Connecting to Other People's Teaching Techniques!

Kids don't come with a manual. Whether you are a parent, teacher, or kid yourself, everyone realizes that fact at some point in life. In the teaching world, the best thing that you can do is build a network of resources. What better resource than other teachers that have creativity or experience in a particular field? I happen to love music and have taught it for years. After a bit of searching I found http://www.pitchhill.com/blog and fell in love. This blog created by Shelley Tomich does a great job of showing different teaching techniques for teaching singing based on the Solfége system.

There were a number of aspects of this blog that were especially helpful and user-friendly. First of all the Shelley categorized her posts based on grade and topic. So if I am looking for ideas specifically for 1st grade, I can go directly there. Alternately, if I want specific tips on teaching tempo or pitch, there are similar links for that as well.

Another neat aspect of this website is that she does not assume prior music knowledge of the viewer. She incorporates numerous images to illustrate her teaching techniques and even provides a video to demonstrate for the reader her "Cup and Rhythm Stick Activity". You can tell from this picture of her classroom that Shelley is passionate about what she does!