Sheet Music, Teaching Ideas, and More
The reason I keep this blog is because I myself can’t remember what I did from one week to the next. I had to go back and read my own past blog posts even to have a clue about this one. Here’s what we did in June:
Week 1: We practiced intervals with Interval Ice Cream.
Week 2: We practiced rhythms with Whiteboard Rhythm Dictation.
Week 3: We played the Catch My Mistake Sight Reading Game. Amazingly, I lost every time.
Week 4: We composed with Chromatic Composition.
It was time for a little chromaticism this week. We composed with this worksheet I worked up and all the students enjoyed it eventually, though some of them gave me some doubtful looks at the beginning.
The basic instructions are all on the worksheet. The only variations I did were to what rhythm I gave them for the right hand. Beginners got only quarter notes and half notes. Older students got something more advanced. For the most part, I did all the writing and most of the playing. I find that for most students the actual writing and playing is so difficult, it gets in the way of their free composing and ruins the creativity of the experience.
Other variations would include having the more advanced students continue on with more measures. Or transposing it to another key.
Lori Davis Studio 