Thanks to all who joined us last night on Zoom, May 18, 2020, to discuss the test run rollout of the modified individual lessons of the distance learning versions of the
S-Cubed Sight Singing Program for Beginners. If you'd like to be a part of our test run/review period that will run from now until mid-July, please email me at inthemiddlewithmrd@gmail.com and write "subscribe" in the subject line. We will be using email to offer 2 hour flash freebies of the new lessons followed by a few weeks of very low pricing on the various products we introduce. If you are unfamiliar with this program,
here are the details about how and why it was developed by Mr D.
Here is the recap of the ZOOM session below. And if you prefer to watch a recap on YouTube
here is the link.,
There were three objectives for the ZOOM session:
#1-To share how I originally rolled out S-Cubed and how this roll out will compare to it
#2-I introduced Mr. C, who is the person who has been working in conjunction with me to create these online versions
#3-In the final section of the webinar, I opened the Zoom up to the teachers in the meeting to share what they had been doing successfully to modify S-Cubed for the recent distance learning period we've all faced.
Our objective with this rollout is to create an "online ready to use" version of each S-Cubed lesson so you can use them for distance learning in Google Classroom and similar platforms when you aren't able to in front of your students in the group setting.
Section 1-
Original roll out and how it compares to what we are doing with
out distance version release
In 2009, I started writing a book called "S-Cubed Sight Singing Program for Beginners" to share the ideas I'd been using with my own beginners to help them to confidently and competently sight sing in the group setting. The main objectives were to incorporate FUN, competition and to reach them all...especially the ones with no background with private music lessons. S-Cubed is part philosophy and method.
I sent it to every major music publisher, and they all turned it down. It just didn't translate on paper.
In the fall of 2012, I heard about
Teachers Pay Teachers. It looked like a possible outlet that I could use to get my program out for other teachers to use. In the summer of 2013, I took a deep look at TpT so I could decide whether or not this would work. At the time, the site was mostly filled with cute printables created for elementary school teachers who needed something quick and inexpensive. My program was a curriculum. Nobody was really offering full curricula on TpT at the time, and to top it off, I wasn't very good at creating cute "anything" with technology. It wasn't my area of strength.
But I thought about it carefully, and I saw a way to make it work. I created
three free offerings to show what the program would look like and what could happen for teachers who adopted S-Cubed.
Then, during the first week of school, I created
Lesson one-The Game-Forbidden Pattern. I set my I-Phone up in the corner of my classroom on a cheap tripod so I could record myself actually teaching the program "live". Each day, I recorded video teaching tips of the that days lessons to guide the teacher, and I shared the lesson plans. I came home each day and uploaded the videos to YouTube. I grabbed the links, placed them into the Power Points, and each Friday, I uploaded a new $3 individual "week to two-week long lesson" into my TpT store.
I did that for 27 weeks as I prepared my students for adjudication so they could go into the Sight Singing room.
This is the video of those students at their assessment after I'd taught the 27 weeks of lessons of S-Cubed.
During that 27 week period, teachers were slowing finding my lessons on TpT and purchasing them one lesson at a time. They would leave feedback for me, almost always positive (THANK YOU!), and if they had something really important/constructive I needed to hear, they would email me at inthemiddlewithmrd@gmail.com to share it with me so I could make the needed corrections. Teachers were and are very kind to me, and I have greatly appreciated it. I was very nervous about sharing my work online, and my anxiety eased with each passing week.
In early April 2014, I created various "bundles" of my program.
Level ONE gets your students up to 2-part a capella sight singing with skips as wide as an octave and syncopated rhythms. I divided level one into several other smaller bundles for teachers who don't see their students daily and who don't need the whole program. As more districts began to purchase the program for their teachers, pricing increased with the demand, but I continued to offer specials and giveaways often through my TpT store, and I continue to do that today even though the program is offered on JW Pepper and other major platforms. In 2015, I created
Level TWO of the program and offered the
MEGA Bundle for those who were all in and wanted to get their students to three part SAB sight singing.
We aren't sure how long we will be doing distance learning. We hope it isn't long. The Choral Art is a group effort, but right now, we are facing the possibility of having a different set up for the fall of 2020 school year.
So, we need a distance version of the program.
