Website where students can practice reading rhythms. In one mode a rhythm is played and then the student must use the available notes to write that rhythm. In the second mode a rhythm is written and students need to select which of four audio examples sounds like what is written. This is a great resource for quick check-ins of student understanding of rhythmic notation.

Amazing resource for lesson plans, worksheets, and games to teach students about a wide variety of music topics. This website would be great for creating lesson plans for subs and would also be a great resource if you can't find printed worksheets that address theory. The games are also fun and educational, asking students to identify instruments, tempos, etc. and can act as quizzes that can be scored and printed out. Great resource!

This site has a wide variety of music games for young children. Children can learn about different instruments, create their own digital instrument and play music with and sing along with popular cartoon characters.

MuseScore is a free music notation program that is easy to use and can produce easy to read, high quality sheet music for your ensembles. The interface is similar to other notation programs that you need to pay for. I have been using MuseScore to create etudes and warmups for my ensemble classes.

This is another great, simple, web-based music sequencer that can be used to allow students to experiment with composition without needing to know anything about reading music or writing music notation. There is a large amount of sounds available and the sounds are of high quality. It is very simple to use and students can start composing right away using this site.

This simple app is great for reading notation and having students identify notes on the staff. Difficulty levels range from three notes in one clef to over 20 notes using a grand staff with accidentals. Exercises can be done in as little as 30 seconds. I think any middle or high school musician would benefit from the use of this app as a simple reminder of how to recognize pitches notated on the staff.

Quaver has a large amount of lessons available for teaching from PreK-8th grade. It is probably the most complete music teaching software resource I have found. This could be used in any general music class as well as ensembles. It is much more interactive than a textbook and the interface changes as the grade level increases so that it remains engaging for the age group.

This is a simple, free, loop based music sequencer that allows students to create short compositions. It is very simple and easy to learn and nicely shows subdivisions. The sound samples are of high quality.

J.W. Pepper is the easiest site I've used when choosing and purchasing sheet music. It is very helpful that most of the pieces allow you to hear a performance of the music you want to buy and you are able to see the scores for the pieces, this has helped me determine if my groups can play the piece before I buy it. I can see if the range is too high for trumpets, if there are a lot of string crossings for violins, etc.

There was a big shift in the music education standards in 2014. Sometimes it's difficult to remember what standards we are supposed to teach as we try to plan our curriculum around performances. Here's a quick reminder!