I split my fourth graders into two groups. For half the class, one group would work on a Garage Band assignment on their iPads while the other students did a recorder lesson with me. Then halfway through the class, we would switch.
I started recorder with the whole class in the past, and I'm not sure why it never occurred to me to start them up in small groups. Also, something I did in the past was a lot of teaching about the recorder and expectations around playing before we got to play the instrument. But this time, I just jumped in and got them playing, which worked well.
One of the hardest things about teaching the recorder is classroom management. When a class is doing a really good job with norms about not speaking over each other, this doesn't necessarily carry over to the recorder. Students are eager to play, unaware of how playing out of turn is disruptive, and have the potential to create loud, headache-inducing songs without a lot of effort.
Before I handed them the recorders, we would watch videos of people playing the recorder with the idea that they would take the work seriously and get a tone model in their head about how a recorder should sound like. Then I would lecture them about how to play the recorder and give them a quiz based on my lecture. They needed to answer critical questions about setting up their hands and basic techniques and troubleshooting when their instruments didn't sound right.
This did create a level of interest and investment in the instrument. Also, I would incentivize students' by choosing well-behaved students to play an iPad recorder game in front o the class at the end of a recorder lesson. However, with all of this, it was still a challenge to manage the class.
I did none of these things this time. Instead, I told them how to label their recorder bag, and once they did this, I put a recorder in their hands. We got to work quickly, and I had them play and play and play and play. If a student was out of turn, I corrected them immediately without subtlety. I gave them clear and direct positive and constructive feedback and helped them see their improvement.
It was fast-paced work with a higher level of intensity than I usually teach, but it worked. The kids seemed to feel good after we were done, and I heard a lot of positive comments as students left the class. Part of this work was that I only worked with each half-class on the recorder for about twelve minutes once we got going. Some of my students would have struggled with the work much longer than that.
While I'll spend some time later showing my students videos of recorder playing, getting to the instrument first was a good idea. Students like music classes for many reasons, but the main reason is that they want to play music. The most motivating thing to keep students engaged and interested in music class is creating good music and improving during the course.
I taught many different lessons during the early pandemic during music class. Still, most of it wasn't engaging students in the art of creating music and performing music by singing or playing an instrument. This was because we were limited because of safety mitigations, and now that we have moved past them, it's time to get back to the most fun part of music class: making music.
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