Along with the help of Mr C, Mario Contreras, I will roll out the distance learning modifications in a similar way as I did before...one lesson at a time. That will occur between now and mid-July 2020. We will get as far as we can, and we will offer bundles as we add the lessons.
We hope to get reviews and feedback from you to help.
This program was always intended to be used in the group setting, and we will get back to that as life begins to return to normal sometime in the future...but for now, we need options for distance learning to keep our students engaged and learning music literacy.
Section 2
Introducing Mr C and listening to his distance learning journey with S-Cubed since March 2020
Back in March, I got an email from Mario Contreras. He has been an S-Cubed Teacher for 5 years, and he has taught middle school choral music for 9 years in Texas. When the lockdown happened, he was on Lesson 19 of S-Cubed with his students. He decided that he wanted to continue teaching S-Cubed virtually, and he made some modifications. He used "Loom" to instruct the students so his video was right there on the S-Cubed slide. It was as though he was in the room. He added some more assessments to the lessons because he was not there to visually assess his students each day. In addition, he had his students submit videos of their sight singing examples into the Google Classroom.
I loved what he was doing, and I asked if we could meet on Zoom and talk further. We did so, and we decided that we would try to offer his modified versions to teachers.
So, he created a distance learning version of
Lesson One of the program. We've begun the slow rollout! The current pricing is $5 for that lesson. If you get it now on TpT, you will have permanent access to all updates as we improve the offering based on feedback by signing into your TpT account and going to "My Purchases". The pricing will stay low through mid-July during our "test run" period.
Soon, we will make Lesson 2 available as well. We will be doing this week by week. We may have special ZOOM sessions to discuss what we are releasing, and how to improve what we have already released.
Make sure you are on my email list so you don't miss the special free offerings. (Write "subscribe" in the subject line when you email me at inthemiddlewithmrd@gmail.com). The length of time to get the lessons free will always be short...normally for 2 hours. At the same time, I will be offering my regular popular bundles at discounted rates for those 2 hours. You will always find out via email. I will post on social media too, but the algorithms of social media don't always make it the best way to see things. The things that we "find" on our feed are usually things that have gotten the most likes or comments. That is why I recommend staying on top of emails from me over the next several weeks!
Section 3
Open discussion for the teachers on the Zoom
At this point, we opened up the discussion to people who are S-Cubed Teachers and who had been modifying the program for distance learning during the recent lockdown. The most interesting idea for me personally was using
Screencastify combined with
EdPuzzle. I am not familiar with these two types of technology, but they look interesting, so we will be exploring it further.
I also used FlipGrid with my students during virtual learning, and I think it would be a great way to have students record and submit sight singing examples.
If you already use S-Cubed, perhaps you can give them a try. If you like how they interact, feel free to email me your work so we can check it out during this test period and put together the best, most engaging distance learning versions of the individual lessons of S-Cubed that we can create.
Also, personally, I know that if I am having to teach distance learning next fall, I am going to rely much more heavily on
Music Prodigy for assessment and individual sight singing practice. I have used this tool for years now, but not nearly as much as I will if we face distance learning in the fall. I love this technology because students sing directly into their phones, chromebooks or other device. It scores them automatically and immediately. You can listen to them later. You can see how long they spent working on the example. It's truly an amazing technology that will come in handy if we face a distance learning landscape. When I created S-Cubed, I created "one to one" examples specifically for Music Prodigy's platform. So technically, you could teach a sight singing lesson for your students during the day, and then at night, you could send them home to complete the Music Prodigy example that correlates exactly to the skill sets you taught that day. The notes turn yellow, red and green depending on the accuracy of the singer's rhythm and pitch. Music Prodigy is running a special through the end of May that is super economical. Unlike many programs, Music Prodigy is "one price for the full program in conjunction with S-Cubed". You don't pay for individual subscriptions per students. It is an annual subscription that is renewable.
What's next?
Over the next several weeks, we will be reaching out to S-Cubed Teachers and Non S-Cubed Teachers alike as we work to help all of us discover effective and engaging ways teaching of music literacy to the true beginner using the online platform just in case we are facing periods in the future during which choral music is taught using distance learning!
Our aim is to create a distance learning version of S-Cubed that you use and upload to your platform with ease.
