About My Sight Singing and Sight Reading Program!

S-Cubed!  Successful Sight Singing for Middle School Teachers and their Students!  #scubed #sightsinging

First and foremost, I recommend that you read what real middle school, elementary and high school teachers in classrooms all over the world.

Here is what they are saying!

Simply "google" Middle School Sight Singing to discover all of my free and paid resources for teaching middle school beginners to sight sing in an engaging way that works!

Link directly to my lessons on TPT where you will find very detailed product descriptions with links from one lesson to the next.

Want to add Music Prodigy Practice and Assessment Program to supplement your daily S-Cubed lessons so your children can sing directly into their computers/laptops/smartphones and work to improve upon what you've taught with S-Cubed?  Click here!

Link Directly to My YouTube Channel with lots of Teaching Tips and Teaching Examples.

Come be a part of my Facebook "LIVE" learning sessions!  It's an ongoing continuing education class!  Click here and "like" or "follow" my page!  Click here to join thousands of other middle school teachers on our Facebook Page "I Teach Middle School Chorus!".  On that page, we keep it positive and support each other.  We are all on the same team.  

Link to a video description of S-Cubed!

The Philosophy:

Recognize what the children don't know.  Don't fault them for not knowing it.  Then, teach it to them in a way they will remember forever...  That is the philosophy of S-Cubed:  Successful Sight Singing for Middle School Teachers and their Students!  ...How to teach Sight Singing to Middle School Beginners...

With S-Cubed!, I have aimed to create a way for teachers to improve how they 

teach sight singing to their upper elementary and middle school students using

21st Century Technology.   I believe that text books have served their purpose.

They certainly helped me in my development as a teacher, and I respect the 

work that went into the creation of each and every one of them.  But now, in the

21st century, I think it is time to help struggling teachers using all of the 

technologies that are available at our finger tips.  I wanted to create a learning 

tool that people could use from their phones as well as their work computers!  

I filled this system with downloadable, ready-to-use reusable lesson plans,

sight singing examples and rhythm exercises that are complete with direct links

   
to video teaching tips for each lesson and video teaching examples of me 

teaching the lesson.  I included the teaching examples because throughout my 

early career, I always wanted to go into the classrooms of teachers and watch 

them teach.    S-Cubed is a two-year long workshop with lesson plans included,

however, it can be purchased in smaller chunks is you don't see your children 

very often.

I use S-Cubed myself in my own classroom and it works wonders 

with beginners.  It's a philosophy and a method wrapped together.  In the 

lessons, I have revealed every secret I've learned as I have taught mostly 

beginners over the last 20-plus years I've taught public school.  I needed 

something more than a textbook when I started teaching, and I wanted to 

supply teachers with something more when I created this program. 

When I started teaching middle school students how to sight sing music, all I 

remember is the moans and the failures.

I would say "Pull out the Sight Singing books".  They would moan.

They would begin singing a Sight Singing example and by measure two, they 

completely stopped singing and stared at me.

It was horrible.

I looked everywhere for a program that would solve this horrible daily 

experience.  Nothing that I found worked.  The elementary methods were 

mostly fun-filled activities and games, but were vastly inadequate.  Every single

method for middle school that I found moved too fast for this age group and 

none of them taught me how to teach them the enormous variety of skills they

needed to become as fluent as I wanted them to be.   It was as though they

assumed the children who walked in the door of your classroom either took 

private lessons or went to elementary school at a special music school.

I needed something that combined fun and rigor that would end up in fluency!

I wanted my students to be able to successfully read 3-part music with difficult

skips and rhythms by the time they left me in 8th grade.

When I moved the Georgia, I had to create something that worked out of 

necessity because the first time I took my students into the sight singing room,

I was absolutely shocked.  The standard of Sight Singing performance that was

expected at the annual state adjudicated festival in this state was much higher

than the states in which I had previously taught.  I couldn't believe the level of 

proficiency required by the students from 6th-8th grade.  The truth is that I

couldn't have read that level of material in my freshman year of college. I was

not comfortable having my children go into the Sight Singing room each year 

and fail because I hadn't prepared them.  Over time, I figured it out, but year 

after year, I watched so many of my colleagues and their students walk out of 

the sight singing room completely disillusioned that I decided I had to find a

way to share what I had learned.

With technology, I've figured out the delivery method!  I don't think there is 

anything else like S-Cubed that is available to teachers.   Using the internet, I 

share my daily sight singing activities and procedures, sight singing examples,

rhythm exercises and so much more with other teachers as well as provide

video teaching tips and actual video of me teaching the various lessons so that

other teachers can use the resources to improve their own approach to 

teaching sight singing to their beginners.


I began collecting reviews soon after I finished creating the program in the spring of 2014.  

Imagine my surprise on November 15, 2014, when I posted the comment below on a

Facebook group for Music Teachers, and Roger Emerson, one of the best middle school

arrangers/composers in the world wrote this!

To see more reviews, click here and here.

S-Cubed is endorsed and used by the Durham School of the Arts in Durham, North Carolina and many programs around the world!

S-Cubed is designed to be effective, usable on a daily basis, fun, methodical, interactive and successful each and every day specifically for this age group.

Using my program, I make sure that ALL of my students can read music when they leave my classroom.   Most of them come to me with no background in reading music. By the end of their 6th grade year, they are highly proficient readers. Because I have such large groups of students in one classroom, my Sight Singing program is ideal for teaching in a group setting.

This is a sample of my students preparing to read a very difficult Sight Singing example at their adjudicated festival using all of the techniques I methodically taught to them: click here! 

This is 5 minutes later, click here!

You and your beginners can do it too!