Teachers the world over are discovering the importance and benefits of incorporating popular culture into the music classroom. The cultural prevalence and the students' familiarity with recorded music, videos, games, and other increasingly accessible multimedia materials help enliven course content and foster interactive learning and participation. Pop-Culture Pedagogy in the Music Classroom: Teaching Tools from American Idol to YouTube provides ideas and techniques for teaching music classes using elements of popular culture that resonate with students' everyday lives. From popular songs and genres to covers, mixes, and mashups; from video games such as Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero to television shows like American Idol, this exciting collection offers pedagogical models for incorporating pop culture and its associated technologies into a wide variety of music courses. Biamonte has collected well-rounded essays that consider a variety of applications. After an introduction, the essays are organized in 3 sections. The first addresses general tools and technology that can be incorporated into almost any music class: sound-mixing techniques and the benefits of using iPods and YouTube. The middle section uses popular songs, video games, or other aspects of pop culture to demonstrate music-theory topics or to develop ear-training and rhythmic skills. The final section examines the musical, lyrical, or visual content in popular songs, genres, or videos as a point of departure for addressing broader issues and contexts. Each chapter contains notes and a bibliography, and two comprehensive appendixes list popular song examples for teaching harmony, melody, and rhythm. Two indexes cross-reference the material by title and by general subject. While written with college and secondary-school teachers in mind, the methods and materials presented here can be adapted to any educational level.

Popular music has long been a subject of academic inquiry, with college courses taught on Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles, along with more contemporary artists like Beyonce and Outkast. This collection of essays draws upon the knowledge and expertise of instructors from a variety of disciplines who have taught classes on popular music. Topics include: the analysis of music genres such as American folk, Latin American protest music, and Black music; exploring the musical catalog and socio-cultural relevance of specific artists; and discussing how popular music can be used to teach subjects such as history, identity, race, gender, and politics. Instructional strategies for educators are provided.

This pioneering book reveals how the music classroom can draw upon the world of popular musicians' informal learning practices, so as to recognize and foster a range of musical skills and knowledge that have long been overlooked within music education. It investigates how far informal learning practices are possible and desirable in a classroom context; how they can affect young teenagers' musical skill and knowledge acquisition.

A little girl and various animals sing their own version of this popular rhyme.

If you ever want to start a fight in the staffroom then bring up the question of the use of music in the classroom. And if you want to settle that perennial dispute then this is the book to do it with. Nina's groundbreaking research has proven how music can be of direct benefit for learning and motivation in classrooms across the school and this book , simply and effectively, tells you what music to use, when and why. So, put away your whale song CD and your James Last box set and explore how real music can transform your classroom.

Popular musicians acquire some or all of their skills and knowledge informally, outside school or university, and with little help from trained instrumental teachers. How do they go about this process? Despite the fact that popular music has recently entered formal music education, we have as yet a limited understanding of the learning practices adopted by its musicians. Nor do we know why so many popular musicians in the past turned away from music education, or how young popular musicians today are responding to it. Drawing on a series of interviews with musicians aged between fifteen and fifty, Lucy Green explores the nature of pop musicians' informal learning practices, attitudes and values, the extent to which these altered over the last forty years, and the experiences of the musicians in formal music education. Through a comparison of the characteristics of informal pop music learning with those of more formal music education, the book offers insights into how we might re-invigorate the musical involvement of the population. Could the creation of a teaching culture that recognizes and rewards aural imitation, improvisation and experimentation, as well as commitment and passion, encourage more people to make music? Since the hardback publication of this book in 2001, the author has explored many of its themes through practical work in school classrooms. Her follow-up book, Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy (2008) appears in the same Ashgate series.

Contains ten ensemble pieces specially arranged for just about any instrument and useful for players aged 9-13. This work can be achieved on any of the following instruments: recorders, keyboards, guitars, violins, glockenspiels, chimes, flutes or tambourines.

While attention has been paid to various aspects of music education in China, to date no single publication has systematically addressed the complex interplay of sociopolitical transformations underlying the development of popular music and music education in the multilevel culture of China. Before the implementation of the new curriculum reforms in China at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there was neither Chinese nor Western popular music in textbook materials. Popular culture had long been prohibited in school music education by China’s strong revolutionary orientation, which feared ‘spiritual pollution’ by Western cultures. However, since the early twenty-first century, education reform has attempted to help students deal with experiences in their daily lives and has officially included learning the canon of popular music in the music curriculum. In relation to this topic, this book analyses how social transformation and cultural politics have affected community relations and the transmission of popular music through school music education. Ho presents music and music education as sociopolitical constructions of nationalism and globalization. Moreover, how popular music is received in national and global contexts and how it affects the construction of social and musical meanings in school music education, as well as the reformation of music education in mainland China, is discussed. Based on the perspectives of school music teachers and students, the findings of the empirical studies in this book address the power and potential use of popular music in school music education as a producer and reproducer of cultural politics in the music curriculum in the mainland.

Teaching in the Fast Lane offers teachers a way to increase student engagement: an active classroom. The active classroom is about creating learning experiences differently, so that students engage in exploration of the content and take on a good share of the responsibility for their own learning. It’s about students reaching explicit targets in different ways, which can result in increased student effort and a higher quality of work. Author Suzy Pepper Rollins details how to design, manage, and maintain an active classroom that balances autonomy and structure. She offers student-centered, practical strategies on sorting, station teaching, and cooperative learning that will help teachers build on students’ intellectual curiosity, self-efficacy, and sense of purpose. Using the strategies in this book, teachers can strategically “let go” in ways that enable students to reach their learning targets, achieve more, be motivated to work, learn to collaborate, and experience a real sense of accomplishment.

The Smart Classroom Management Way is a collection of the very best writing from ten years of Smart Classroom Management (SCM). It isn't, however, simply a random mix of popular articles. It's a comprehensive work that encompasses every principle, theme, and methodology of the SCM approach. The book is laid out across six major areas of classroom management and includes the most pressing issues, problems, and concerns shared by all teachers. The underlying SCM themes of accountability, maturity, independence, personal responsibility, and intrinsic motivation are all there and weave their way throughout the entirety of the book. Together, they form a simple, unique, and sometimes contrarian approach to classroom management that anyone can do. Whether you're an elementary, middle, or high school teacher, The Smart Classroom Management Way will give you the strategies, skills, and know-how to turn any group of students into the motivated, well-behaved class you love teaching.