Starting the Year Off Right in Middle School Choir

This article was generated from an email conversation between Ian Henning and Mitch Al-Ubaidi regarding ideas presented in Episode 172. “Dispelling Middle School Myths”

By Ian Henning and Mitch Al-Ubaidi

Cross Posted from Choralosophy Community

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Hi Ian,

My name is Mitch Al-Ubaidi and I am a brand new teacher finishing up my second year in the profession. I teach middle school choir and general music in Wisconsin. I’m reaching out to you because I listened to Choralosophy podcast episode 172 where you shared your successes and struggles with implementing music literacy in your middle school choir classroom. Your story rings true to me and many other people in the profession and I want to say thank you for sharing your story! It inspired me so much to prepare for next year! 🙂

As I sit here, thinking a lot about my mistakes and deeply regretting the fact that I over-programmed for the last concert of the year (and with only a few weeks left in the school year, it’s pretty much too late to change anything in my opinion), I realize that I have not been “doing it right” in my classroom since I began teaching. My schooling had not prepared me well enough and I am paying the price for it. All of the music for my groups have been taught by rote, lots of playing parts at the piano, and lots of frustration (I am not a pianist, by the way.). I feel frustrated because sections of the choir have difficulty holding onto their part or want to sing a different part,

information is not being retained from day to day, morale is low, the students have difficulty focusing causing issues with their behavior, and I often feel like I don’t know what to do next at the end of each class.

So now that you have heard my sob story, I have a few questions to ask in regards to how one can start off on the right foot for having more of a music literacy-centered classroom next school year (some are also general questions about your program).

When does your school year start?

Does your middle school choir perform a fall concert?

What are your recommendations for repertoire with music literacy in mind? (mostly looking at unison, 2-part)

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What resources, approaches, exercises, etc. do you use/do for the male voice change? I’m unable to separate them by voice part due to our schedule and we are unable to have pull-out lessons or structured lesson time.

What does the first month of school look like for you in your middle school choir classroom? What does your class look like when you’re not teaching music literacy? What sorts of team building/bonding and relationship building things do you do with your classes? I feel like I’m fresh-out of ideas. When do you introduce your students to looking at a score for the first time? I understand that you teach in 90-minute blocks every other day. I teach in 42-minute periods every other day.

I’m an S-Cubed and Sight Reading Factory user myself, although I have not been consistent with it. I’ve been looking more into it and there’s been so much I missed and skipped over. With your 90-minute classes, do you do multiple lessons with S-Cubed in a class period or do you take it a day at a time?

Something I could see happening in my classroom is resistance to having a music literacy-centered classroom. Since I’ve mostly taught music one way for so long, and have been inconsistent with teaching with implementing music literacy, I could see many kids not being excited or wanting to go back to the old way of doing things. I feel there may also be some disconnect because many of our kids are in the middle school show choir program and they would learn the music differently than I would teach it.

Again, thank you so much for sharing your story and I hope you have a great end to your school year! I know your kids are very lucky to have such a passionate and dedicated music educator! 🙂

-Mitchell Al-Ubaidi

Hi Mitch,

Thanks so much for reaching out! I’m honored that you were inspired by what I shared on the podcast. You’re right, we are not alone in navigating the best practices in choral music education. I’m only wrapping up my 4th year of teaching, so by no means do I have all the answers, but I will try my best. Nothing would make me happier than helping you hone your craft!

Before I address your questions, I want to share my perspective on your ‘sob story’, though I wouldn’t call it that. In my personal opinion, supported exclusively by anecdotal evidence, over-programming performance repertoire is the most common mistake that new ensemble music teachers make. I have yet to meet any orchestra, band, or choir teacher who has never bitten off more than they (i.e. their students) can chew. I see it as a rite of passage of sorts. We all have big dreams about the awesome pieces we want our students to be able to perform! The issue, in my opinion, comes from not realizing that they need more scaffolding and support to get to that level than we have time to give them in one concert cycle. By the end, we wish we had been a little less ambitious. That is all normal. Try not to be too hard on yourself. When I went through an experience just like yours a few years ago, I realized I could wallow in self-pity, or I could channel that regret into lessons learned and changes made moving forward. I recommend the latter!

