Songworks II

Book excerpt: This methods text for the music specialist focuses on teaching children the sounds of music-singing-and the symbols of music-reading and writing music notation. With over 75 Mini-Lessons, this text offers general principles and specific ways to teach elements of rhythm, melody, and structure and help children learn to read, write, and enjoy music. The text addresses the four major challenges of teaching music: how to translate the aural sense of music into visual and kinesthetic experiences for young children, how to organize musical sounds, how to explore the patterns of music in temporal rather than static contexts, and how to engage the students as performers of the music studied through singing, moving, and playing classroom instruments.