Category Archives: Recorders

Issue 144: Once a man fell in a well

This is one of the first songs I learned to teach when I started teaching the Wider Opportunities Programme. Many of my colleagues will now scroll straight onto the next post as they have been teaching this to a dozen … Continue reading

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Issue 141: Teaching young recorder players to read B and A

This worked brilliantly with a year 3 class. It came about because I couldn’t persuade my trusty “Recorder Magic Interactive” software to work on the class laptop in the 30 seconds that I had to load it and start the lesson, … Continue reading

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Issue 138: Animal Fair

This is a popular little song. Once you get to the “Monkey, monkey, monkey” bit at the end, one group continues singing (or playing) this as an ostinato while the others sing the song again. I wrote this arrangement for … Continue reading

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Issue 136: Reading Music

So, having just mentioned that from now on primary school children are expected to learn staff notation, here’s a really, really quick introduction to reading pitch notation… Have a look at this little piece, which I “composed”, if I can dignify … Continue reading

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Issue 132: Music Writing

I came across this article recently: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/science/whats-lost-as-handwriting-fades.html?referrer= I was fascinated to read how important handwriting appears to be for children as part of process of learning to read. I’ve always felt that writing music notation is a really helpful way of … Continue reading

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Issue 130: Sharks and Recorders

I’ve always tended to say “shark”, rather than “sharp” when teaching piano – as in “watch out for Freddy Shark” when teaching G major scale. It seems to make it more memorable. I have now discovered that children have absolutely no … Continue reading

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Issue 129: Recorders – Bringing the boys on side

The boys in my year 3 recorder class were getting bored… and not paying attention… and getting left behind. Not any more! I decided to call in Darth Vader. “Grasp your recorder like a light-sabre, left hand on top or you … Continue reading

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Issue 119: La Volta

  The theme for this half term in one of my schools is “timbre”. So save my poor aching head from trying to remember too many lessons at too many schools with too many instruments, I’m kind of incorporating it … Continue reading

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