Digital Musicking

As a member of NAfME, you get access to numerous resources. On their website, you can find different sections for teachers, students, etc. One of the resources as a teacher you can access is the Online Professional Development for Music Educators by Music Educators. Through this, you can get over a 100 hours of professional development. This is great, especially if you don't have a lot of opportunities to do this through your school.

The NAMM foundation is another great organization for music educators. On their website, they offer different resources for educators through the Music Achievement Council. They also offer some videos with 'tips for success', which can help you advocate and support music programs, and the 'business side' of teaching music.

Resource for UF Masters in Music Education. Smartmusic is an incredible resource that can be used in the classroom to aid in individual assessment. It allows for a student to be accompanied and even record assignments to be turned into the teacher. This program greatly reduces class time spent on assessment!

SmartMusic is a great program on it's own for teaching music. But they also offer advice on other great resources, such as those on this page.

This website includes teaching materials, blogs, and more to support band directors. Some of the materials include seating chart, 'rehearsal detective' forms, and more practical forms for band directors.

This website is a collection of various resources by Wendy Higdon to assist band directors in their classrooms. Her website offers a podcast about band related topics such as recruitment and inventory. Her blog includes articles on building fundamentals and stocking the right reeds for your woodwinds. Finally she has many resources available to download such as seating chart generators, recruiting materials, and self-assessments.

This blog is written by Wendy Hart Higdon, a middle school band director who has wrote tons of articles on directing middle school bands, and has an awesome recruitment checklist on here!

Katie Wardrobe provides a brief introduction on her podcast on technology in music education and how to use these resources in the classroom.

This website is run by Katie Wardrobe, and she has great tips on how to integrate technology into teaching music. She even has a few freebies, like a free iPad course!

This blog is run by Angela Harman, who is an orchestra teacher in Utah. She has several great posts on starting beginner strings, recruitment, and even re-energizing rehearsals. She also has a book on shifting, which can be tricky to teach.

This website has a bunch of resources! They have free, downloadable files like beginning of the year checklists. They also post a lot of instrument specific articles, like proper techniques and how to teach them.

This is a great resource for teachers looking to incorporate folk songs from around the world.  The site provides audio files of the songs so that you can hear the proper pronunciation of the lyrics.  

This is a great elementary music resource for teachers looking to add folk music from around the world into their curriculum. Simple children's songs are sung in different languages

This website provides browsers with a database of songs for children from a wealth of different cultures and different languages. Recordings of songs are also provided.

Blog Post by Ryan Sargent on how to effectively lesson plan as a music teacher. Ryan gives tips on standards, objectives and assessment music teachers can use to become more effective lesson planners.

This official website for the Gordon Music Learning Theory provides many core principles and philosophies centered around this theory, professional development opportunities, and accessible links for music teachers to join an area chapter.

Being a first-year teacher is, as I'm sure we all know, daunting and overwhelming, especially for those of us who seek to be the best that we can be for our students. Nonetheless, educator Jim Matthews provides his audience with a concise list of eight habits exhibited by several highly effective band directors, which includes but is not limited to having ensembles play long tones, engage in breathing exercises, and participate in warm-up routines that are both effective and efficient. By adopting each of these eight habits, Matthews is certain that every year of teaching will be nothing short of productive and rewarding.

This website has online piano lessons and suggestions for jazz listening.

Fun website that allows you to play the drums using the keys on your keyboard- this would be a great way to introduce students to creating rhythms and patterns.

From the Top is an NPR program that features kids who have achieved an extremely high level of performance. There are many videos of student performances. It could be great for students to see kids their age performing advanced music.

From the Top is the video series that highlights young performers. This website houses the more recent streaming videos, sharing the performers' stories and their performances on the stage. These videos are great resources for the classroom as they highlight young performers on all instruments and a variety of genres. See specifically PBS's section on From the Top for earlier seasons and lesson plans.

This website is sponsored by the PBR. You have access to videos and podcasts about classical music and many other music topics. This would be a great resource for middle school and high student performers.

PBS Kids has a ton of music games great for use with the early elementary level. These games are great to reinforce concepts being taught in the general elementary classroom.

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.

Several games that relate to elementary music learning that kids will love to play. These games are perfect as a time filler, or as part of a lesson. These games are best for young (K5-1) students.

Classroom noise level meter. Not only great for elementary classrooms but allows junior high ensembles to visualize the differences in their dynamics.

TeachRock is an online educational resource presented by Steven Van Zandt's Rock and Roll Forever Foundation and offered free-of-charge to educators and individuals everywhere. Interdisciplinary in nature, TeachRock is geared toward middle and high school students but includes resources for learning at all levels.

A resource including lesson plans, music and video clips, and more for teaching styles and history of rock and roll music.

This website has a wide variety of resources such as sheet music, lesson plans, composer biographies written with elementary level vocabulary, music theory worksheets, and much more. This website is geared toward elementary music but could also be useful in some middle school applications.

This website offers various music resources for download, such as sheet music, theory worksheets, composer biographies, and music award certificates. It is mainly for younger aged children, but can also be used for middle schoolers.

A fabulous resource for eye-catching, student-engaging music worksheets that ask students to think critically about music concepts. A variety of topics are covered.

A comprehensive list of podcasts for music educators looking to learn on the go!