10 Tips to Make Teaching Music to Children More Effective
Teaching music to children can be challenging, especially when your pupils struggle to grasp new concepts. Do you tire of using the same teaching materials repeatedly because you have to follow the curriculum?
Teaching the same topics year in year out can become tedious. It is all too easy for this monotonous feeling to be accidentally passed on to students.
Fortunately, you are not alone!
We have plenty of resources and methods out there for teachers to help kids understand music better. Maybe your students are struggling because they haven’t become interested in studying music. Perhaps they want to learn but find the materials and concepts too difficult to understand.
Either way, there are techniques and strategies that you can use. These ideas will help students find their desire to learn and increase their ability to understand your music lessons.
In this article we present ten tips to make teaching music to kids more effective.
What You'll Learn?
- 1. Let your positive attitude shine through.
- 2. Incorporate practical engagement.
- 3. Keep boredom at bay by using a variety of tasks.
- 4. Teach music your students like and can relate to.
- 5. Technology is the twenty-first-century teacher’s best friend.
- 6. Encourage your pupils to interact with each other.
- 7. Be aware of your students’ differing skill levels.
- 8. Creativity is a powerful teaching tool.
- 9. Perform to an online audience.
- 10. Teaching music through games is more fun!
1. Let your positive attitude shine through.
Every music class is different and the constant planning can be overwhelming. Many teachers complain that they feel like they spend as much time planning as they do actually teaching! But this planning pays off and can make your teaching far more effective. Having a good strategy for planning – planning your planning, if you like – means that your time isn’t wasted. Treat your planning time as time for your own inspiration to come through. You will feel proud of your plans and putting them into action in the classroom will give you pleasure.
If you’ve spent time on your lesson plan and feel well-prepared then I’m sure you are excited about teaching the class. As teachers, we feel happy when we can see our carefully thought-out plans coming into fruition. Let your positive attitude and excited feeling show. Your students will pick up on your mood and learn even more than usual.
TeachHub suggests taking this a step further and going beyond individual lesson plans. The website explains that
"teachers who had a plan, not just for their classrooms but for their personal life and profession, often had greater success with their students"
Having your own plan means you can connect with students. You can meet them on the learning journey, spreading the positivity of having direction and goals. Careful planning means you can develop a positive attitude towards your teaching career. This will be automatically passed on to students in class.
2. Incorporate practical engagement.
Music is best learnt by doing, not by reading and writing. Make your lessons active and add to some energy to them! Even if you are teaching music theory there are ways to include practical activities. For younger children, games such as Magic Feet Follow the Beat present important elements of music theory in a fun way. This makes new words easy to learn.
If you think back to your own time as a school pupil, I’m sure some of your most memorable classes were where you were not just sitting there. You weren't staring at the pages of a textbook or copying notes down from the board. The classes where you had to move around and do something are more likely to stick in your head.
This is great for music teachers because it’s so easy for us to incorporate physical movements and activities into our lessons.
- Clapping out rhythms and singing are simple ways to get moving without any specialist equipment needed.
- Combining listening with making music is a great way to make the connection between aural and kinaesthetic learning processes.
Using one’s body to play an instrument can make learning so much easier as the physical act of doing helps your students to commit the lesson to memory. Remember that even in school, to learn music you must play music, not just talk about it.
3. Keep boredom at bay by using a variety of tasks.
There isn’t much shorter than the attention span of a child today. New technologies are making it easier for us to read and learn in short bursts. It is getting harder for young people to focus on one topic or task for a long period of time. Fit your lessons to your students’ concentration levels.
Mindchamps explains that kids can become overwhelmed when presented with a string of tasks. This makes them get bored and give up. Luckily, it is easy to avoid this scenario in your classroom.
Don't build each lesson around a single lengthy task. Break it down into short activities each lasting 5 to 15 minutes depending on the age group of your students. Teaching kids music can be done through singing, playing instruments, and listening to music. Writing lyrics or composing pieces, and learning about musicians and composers are other great ways to learn. You should mix up activities including
- listening,
- playing instruments,
- reading,
- writing,
- composing.
Each brings a different feel to your classroom, meaning students are less likely to get bored. Within each larger topic, plan to include a variety of short tasks and activities. Keep an active atmosphere in the classroom. Match the speed of each task to the age group of your students, or to each individual student where possible.
4. Teach music your students like and can relate to.
Engage your students instantly by teaching them their favorite songs or genres. All kinds of music can be valuable resources for teaching and learning. There is no need to stick to the genres that have traditionally been associated with music lessons, such as classical and baroque music.
Our music teaching app Solfeg.io has a massive song library where you can find music that will appeal to your students. Use Solfeg.io to break the music down and choose specific musical elements to teach to your students. Perhaps the chord progressions, rhythm, or melodic patterns would make a good lesson, and one the students are sure to remember.
Teaching teenagers? How about a rap song by one of their favorite artists? Ask them about the music they enjoy to find out what is current and popular in their community. For younger children, you could use nursery rhymes or even theme tunes for their favourite TV programmes. Imagine the look of recognition and surprise on their faces when you suddenly play them their favourite song!
5. Technology is the twenty-first-century teacher’s best friend.
Today’s kids are digital natives, and today’s tech is a great resource for education, like this article you are probably reading on a screen right now. Music is the perfect subject for using new technology in the classroom, and clever use of tech can make your teaching far more effective.
Use apps and YouTube or other video sites. Sometimes watching a video can make a lesson more memorable than listening to the same piece of music without a video. Showing videos of live performances is a great way to teach your students about how instruments are played. It is also a good way to see famous artists performing.