How Well Do You Know Your Students?:Relationships are the key to unlocking success
Paul Litten shares his personal experiences and bullet points ways to foster relationships with the students in your choral classroom.
Paul Litten shares his personal experiences and bullet points ways to foster relationships with the students in your choral classroom.
As you approach a lull in the school year try this "Compliment or Confession" brain break / team-building activity (as seen in the I'm a Choir Director Facebook group). This is a great way to manage your classroom between activities and build relationships within your ensemble.
This is an ear-training warm-up I recently learned from Kathy Saltzman Romey who, in turn, learned it from Jos van Veldhoven in March of 2019 at the International Bach Academy Stuttgart. It is great for helping choirs tune chords as individual voice functions change, and it's easy to teach by rote! [Ian Loeppky]
Heather Cantwell's presentation for the AVA Membership at the 2019 Fall Workshop in Montgomery, AL can be viewed at the link below. Competitions, games, trips, setting expectations, videos, and more!
When looking for team-building activities in the chorus classroom, Heather Cantwell often refers to this document by Joelle Norris.
Alabama ACDA President-Elect MELINDA S. DOYLE is Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at the University of Montevallo, where she conducts the Concert Choir, University Chorus and teaches undergraduate choral conducting and choral methods.
In his high school chorus classroom, Randall Fields integrates a student composition as a final exam activity to demonstrate his students' level of understanding of the key curricular concepts of the class. Students create their own original composition then teach it to peers using the rules from SCPA sight-reading as a guide.
Hoover High School choir director John Kincaid demonstrates a process of working with the changing voice and boys struggling to access the upper range.