Well, the chaos of Christmas is over, and a new lockdown has begun. I am trying to keep positive and appreciate all the new learning I have been doing over the last few months. Music teaching has been challenging for all of us, trying to adapt to the new regulations in school, as well as online learning. Like some of you around the world
, I am still teaching face to face in school every day, but with about 10% of each class attending virtually online (and no singing allowed), practical tasks can be challenging!
The classroom playalongs over the Christmas period were pretty popular with my students and I also had some lovely feedback from other teachers around the world - thanks to everyone for reaching out and making the world a smaller place! I don´t know about you, but I have become pretty addicted to the new craze of body percussion playalongs that are taking YouTube by storm! My students love them and they always put a smile on my face!
Recently, though, I have been wanting to try and link our learning a little more to these gems of enjoyment. I mostly teach topic-based lessons, and have been using these restrictive times to push the learning of notation in class too. With this in mind, I have created some rhythm playalongs that are a little different to others - they are notation based and quite challenging! I have started with a couple of shortened versions of Spring and Autumn by Vivaldi (as that is what we are studying in Year 3 and 4 at the moment!)
I would really WELCOME any suggestions you all have about music that you would like to have playalongs to! I am also thinking of creating "Levels of Difficulty" for each piece so there is some progression there... what are you thoughts? Let me know via email or social media!
My final note is this - we are all playing a game where the rules are constantly changing at the moment. It´s ok to celebrate the small wins of the day and accept that when you do something new for the first time, it probably won´t be great - but next time will be better. Hang in there fellow music teachers - if there is anything I can help you with, drop me a line. xx