Digital Musicking

Carnegie Hall provides music educators with resources to use with students in K-5. There are various activities, exercises, class games, and assessments that incorporate songs, instruments, and various styles of music. Some concepts taught include rhythm, meter, form, pitch, expressive qualities, and overall performance. Activities and resources are categorized by appropriate grade levels. This website also links to other educational resources, programs, and opportunities that music educators can utilize to benefit themselves and their music students.

Music Teacher Tools & Resources is a resource for teachers in grades K-5 and includes lesson plans, assessments, listening examples, activities, and videos. The resources also integrate the elements of music with engaging activities. A wonderful resource to use and/or complement any lesson.

The purpose of this website is to provide music educators with tools that address music fundamentals. The site also had digital music learning options that provide professional development for educators as well as connect students to diverse musical communities. The resource provides unique learning opportunities for elementary students.

This is a fun listening game in the form of Tetris. This game is designed to enhance the audiation skills in students by helping them identify instruments based on their unique sounds. There are three levels of difficulty for students to play. Each instrument that descends is accompanied by its innate musical sound. In the first level, students must match instruments according to their family. In the second level, students must match instruments with identical instruments. On the third level, the most challenging level, students must match instruments with identical instruments, but the icon of each instrument is blacked out. In other words, students must rely solely on their ears to hear and categorize each instrument's unique sound.

This website offers worksheets, games, and tutorial videos for teachers to use with their younger piano students (K-6 to) to enhance student engagement and understanding. Some basic theory is taught in the form of colorful dittos for students, and other theory or technique is taught by game-based worksheets. There are a number of resources to accommodate major holidays and calendar events as well. There are many link that branch off into different other sites to facilitate the sharing of ideas with other educators. Videos are also included to demonstrate how various games and lessons should be structured for maximum efficiency.

This website was created by Jon F. Mueller, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at North Central College in Illinois. Mueller discusses the differences between traditional assessment and authentic assessment - two different concepts that have different long-term goals and outcomes for students. Mueller, a strong advocate for authentic assessment, provides various examples to illustrate the pros and cons of both methods of assessment at different levels and fields of education, while providing data and research to support his stance. Mueller also provides information and structured examples on how educators can incorporate authentic assessment (in many forms) in their classrooms.

A website to help create and utilize musical assessments. A teacher can learn about new assessments, compare state and national music standards, and learn about the most up-to-date musical research.

This site provides several useful resources for educators. It is an authentic assessment toolbox filled with tips to help teachers create rubrics, include standards in their assignments, and examples of assessments to use.

Songfacts is a website that enables educators and students to learn the historical background of artists and their songs. There is a search engine that allows for an easy look-up of any artist, and accompanying this search is a timeline of major events, a brief history of the artist's life, and insight that the general public may not know about the artist. There is also research and insight about individual songs that the artist released or collaborated on. Songfacts can be a great resource to give more context about music that students are learning to in and out of class. It can engage students in listening to music more actively if they are intrigued about the artist's life, struggles, achievements, vision, and motivation for creation.

This is an entertaining and educational video from Ted Talk. Famous singer and songwriter Bobby McFerrin uses the crowd to improvise a pentatonic scale. This is only a small clip from the event "Notes and Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus" from the World Science Festival.

Launchpad Arcade is a great tool to introduce students to composing music. It has a variety of sounds and loops, and allows for a lot of artistic freedom. Using this for a composition could allow for as much or as little structure as you wish.

Provides worksheets and activities for multiple grade levels and abilities. Activities include: sheet music, music theory, composers, naming notes, and much more. Activities are very accessible for elementary students.

Resources for grades K-5, involving age-appropriate lessons and ideas. Ideas center around pitch, form, dynamics, rhythms, meter, performing, singing, tempo, meter, etc.

Carnegie Hall has a great resource for music educators who teach K-5th grade general music. They list the activities by grade, and even tell you what you can use each resource for (i.e. teaching rhythm, meter, singing, etc.).

The Carnegie Hall Education page for Educators provides teaching resources to teachers. They provide lesson plans, meeting certain standards, for grades K-5. These lesson plans cover everything from the basics to composition to improvisation with Brazilian Sama

Hands-on games and activities for General Music Classrooms. Variety of games including teams, movement, worksheets, bucket drumming, scavenger hunts, and musical chairs.

Smartboard ideas, templates, and games for the music classroom. Many are ready to use, and others you are able to edit to fit your content/classroom.

Garageband lesson plan/ideas for middle to high school students. Can be adapted to specific needs, but is very well done with a lot of information, including plan outlines, scoring, assessments, and rubrics.

Todd Meehan is a Associate Professor at Baylor University. His blog includes his many percussion video blogs (vlogs). Many of these are humorous videos for percussionists.

Steve Weiss is my go-to when buying percussion equipment. This page in particular is a guide to help music directors purchase high-quality percussion instruments if you don't know much or anything about percussion. The list also is split between elementary, middle school, and high school to ensure that you get appropriate instruments for the playing level and budget.

The Cleveland Orchestra's Education & Community website includes learning/teaching opportunities for families, educators, and adults, and has performance opportunities for youth. This is a well-developed webpage that engages youth to adults.

The Innovative Percussion, Inc. website identifies stick and mallet purchase options for middle and high school band directors. The website additionally includes several websites on various percussion related topics, such as "Reading on Keyboard Percussion," "Brazilian Percussion," "Developing Your Technical Skills," and others.

The GF Percussion website is a good website for percussion technique exercises. Some include Stick Control (an essential book for percussionists) and other pad and drum set exercises.

MusicTech is music technology (music production) website that shows and details all new and reviewed music technologies. Besides articles and reviews, there is a great Tutorials page that includes DAW how-to and interviews.

The All-Star Orchestra, which is made up of "All-Stars" from various orchestras, produced content for Khan Academy. There is a wide-range of videos to watch from notes and rhythms, music history, conducting lessons, instrument demonstrations. This is a fantastic series with top musicians.

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