Getting Started With Middle School Chorus

Getting Started with Middle School Chorus is designed to help you get started in a new position. As you approach your new experience, you may be filled with anticipation and, perhaps, feel some anxiety at the same time. This book is here to point you in the right directions. There is enough specific information here to “get you started” and on your way! The third edition of Getting Started with Middle School Chorus is thoroughly grounded in research and incorporates new information about working with young adolescent changing voices, designing optimal rehearsals for middle-schoolers, managing growing choral programs, and helping youngsters gain musical skills they can carry with them for a lifetime of making music. Getting Started with Middle School Chorus provides strategies to build your confidence as you take on the new responsibilities associated with teaching middle school chorus.

Whether you're new to working with middle school choirs or seeking advice on improving your effectiveness, you'll appreciate the useful hands-on strategies in The First Weeks of Middle School Chorus. Implement Freer's specific, ready-to-use tips immediately in your rehearsals. He reminds you of things you've forgotten, prompts you to reframe what you already do, and encourages you to try new approaches. Organized in lists for easy reference, the book takes you through the first weeks of school and covers setting up your classroom, choral activities for day one and beyond, repertoire for the first weeks, warm-ups for changing voices, rehearsal strategies, placing students into groups and voice parts, and resources. Readers who find TIPS: The First Weeks of Middle School Chorus helpful may want to consult Freer's Getting Started with Middle School Chorus, Second Edition for more detailed information about the tips, strategies, and techniques found in this practical guide.

Choral Music: A Research and Information Guide, Third Edition, offers a comprehensive guide to the literature on choral music in the Western tradition. Clearly annotated bibliographic entries guide readers to resources on key topics within choral music, individual choral composers, regional and sacred choral traditions, choral techniques, choral music education, genre studies, and more, providing an essential reference for researchers and practitioners. Covering monographs, bibliographies, selected dissertations, reference works, journals, electronic databases, and websites, this research guide makes it easy to locate relevant sources. Comprehensive indices of authors, titles, and subjects keep the volume user-friendly. The new edition has been brought up to date with entries encompassing the latest scholarship, and updated references and annotations throughout, capturing the continued growth of literature on choral music since the publication of the second edition.

Growing Musicians: Teaching Music in Middle School and Beyond focuses on teaching adolescents within the context of a music classroom, regardless of content area (orchestra, band, choir, or general music). It provides a look at the importance of music courses in the lives of adolescents as they navigate the path between being a child and an adult. As every music student is completely unique, there is no one-size-fits-all prescriptive way of working with this age group. Rather, music educators must approach adolescents with high musical standards and aspirations to learn and achieve within music; a willingness to honor the individuality of each adolescent musician; a sense of structure, but an ability to be flexible; a desire to foster and promote a safe classroom environment where students feel empowered to be themselves and speak openly about what they think and believe; an understanding that music classes are not only safe places where students learn how to become better musicians but also better people through musical experiences focused on humanity and empathy; and a dose of humor, or at least the ability to acknowledge that adolescents are extremely funny whether or not they realize it. In addition, this book encourages pre-service and practicing music educators to mindfully examine and better understand their own teaching practices.

As the landscape of choral education changes - disrupted by Glee, YouTube, and increasingly cheap audio production software - teachers of choral conducting need current research in the field that charts scholarly paths through contemporary debates and sets an agenda for new critical thought and practice. Where, in the digitizing world, is the field of choral pedagogy moving? Editor Frank Abrahams and Paul D. Head, both experienced choral conductors and teachers, offer here a comprehensive handbook of newly-commissioned chapters that provide key scholarly-critical perspectives on teaching and learning in the field of choral music, written by academic scholars and researchers in tandem with active choral conductors. As chapters in this book demonstrate, choral pedagogy encompasses everything from conductors' gestures to the administrative management of the choir. The contributors to The Oxford Handbook of Choral Pedagogy address the full range of issues in contemporary choral pedagogy, from repertoire to voice science to the social and political aspects of choral singing. They also cover the construction of a choral singer's personal identity, the gendering of choral ensembles, social justice in choral education, and the role of the choral art in society more generally. Included scholarship focuses on both the United States and international perspectives in five sections that address traditional paradigms of the field and challenges to them; critical case studies on teaching and conducting specific populations (such as international, school, or barbershop choirs); the pedagogical functions of repertoire; teaching as a way to construct identity; and new scholarly methodologies in pedagogy and the voice.

"The Oxford Guide to Choral Artistry, a Kodály Perspective for Middle School to College Level Choirs, is a practical and organic approach to teaching choral singing and sight-reading. The text is grounded in current research from choral pedagogy, music theory, music perception, and cognition. Topics include framing a 1) choral curriculum based on the Kodály concept, 2) launching the academic year for beginning, intermediate, and advanced choirs, 3) building part-work skills, 4) sight-reading, 5) a progressive music theory sequences for middle to college level choirs, 6) teaching strategies, 7) choral rehearsal plans as well samples of how to teach specific repertoire from Medieval to Contemporary Choral Composers. As part of the Kodály philosophy's practical approach, we include two models for learning choral literature. The first is a "Performance Through Sound Analysis" model for understanding Commercial, Global Folks, and arrangement. The second is a "Performance Through Sound Analysis and Notation" model for learning classical music and recently composed music. Both models delineate an approach to teaching a choral work that significantly improves students' musicianship while at the same time, engages the ensemble in learning the overall composition in partnership with the conductor. The final chapter of the book includes rubrics to assess the effectiveness of a choral program. This book does not purport to be a comprehensive choral pedagogy text. It is a detailed guide to helping choral directors at all levels improve the choral singing and musicianship of their students from a Kodály perspective. We hope that this book serves as a resource for choral directors and inspire further conversations and dialogue concerning the application of the Kodály perspective to choral singing. The research for these publications is not presented as exhaustive nor conclusive; it is offered as a foundation. We encourage our colleagues in the field to continue to add to this research"--

This is an essential text on an important area of the music curriculum consistently judged weak or inadequate by school inspectors in Britain. It covers social, physiological, musical, and pedagogical aspects of young adolescent singing, with focus on Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14) and the progression from primary school. Grounded in extensive research and authoritatively written, it uses case studies to illustrate best practice, and introduces the principles of cambiata, a dedicated approach to the adolescent voice. Other chapters contain practical and proven advice on repertoire, technique, and the motivation of reluctant singers, boosting the confidence of teachers for whom choral work is not the main specialism.

With the popularity of Glee, many students are asking themselves, "How can I start a glee club at my school?" With this come other pertinent questions: how do you decide what songs to perform, how do you find singers and musicians who can put on a good performance, and many others. This volume, in the Glee Club series, answers these questions and more. Readers will be well on their way to forming their own glee club with this fun and engaging guide to all things glee club.