Isn't the internet great!

Just found a great interactive recorder fingering chart.Must remember to show year 4 this next Tuesday. Thank you Hampshire County Council!

Here goes!

Well, I've finally taken the plunge! I've decided to document my journey toward becoming a proper music teacher. In most primary schools bog standard teachers like me end up teaching every subject. Unless you are in a school with a specialist music teacher you are expected to teach your own music lessons. This is not a brilliant state of affairs unless you have some help and support. Self conscious about the fact I neither played an instrument or was able to read music I preferred to leave it to singing a few songs and listening to Peter and the Wolf. Not exactly delivering a music education to my class.

I had always enjoyed singing with my class. I'd had a great music teacher at primary school (Mrs Lake who used to teach at Gorringe)and still remembered many of the songs she had taught us. However I was very frustrated at my inability to help the children improve the sound. I then had the great good fortunate to run into Soo Bishop who was an advanced skills teacher who taught music. I saw first hand how she was able to help children find their singing voice, develop self discipline and create amazing sounds. Watching Soo and following her lesson plans gave me the confidence to have a go myself. To cut a long story short I was persuaded to start teaching music to year 3 and year 4. I have joined Soo's Merton teachers choir,started to learn to read western classical notation,signed up for a Voices Foundation 5 day course and begun teaching recorders to year 5. I plan to keep this blog as a diary of my progress.