Category: Teaching Strategies

Reminding students to loosen their bows

Do your students ever forget to loosen their bows? No? Mine neither! Ha ha, yeah right!! I’ve found that creative posters and memes can help students to remember to do this very important task. Below is a small flyer/poster I made for my classroom. Feel free to download and print...

Fingerboard Geography

It’s quite fascinating how many students play without knowing much about the geography of their fingerboard. Lack of this knowledge causes students to make note errors and can often lead to frustration. The analogy I provide to my students is for them to imagine that they are going on a...

Bow Warm-Ups 2.0

It has been 11 years since I recorded the first bow warm-ups video in my fifth-grade class in Hilliard, Ohio.  That video was filmed spontaneously on an older low-resolution cell phone in class by a student volunteer.  The backing tracks were played live on a little Bose SoundDock Portable speaker....

Back to School 2020: More resources coming your way!

It is an unprecedented time in our world’s history, with COVID-19 shutting down schools last spring and creating some difficult decisions for school adminstrators this fall. Many schools are going back to school virtually and will be making plans to bring students back face to face when conditions allow. Some...

Teaching Music in the Virtual World

With the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic, most schools shut down in March of 2020. Overnight and without warning, teachers were expected to step up and create a completely brand new way of delivering their instruction. Most secondary school-based courses, such as band, chorus, and orchestra heavily rely on the ability to...

Podcast Episodes on Distance Learning

Hello everyone! As we navigate through these uncertain times, I have seen so many music educators pull together in an effort to provide our students with the best experience possible. While distance learning will never replace face-to-face instruction, we should all feel fortunate that we have the technology that affords...

ASTA 2020 Sessions

Attending the ASTA conference is always one of my favorites mostly because of the amazing people I get to interact with. I am able to catch up with friends who I haven’t seen in a long time and have meaningful conversations with them. In addition, I always meet new people...

Making Practice Videos for Your Students

I have a few sections within my orchestras where students need some extra help, so I’ve decided to make a few “play along” videos for them to view (and listen) that may help them practice at home. I recorded these in class, during rehearsal with a metronome at a slower-than-performance...

GMEA 2020 Session Information

I love the opportunity to gather with friends and colleagues from my state. Even though we are relatively close geographically, there is never enough time to get together and get into a deep discussion about what we are all doing. Attending GMEA allows this to happen! It’s fantastic to meet...

Color-coded finger patterns

The Bornoff finger patterns are an important part of my teaching as they help students visualize patterns of half steps and whole steps and chunk information into a single unit. Another wonderful thing about them is that they are transposable and can be used in any position on the fingerboard....