Tips for teaching movement in elementary music
30m
This training goes over my favorite tips for teaching movement in elementary music. Getting kids up and moving is so important, and honestly in my opinion, is when lots of music learning takes place. If you're not teaching movement yet, most of the time, it just takes us stepping out of our comfort zones as teachers.
Key takeaways from this training include:
1. "Movement to the students at my first school thought of music as just hip hop. That was the culture I taught in."
2. "You have to get comfortable teaching movement, and then your students will feed off of this. It honestly just takes time and consistency."
3. "There is different types of creative movement. There is no right or wrong way to teach it. Do what's comfortable to you."
4. "If you learn something at a workshop, you can change it up and make it your own, to fit the style of your music classroom."
5. "Using scarves when teaching creative music is one of my favorite things to do. Kids are a lot more creative than we give them credit for."
6. "There are so many ways to teach movement... folk dances, creative movement, mirror movement, class or partner movement are examples."
7. "With lower elementary keep it simple and with upper elementary, move more around the room."
8. "If you walk in acting like you're a pro, your students will respond to that."
9. "You're always going to have those one or two kids who don't respond no matter how much effort you give."
10. "These are my favorite movement teaching resources..."
11. "With any book you get, go through any resource and pick what you want to teach. You don't have to do every single lesson in it."
12. "Use literacy to go with movement. There are so many good ways to do this."