Teaching Schedule

Escola Estrela do Mar has about 150 children, and each weeek I teach all of them. I have classes from 3 years old up to 10 years old, varying in size from 15 to 25 kids.

I didnt actually realise that I would be teaching so many kids and especially down to such a young age until a week or so before I arrived.  That got me rethinking what I was planning on doing when I arrived.  With no music program here at all and no experience at all with kids I was in for a challenge! Luckily I had no shortage of ideas – the main dillemma without teaching experience was knowing which ones would work and which would not.

Teaching the older classes 7-10 years olds I find relatively easy. They are well behaved, understand discipline, have good concentration, good coordination, can click their fingers and keep a sense of beat. As such its possible to relate to them in an almost adult teaching style.

In contrast the younger kids 3, 4, 5 and 6 are a very different kettle of fish. They have very short attention spans, get distracted easily, dont fully understand discipline. If they see an instrument they will just want to grab it, so with these kids its also important to convey a wide range of other concepts that have nothing to do with music. And for them everything has to be disguised as a game or form of play.

Understanding Pitch – As a game
As an example I found a fun game on the internet that teaches young kids about pitch. Basically you play 2 notes on a recorder or harmonica; one high and one low. When I play the high note they have to stand up with arms stretched as high as possible, and when I play the low note they have to go down as low as possible. This teaches them to listen and discern which note is higher or lower. You can then make simple rhythms to which they have to keep their movements going. A brief run of high-low-high-low in quick succession always brings lots of laughter as they cant possibly keep up their movements with such speed and things descend into brief chaos.

Around these ages, trying to teach pitch in any kind of academic way I suspect would fail miserably. But this approach is great. It gets them listening and thinking and understanding pitch; but in a way that is fun. After they get the hang of it you can introduce a 3rd middle note and they can squat down a little bit for this.

Keep it Simple!
When I arrived, one of my biggest challenges was moving from conveying abstract concepts used to design and develop software for financial services products to teaching young kids music. If you think they might be polar opposites, then you´d be right. I had to quickly break down complex musical concepts into their simplest parts and keep the kids fully engaged at the same time. That’s all do-able, but its a bit of a headspin if you’re not used to working that way…One of my ~many~ challenges here.

As an example, when I first showed the kids the Berimbau, I broke down its introduction in this kind of way:

What is this instrument ?
Does anyone know its name ?
The name of this instrument is the Berimbau…. Ber-im-bau.
Can you say Berimbau with me ?
What do you think it sounds like ?
How do we play it ?
Who likes the sound that it makes ?
Is this sound (dong), the same as this one (ding)?
Who wants to learn to play this instrument?

At each step above getting some engagement and reaction from the kids is vital. It keeps them interested and they feel like they are participating. Asking lots of questions and getting hands in the air etc is a great way for them to participate. Any kind of monologue approach will never work (you can wait till University for that boring delivery style).