Hello! Thanks for your interest in these materials! I hope they work for you as well as they ve worked for me. In these few pages, I want to explain a few things that are not evident within the materials themselves. If you have questions or comments about anything, please feel free to contact me at heat@heatdziczek.com or 480-332-5755. Despite sounding like a good starting point, I don t use Lesson 1 on Day 1. The first few meetings, I go over expectations for the year, classroom rules, rhythm, and the basics of their instruments. When we start Lesson 1, the students already know the following: how to count & clap/clap & hiss eighth notes, quarter notes, and quarter rests notes come in right-side-up and upside-down versions; rests do not how to assemble their instrument how to properly hold their instrument how to form an embouchure how to breathe how to sit how to tongue* *I have found that some students do not learn tonguing easily. Depending on the skill level of the student, I might not enforce tonguing until a little bit farther down the line. If a student is struggling with posture, hand position, and producing a tone, I m going to let tonguing fall by the wayside for a short while until they ve gained competence in other areas. I require tonguing to graduate from Lesson 2. The size of the class and the instrumentation of the class will determine how long all of that takes. Seeing students twice per week in heterogeneous classes of 12-24 students, it takes at least two weeks to cover all of that. I am completely OK with these things taking time, as you will see as you get into these materials. What we are teaching these kids is the most basic foundation of everything that comes later. Taking time to make sure they really understand it and can perform it makes sense to me. If you want more information on how I go through anything or everything on that bullet-point list, or anywhere else in these materials, let me know. I m happy to share. My small groups are by homeroom, so instrumentation is mixed. At least half of the meetings, we do what the students call music station. I set up two chairs and a stand in the back or to the side, and students come over to me one at a time and play whatever they are prepared to play that day. This gives me a few minutes to work with each child individually. It also allows the faster-moving students to move faster and the struggling students to get help and learn at their own pace. I have a chart for each student where I record the date, what they played, how they did, and what their assignment is for next time. I keep these charts in folders by class. This has drastically reduced the number of kids who slip through the cracks.
Lesson 1 Front side: three first notes (concert B b, C, and D) with two songs using only those notes Back side: six notes (concert A through concert F) with two more songs I included fermatas on the last notes so we could get into watching and cutting off together, but I didn t include the word fermata. If students ask, I tell them its name. Otherwise, we ll fill in that piece of information later. There are no stems on the letters on Lesson 1. I tell the students to count every letter like a quarter note. I had stems on the page, but it was very crowded and difficult to look at. Giving oral directions instead of making everything smaller so that it would fit has worked for me. Since the students are playing songs in quarter notes and rests, aside from the note with the fermata, there are no long notes. Consequently, we play games with holding notes out so that they can begin to work on breath control and sustained pitch. These games also teach the students to watch for cutoffs right from the beginning. Each song has a rubric under it, a list of things that I require the students to do for each song. (The possible exception is tonguing, as discussed above.) We go over the rubric for each song that they play. When they can check all of the boxes, they move on to the next song. Lesson 2 The pitches and rhythms used are the same: quarters, eighths, concert A through F. Students learn some new symbols instead: breath mark, double bar line, repeat sign, and tie. With the addition of ties, longer notes are now available without actually adding a new rhythm component to the mix. I ask the students to count everything 1-and, including the second of two quarter notes tied together. At this point in the game, changing it to 1-and-2-and is confusing for too many students, so we change it later. (The confusion was a lack of understanding why this quarter note is a 1-and and this quarter note is a 2-and and since there are no measures yet, 2-and is a new concept. Yes, there are plenty of students who understand it quickly, but my goal at this point is to remove as many stumbling blocks as possible to help kids be successful. That said, if a student asks about using sequential numbers instead of all ones, I do answer truthfully.) The bell part includes breath mark, though I realize they don t need to breathe. If you are playing songs together as a group and are enforcing the breath marks, it s good to have percussion breathe there, too it helps their entrance be together. Also, since there are no measures, the breath marks tend to be landmarks. The rubrics are identical to those in Lesson 1. Lesson 3 The beginning of pitch-reading! The students know already how to read the rhythms in this lesson and they know how to play the pitches. (If this music was given to them notated the same as Lesson 2, they should be able to play it without difficulty.) The only new piece of information is how to figure out which letter that note is. This page only introduces the first three pitches (a relief to any brass players who are struggling with the higher partial).
