GStephens

One of the frustrations I've felt with my own teaching at East Central is that I've not had enough early elementary formal training in my background.  A lot of what I've been teaching has come from the way I learned music as a piano student with my mom and from the band director who continued my music instruction from fifth grade through high school.  It has been a constant challenge for me to learn how to teach the early grades--especially kindergarten and the first semester first grader.  I've not felt I had enough "prep" lessons for students to develop music skills until they were ready for more formal instruction.  For example, I know kindergarteners need to move a LOT, but I have not had enough movement activities in my bag of lessons that would use movement to teach music skills.

Part two of this book begins with an introduction to the seven stages of Preparatory Audiation:  1.  Absorption; 2.  Random Response; 3.  Purposeful Response; 4.  Shedding Egocentricity; 5.  Breaking the Code; 6.  Introspection; 7.  Coordination.  Rather than discuss each one, I would rather focus on my weakness--how he begins with kindergarteners.

I was surprised to read that Bluestine doesn't sing songs with words in his kindergarten classes!  Rather, he uses listening with movement and chant without words to begin developing his students who he says are in the tonal babble stage.  I plan to order two items he recommends:  One is a collection of recorded music compiled by Gordon, Jump Right In to Listening.  The other is a book:  The Early ChildhoodMusic Curriculum:  Experimental Songs and Chants.  I have a lot of thinking to do about teaching kindergarten in this manner--I can just imagine Dr. Ware or Mrs. Wood coming to do my observations with our East Central students dancing and chanting around like a bunch of wild things!  Perhaps it's just what I've been looking for--time will tell!