tool I will be using with my percussion students.

NOT AN ELECTRONIC RUBBER DRUM HEAD

As you can see from the photo, this is an electronic snare drum with a mesh drum head that triggers an electronic drum sound when you hit it with your drum sticks. Not a new idea- electronic drum kits have been around awhile, but the feel of the drum head is really great and you can adjust the tension on the drum head to get the right feel for your students. As with most electronic drums, you can adjust the volume, the type of drum sound (snare, tom, cymbal) and output the sound to headphones or a powered speaker or PA via an external jack. But the cool part of this rhythm task master is the Coach mode.

ACCURACY IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT

Want your percussion students to focus on proper technique and accuracy? Set the RMP5 to “Coach Mode-Accuracy Score” and you can create exercises for your students that will kick their rhythmic behinds. Here is how it works:

1. Set your metronome to desired BPM.
2. Select Coach Mode-Accuracy Score.
3. Wait for the 2 measure count off.
4. Try to play exactly with the metronome.
5. The rhythm coach will show if you are behind, dead-on or ahead of the beat on the built in display.
6. After a pre-determined amount of measures, you receive an accuracy score of how well you played.

Immediate feedback in the form of a percentage of hits right on the beat will be displayed after you play. Sounds easy? It took me 15-20 minutes of constant focus and concentration to get a perfect score playing simple quarters notes at 120 BPM! I nearly cried…but I did it! And took a picture to prove it (see Roland video below to watch coach mode in action):

Imagine how your kids will respond to the challenge. I found myself standing taller, focusing on my matched grip technique and making sure my strokes were the same height to get that perfect score.

SMOOTH OUT THOSE STROKES

There is also a “stroke balance” feature that will give you a visual cue as to how even the weight of your strokes are…get rid of that galop sound in those double stroke rolls and paradiddles. There is also a feature where you get a count off and you play through a cycle of half, quarter, eighth, triplet and sixteenth note patterns. Step it up to 6, 7, and 8 group patterns and you can really get your chops cooking. Price? Not cheap…about $250 on the street but I think it will be a valuable resource for my students.

HOW WILL I USE THIS IN MY INSTRUMENTAL CLASSROOM

I’m hoping to have this set up in a corner of my room and have my drummers rotate through using the Rhythm Coach during rehearsals. With a pair of headphones to keep the noise down, and one eye on them to make sure they don’t abuse the equipment, I expect this to be a valuable tool for my drummers. I will have them keep track of their accuracy scores and develop some friendly competition within the section. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Coach Mode-accuracy score video

Several of you responded with some great ideas (see below) and I want to share with you a tool I use to help me organize my general music classes. The example below is for a 1st grade general music class, but you could adapt this for any music class:

I like this form because it has 3 essential sections:

1. What is this course about? Can you answer that question clearly in the area provided?
2. Course Questions. Student accountability questions that begin with “Can you…identify, sing, play, etc.”
3. Course Standards. Question you will be held accountable for as the teacher- “What are the students supposed to learn? How will we know they’ve learned it?” And Value-weight given to each measure.

Wrap that all up in a nice looking graphical design, and you have a course organizer that works for me. You can see more examples from other classes and download some more course organizers here. If you use these in a workshop, presentation or blog post, please trackback or link back to my blog.

YOUR GREAT IDEAS FOR PLANNING

# Msgallanton

I am an elementary school music teacher (Grades 1-6). I’m beginning my second year of teaching next month, and this method of planning was hugely helpful to me in my first year of teaching, when I needed lots of structure to get me through:

I created a binder for each grade, each with 10 index dividers inside. I labeled the dividers for each month, and on each divider, I stuck a post-it note with a list of the major concepts/songs to be covered for the month. This way I can reuse the dividers in future years, but I can easily update/change my monthly plan with a new post-it note.

For each month, I insert photocopies of songs (so that I can write my notes all over them), copies of worksheets or handouts, note pages, pictures, etc. in the order that I want to teach each song or concept. My school uses “Share the Music” as our main resource, but we are not expected to teach it page-by-page. By using the binder method, I’ve given myself the opportunity to photocopy pages from Share the Music and other resources (I love “An Orff Mosaic from Canada” as well). This saves me from searching for songs mid-year in my stack of song books. I have it all at my fingertips! Using a three-ring binder is also beneficial because it allows for easy insertion and removal of songs and ideas.

Hope this is helpful!

# Paul Schernitzkion

Ken,

Is is time to prep already? While I have a thousand things to organize for the school year, I am really getting a handle on lesson plans. I’ve noticed a lot of classroom teachers don’t realize that elementary music teachers really make their own lesson plans, usually pieced together from various sources.

I may be one of the few music teachers who actually does this, but, I do write (on the computer) a lesson for every class, every grade. K-5 sees me once a week, it usually amount to about 30 lessons a year. 30 lessons for each grade amounts to 180 lessons plans.

Back in school when I was learning how to teach I remember teachers having us write long, detailed lesson plans – “Teacher says this, students do this,” etc. My lesson plans aren’t that detailed because a lot that info I carry with me.

The lessons are based on the Washington state EALRs, that’s where I get my lesson topics. On each plan I have a space for what supplies I will need for the lesson (elementary music sometimes requires a lot of stuff), tech stuff I need turned on or files I need pulled up, and usually a list between 5 and 8 things to do that enforce the topic. At the bottom is a place for evaluation – things that worked or didn’t, maybe a class didn’t get everything done, students who had behavior trouble, etc.

Since this is my 4th year with these plans I have tweaked them each year on the computer, and always add new things (usually to the intermediate grades).

This year all I had to do was look at each one, tweak on the computer, and print the new ones off. When the year starts I put each grade level’s plans in a folder and put last years plans in them as well. For example, the first grade folder this year has last year’s K plans in it so I can see what I did with them last year. This works great because a lot of the EALRs build on concepts throughout students’ elementary music careers. I can always say, “remember back when we sang ________? Then we sang it faster and slower? Today we are going to add names to when music is played fast or slow.”

Being this organized takes a lot of time up front, but it sure pays off during the year.

Now, back to school year planning!

-Paul

# Brandt Schneideron

Oh boy, I am jumping into a new program and I have no idea what I am going to be doing. There is room to grow here.

Week 1: Assess, assess, assess.
Week 2: Plan for year.

I always plan back from the concerts and how many minutes I think I need for each song. Then I build in the lessons on reading, ear training, etc…

But this year…who knows?

So if your school library has been updated with all of the books catalogged on an electronic database, ask your librarian what will happen to the old card catalog…