Getting Started with Middle School Chorus is designed for choral music educators getting started in a new position, as well as experienced educators wanting to keep up with current developments in choral music education. This third edition is thoroughly grounded in the latest research and incorporates new information about working with changing adolescent voices, designing optimal rehearsals for middle school students, managing growing choral programs, and helping youngsters gain the musical skills they will need for a lifetime of making music. For new educators, this book features strategies for building confidence in taking on the responsibilities associated with teaching middle school chorus.

Whether you're new to working with middle school choirs or seeking advice on improving your effectiveness, you'll appreciate the useful hands-on strategies in The First Weeks of Middle School Chorus. Implement Freer's specific, ready-to-use tips immediately in your rehearsals. He reminds you of things you've forgotten, prompts you to reframe what you already do, and encourages you to try new approaches. Organized in lists for easy reference, the book takes you through the first weeks of school and covers setting up your classroom, choral activities for day one and beyond, repertoire for the first weeks, warm-ups for changing voices, rehearsal strategies, placing students into groups and voice parts, and resources. Readers who find TIPS: The First Weeks of Middle School Chorus helpful may want to consult Freer's Getting Started with Middle School Chorus, Second Edition for more detailed information about the tips, strategies, and techniques found in this practical guide.

As choir directors, we are constantly challenged to find ways to balance fun with music performance and theory. We want our students to be successful and enjoy their musical experience with us. Assessment is an essential part of what we do. We need to be able to see what our students really understand and we don't want to leave anything out. What if your students were so excited to show you what they know that they came to you and asked for tests? I created this program for my students because they used to get nervous when it was time to test. Sight-reading tests were particularly stressful. I was in Karate at the time, and I noticed how the karate students were always excited to test. The tests were short, and there was a reward for success. I decided to start making a game out of testing for my choir students. Now, my students ask me for tests! They are going online and looking at the concepts before I teach them in class, and they are having fun learning. They are excited to show me what they can do and their musicianship has reached a new level! My students are taking ownership of their progress and becoming independent musicians. How the program works... The concepts for Middle School Singers are divided into seven sections, with levels for first through third year middle school singers. The tests get more challenging as the students progress through the program. The Yellow Belt level is designed for quick success, and the higher Belt Levels are designed to be completed within a six-week time period. The program contains a study guide for each level, as well as a student tracking form for each year in choir, written theory tests, and oral sight-reading and rhythm-reading tests. There are printable certificates at the end of the book for each level, and a printable reward pass (but you can always make your own reward system). With my students, I also create a sticker chart so that my singers can view their successes and get a visual idea of what they still need to accomplish. I can also look at the chart to see what individual classes need at a glance when I am planning for the next week. This program would be a great tool for district alignment and common assessments. You can rest assured that you are covering concepts that your students need to know before they move on to high school.

Choral Music: A Research and Information Guide, Third Edition, offers a comprehensive guide to the literature on choral music in the Western tradition. Clearly annotated bibliographic entries guide readers to resources on key topics within choral music, individual choral composers, regional and sacred choral traditions, choral techniques, choral music education, genre studies, and more, providing an essential reference for researchers and practitioners. Covering monographs, bibliographies, selected dissertations, reference works, journals, electronic databases, and websites, this research guide makes it easy to locate relevant sources. Comprehensive indices of authors, titles, and subjects keep the volume user-friendly. The new edition has been brought up to date with entries encompassing the latest scholarship, and updated references and annotations throughout, capturing the continued growth of literature on choral music since the publication of the second edition.

Growing Musicians: Teaching Music in Middle School and Beyond focuses on teaching adolescents within the context of a music classroom. It considers the impact of music education on adolescents as they transition from child to adult as well as encourages music educators to mindfully examine their own teaching practice.

As the landscape of choral education changes - disrupted by Glee, YouTube, and increasingly cheap audio production software - teachers of choral conducting need current research in the field that charts scholarly paths through contemporary debates and sets an agenda for new critical thought and practice. Where, in the digitizing world, is the field of choral pedagogy moving? Editor Frank Abrahams and Paul D. Head, both experienced choral conductors and teachers, offer here a comprehensive handbook of newly-commissioned chapters that provide key scholarly-critical perspectives on teaching and learning in the field of choral music, written by academic scholars and researchers in tandem with active choral conductors. As chapters in this book demonstrate, choral pedagogy encompasses everything from conductors' gestures to the administrative management of the choir. The contributors to The Oxford Handbook of Choral Pedagogy address the full range of issues in contemporary choral pedagogy, from repertoire to voice science to the social and political aspects of choral singing. They also cover the construction of a choral singer's personal identity, the gendering of choral ensembles, social justice in choral education, and the role of the choral art in society more generally. Included scholarship focuses on both the United States and international perspectives in five sections that address traditional paradigms of the field and challenges to them; critical case studies on teaching and conducting specific populations (such as international, school, or barbershop choirs); the pedagogical functions of repertoire; teaching as a way to construct identity; and new scholarly methodologies in pedagogy and the voice.

As any middle school choir director knows, change is the name of the game! A changing voice is just one of countless physiological and emotional changes that middle school students experience. Knowing the general limits of male and female changing voices, as well as the specific capabilities of your students, are two keys to building healthy -- and happy! -- middle school singers. This book is an accessible, must-read resource for any middle-school choir director looking to foster stronger, more capable musicians, and offers 25 warm-up exercises along with customized grade-specific tips for using them along with free access to accompanying audio recordings--Publisher's description.