Recorder Teaching: A Classroom Approach: A Practical Step-by-Step Guide

The recorder program Mim Chapman describes in this delightfully illustrated manual evolved out of her repeated assignments as music teacher to 1500 students in two or three elementary schools. Classroom teachers & administrators became involved when she trained students to lead daily practice sessions. Parents watched children gain self-confidence & poise as Chapman led them to perform for their teammates, for their classmates, for other classes etc, culminating in a concert by two hundred or more students singing & playing a significant repertoire of folk songs & classics. She takes you on a journey from the first soda straw sound experiment & her "Recipe for Music" (using ingredients beat, rhythm & melody) through a complete music program of listening, moving, creating & exploring. There are clever ideas for handling diversity in the classroom & for integrating the arts into other subject matters. The secret of her success is in Peg Hoenack's "Let's Sing & Play, Bk. I," a sequential song method for soprano recorder (or Flutophone, Tonette, Song Flute) written in an alternate notation. Students need not speak English to read the pictures of hands on the recorder & read the rhythmically spaced pitch names--ABCDEFG. Notes on the staff become symbols for sounds, not the means for making music.Chapman, Mim is the author of 'Recorder Teaching: A Classroom Approach: A Practical Step-by-Step Guide', published 1987 under ISBN 9780913500255 and ISBN 0913500259.