By the way, nothing in my undergrad really taught me how to teach music literacy either. I too am not a pianist, and in fact stumbled into fully a cappella rehearsals just because the piano slows me down. Just taking that out of the equation will be a big step forward for you. Also, I found Choralosophy halfway through my third year of teaching, so you’re ahead of my curve in terms of turning things around. Summer will be great for this! 🙂 I personally love writing down all my ideas for next year right before break and letting them percolate in the background over the summer. If I get a random flash of inspiration in June or July, I’ll write that down too. The week before we come back is when I look through all those ideas and start to make concrete plans.

Going point-by-point through your last sentence:

– Difficulty holding their part: they need easier rep. The default progression I learned is: unison pieces, then rounds/canons, then partner songs, then 2-part, then 3-part. The easiest way to accidentally over-program is to skip parts of this progression. In 6th grade I usually do unison + rounds in the fall, and partner songs + one or two 2-part pieces in the spring. This year 7th grade was mostly 2-part with an easy 3-part in spring, and 8th grade was mostly 3-part, with a 2-part in fall and an easy 4-part in spring. When you step into a new position, your 8th graders might not be ready for 3-part, or your 7th-graders for 2-part. In that case, move backwards in the progression until you find where they should be. You’ve got to scaffold their success. “Teach the students you have, not the students you wish you had”.

– Want to sing a different part: I’ve been there. This starts from the bottom up. Set a norm with your 6th graders next year that everyone sings high and low in choir. Their voices are not nearly developed enough to be assigned to voice parts in middle school, in my opinion. A brilliant idea that I found on Facebook (are you a member of the “I Teach Middle School Chorus!” and “Middle School Choir Director” pages? Great resource!) is to split the class into two or three teams. I went with Team Blue and Team Silver since those are our school’s colors. 6th graders sang two 2-part pieces at our recent concert: for one piece, Blue Team sang Part I and Silver Team sang Part II. They did the opposite on the other piece. For a three-part partner song, they split into 3 teams, with each team rotating through each part in performance. This really encourages vocal flexibility and helps them to not identify with a specific voice part, even though they may have their preferences.

– Info retention: meaningful closure and opening activities. This is something I am also working on. I have many specific ideas we could dive into in another email, but in the broad strokes, do simple things at the end of class that prompt them to think about what they learned/did/accomplished/demonstrated that day, and simple things at the beginning of class that prompt them to reflect on the progress made last class and how they can apply it today. Just giving them the opportunity to focus on retaining their learning will help a lot with this.

– Morale/focus/behavior: It’s like you said, it is too late to switch out your rep. Unfortunately, that is the most likely cause of these issues. When we as educators don’t give our students the tools they need to succeed at the challenges we set before them, morale drops, students lose focus, and behavior issues occur. Rather than despair about it, though, look forward to struggling less with this now that you’re aware of the dangers of over-programming! That’s not super helpful now, though, so in the short term, I recommend simplifying whatever you can and celebrating every win. When students feel success, good things happen to morale and focus. Without knowing your rep, I can’t give specific advice, but here are several ways I simplify rep to get my students to the right level of challenge for them: part reduction (whole piece or tough sections), let students sing whatever part they want (lots more unison usually, but with agency instead of me taking parts away), cutting sections, cutting entire pieces, choosing not to correct persistent mistakes that aren’t hurting anything (minor rhythm change, singing a “wrong” note but it’s still a chord tone, etc.), changing tempo (faster or slower can both make things easier in the right circumstances), changing key if it’s too high or too low for everyone. Some of those aren’t possible with accompaniment tracks, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten some, but in general, the music as written need not be the music as performed. There was one piece where my students couldn’t remember the words for 6 lines of music that all have the same pitch/rhythm. However, if I told them the first word of the line, they remembered the rest of the words no problem. So I printed out the first word of each of the 6 lines and put it on a music stand facing them during the concert. They got all the words! Easy way to cross the threshold from failure to success.

– Don’t know what to do next at the end of each class: All I’ve got for you on this one is: in general, if your plan is to build some fundamental skills, review the learning from last class, and move forward from there, that’s usually a solid plan. The challenge comes in the execution.

