Team Building is so Important.... and Successfully Introducing New Music to your Middle School Singers

Calling ALL middle school teachers...not just chorus teachers!

Team Building Activities at the start of the year really help you learn about your middle school students, help them learn about you and each other creating connections from the start. The old saying "They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care" really applies to this age group.

When middle school students feel connected to you and to the other students in the class, they work so hard for you and for you class. Your class will be the safe, fun space they can't wait to get to daily if you take the time to build the relationships.

In this 17 page Google Slide presentation, you will get 10 games that you can use with your students. Several of them are perfect for the start of the year, and some can be used later and one of them is ongoing. The idea is to start strong connections early in the year and to keep them throughout the year. In this product, you will get games that will do all of those things.

Click here to see the product on TpT.

Some of the most common things I see posted on social media in I Teach Middle School! Facebook page are-

1). How do you introduce new music?

2). Why can't they follow an octavo? (Because we haven't taught it!)

3). Why can't they hold their parts? (Because we didn't teach carefully...habits are hard to break).

In this new product, I share an unlisted video I made just for this in which I take you through step by step, day by day how I introduced and taught a song to my beginners. It's me sitting at the piano in my living room talking you through the process.

I also give you some rehearsal techniques to use that allow you to give them the repetition they need to get the parts ingrained and to avoid having your altos sing soprano or having the baritones sing the soprano part one octave down. I share some reasons why students struggle at certain moments in the song with pitches...things you may not have thought about.

Successfully Introducing New Songs to your Middle School Singers