C instruments have key signatures on this page. I do not consider this an appropriate time to discuss with the entire ensemble what a key signature is. This is how I handle it: I explain that those flats are a shortcut. Instead of drawing a flat on every single note, they just stick them at the beginning, and that means that all of the notes for that letter are flat. (Depending on the kids and time available, I might talk about the benefits of shortcuts back when music was copied by hand.) So they need to check the beginning of their songs to see if those flats are there. Anything at all that can be explained as a shortcut catches their attention. They like shortcuts. While the music is anatomically correct (with bar lines, time signature, clefs, etc.), I don t discuss any of those with the students unless they specifically ask. The rubric in Lesson 3 contains the same information, but the sentences have been condensed to phrases and remain the same in Lessons 4 through 9. Lesson 4 Same rhythms and only the three pitches found in Lesson 3, but now the pitches are mixed up into songs! The front of the page is all two-note songs; the back is three-note songs. I included a cheat sheet at the top of the page so students may cross-check which notes are which, if they have forgotten. I am a firm believer in not writing the pitches in, except for the students who cognitively require it, such as some from the self-contained special ed class. It is far easier to stop it from the beginning than to wean them off of it later. Lesson 5 The rest of the original six pitches are added, one pitch per lesson, beginning in Lesson 5. Also in Lesson 5, students learn what measures and bar lines are, making conversation with them much easier. (It takes many reminders to myself not to use the word measure when teaching Lessons 3 and 4, but reading pitches is a funky skill and so many students struggle with it that it is worth my energy to restrict my language so that students may learn fewer skills at once.) Lesson 6 Most of the students are comfortable enough with all of the notation so far as to easily incorporate half notes into their working vocabulary. Since they have seen quarter notes ties together for so long, they already know how to play them. Again, this is a place where shortcut works well. Lesson 7 E b instruments have key signatures beginning in this lesson. I explain it to them the same as I did for the B b instruments in Lesson 3. Dreydl, Dreydl has a pick-up note, but with a new pitch and round already in that lesson, I chose not to cover pick-up note at this time. It shows up later. Lesson 8 All four songs on this page are duets. In three of them, the top and bottom lines simply switch parts, which allows both students to play the melody and the harmony. This is also why there are not separate rubrics for the top and bottom lines.
Lesson 9 The front side of this page is a giant review of what the students have learned so far. I like to do that for a couple of reasons: 1- it gives us the chance to again go through any pieces that the students are having trouble with (I m not a you should know it we already learned it! kind of teacher); 2- it lets the students see just how much they have learned so far. The newness of playing an instrument has long since worn off by the time we get to Lesson 9, and giving them a list of everything they ve learned helps them to feel pride on their accomplishment to date. Lip slurs are introduced in the brass (though without the slur). For students who can switch competently, I ask them to change notes without tonguing or breathing or stopping (i.e., slurring). For those who struggle, just building up their chops to change notes is sufficient. In the clarinet part for the same exercise, they are asked to play C to low G (instead of open G) to give them a head start on their right hand fingerings. Lesson 10 Finally! A new note! Students learn concert G and have some songs to practice it in. Also new are time/meter signatures (labeled both ways). The rubric contains the same information, but the phrases have been cut down to one word. Lesson 11 Half rests and pick-up notes (also defined as anacrusis) are the two new items in this lesson; no new notes. The rubric is the same as Lesson 10. Currently, that is the end of the lessons. I have plans to create four more, covering the following: both octaves of concert A b whole notes dotted half notes whole rests clefs possibly 1 st and 2 nd endings The following year, my students start in the book from the beginning, at which point, it s tons of review. They move through it very quickly, but we can go over anything that s troublesome or that they ve completely forgotten. The last page is a quick run-down of what is new in each lesson. I have other materials and resources that are or will be available for download from the website. Enjoy! Heather Dziczek
Lesson 1 pitches: concert A, B b, C, D, E b, F with fingerings fermata (symbol and meaning, no name assigned) Lesson 2 breath mark tie double bar line repeat sign two-line song Lesson 3 notation for pitches: concert B b, C, D Lesson 4 no new concepts, but notated pitches from Lesson 3 are mixed Lesson 5 notation for pitch: concert E b bar line measure Lesson 6 notation for pitch: concert F half note Lesson 7 notation for pitch: concert A round Lesson 8 duet Lesson 9 review lesson Lesson 10 pitch with notation: concert G time (meter) signature Lesson 11 pick-up notes (anacrusis) half rest