Every time I present the idea of singing to my band students, I am greeted with a whole host of negative comments and remarks. You may have had similar experiences with student dissent when it comes to singing. I believe that this has very little to do with a student’s ability to vocalize as much as it has to do with confidence and comfort.
For band kids, singing seems to be an unreasonable task because it is too far from their comfort zone. If we force our students to make a leap that is beyond their level of comfort, we risk all sorts of behavior problems and having the flow of class disrupted. Our first reaction to something like this that doesn’t work is to get rid of it and do something else, something in the comfort zone. This is where we should really examine the “Why’s” of the situation. Reflecting on the “Why,” I have come to the conclusion that students need stepping stones.
For example, during my student teaching, I was successful in getting my junior high band (grades 7-8) to sing. If you think we were singing four-part chorales, we weren’t. But what we did achieve was the ability to sing during the tuning process. First, I came up with the goal: “I want my students to sing the tuning pitch before playing and adjusting their instruments to help increase their intonation accuracy.” After creating the goal, I focused on building small successes.
I began by introducing the tuning process to my students. “We first listen to the pitch, then we hum the pitch, and we finish by playing the pitch and adjusting our instruments.” (My cooperating teacher had already taught the students how to adjust their instruments depending on their intonation, so my work was easy!) After three weeks of having the students hum during the process, I decided it was D-Day. While the students were humming, I instructed them, “Now open your mouth.” By this time, the students were comfortable and confident with humming, so they were able to open their mouths without much thought. AND BAM!! They were singing! On pitch too! It was a success which lasted for the last several weeks of my student teaching experience.
I never mentioned that we would be doing any singing or vocalizing. I merely told them that humming the pitch will help us hear it and we’ll tune better. By giving students that stepping stone and reinforcing it over several weeks, they were able to achieve the goal I had set for them.
Does anyone have any input on how they have implemented singing in their band classroom?
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