On to your questions:

1. Mid-August

2. We have a fall concert the week before Thanksgiving Break, and a spring concert in the last full week of April

3. I’m happy to share a list of my favorite unison, canon, partner, and 2-part songs, but it will take me some time to pull together. Most, if not all, of my fall 6th grade rep is taught by rote, which is not at odds with a literacy-based pedagogy! In all honesty though, I’m still trying to build my catalog, as it is hard finding good rep that 6th graders can teach themselves from sheet music. I would post on those Facebook pages I mentioned, there’s always a ton of people ready to share their wisdom.

4. I don’t employ any exercises specifically for the male voice change. My voice changing students do all the same warm ups etc. as everyone else, adapting as needed. This could well be a massive blind spot in my practice; I’ve always known that I really need to shore up my knowledge of vocal pedagogy. That said, I have one approach and one resource for you. One thing I always encourage with a voice change is that students don’t abandon their head voice. I use my head voice all the time in my classroom, starting on Day 1. It helps them learn that a guy singing in a higher register is not weird or anything to be ashamed of. My own head voice is exceptionally strong because my high school choir director made a point to keep us singing in our upper range through our voice change. A student’s head voice may entirely disappear for a time, but it will return. What matters is they don’t give up on it. As for the resource, I cannot recommend Choralosophy episodes 188 and 190 strongly enough. Don’t just listen to them once, either. I’m planning on re-listening to both episodes and diving into the further reading shared in those episodes over the summer.

5. 42 minutes every other day?! My sympathies. That will definitely limit what you can accomplish in a year. All the more reason to program rep that will challenge them at the appropriate level. As for these awesome questions, I fear I could write 10,000 words on the combined subjects of the first month of school, what my class looks like when I’m not explicitly teaching literacy, and community- and relationship-building activities I use in my classes. Can we set up a video call once school is out to dive deep on these subjects? My apologies for leaving you hanging but I do not know how to succinctly summarize my answers to any of those questions. One thing I can leave you with right now: The First Days of School by Harry and Rosemary Wong is the single most valuable book I have ever read about teaching, period. If I had my way, it would be required reading for every new teacher, and required re-reading for the first 5+ years in the profession. That book will help you start the year much more than I ever could.

6. I’m kind of embarrassed, I did not make it nearly as far into S-Cubed as I wanted to this year. I too was less consistent than I wanted to be. To answer your question, I do either 1 or 2 days of a lesson at a time, depending on the pacing I see in the lessons. Some days are lighter than others. Next year I think I’ll only use S-Cubed in 6th grade, and add SRF in 7th grade. My thinking is that S-Cubed’s deliberately built and scaffolded sight reading exercises are more valuable than the randomly-generated ones for the 6th grade beginners. I might work in SRF stuff for my advanced (i.e. instrumentalist) 6th graders only.

7. Who runs the middle school show choir? All the best show choirs I know learn their songs off sheet music. It’s the only way to learn a difficult, multi-part contest set quickly. If it’s a noncompetitive, mostly-unison show choir run by someone other than you, that will indeed be tricky. I’d recommend not making my mistake of dumping it all on them at once. Like the voice part thing, most of your big changes should start at 6th grade and move up with them. With your 7th and 8th students, start with S-Cubed, which is more game-focused and hopefully too engaging to garner complaints. You might still teach rep by rote, but keep having them apply S-Cubed skills like the Bullseye, Chaos practice, and maybe convert Score the Scale into Score the Section (of rep)? Even if you teach by rote, you can still introduce pieces on solfege, and when students have trouble with a section, have them use solfege to fix it. Always with hand signs, of course. If you identify a 4 note phrase that needs checking at the end of one class, you could work it into Poison Pattern next class. It may be too late to make next year’s 8th graders fully musically literate, but ear training is always valuable, and you can do little things that set the stage for their high school choir teacher to get them there(?) Meanwhile, the 6th graders who rise with you will be on board the minute they sight read their first piece of written music. It’s like magic.

Best of luck to you as the school year wraps up. The fact that you reached out to me and shared your struggles and thoughtful questions tells me you are no less passionate and dedicated an educator than I. Let’s make some time later to talk more about how I start the year, if you’d like!

Warm regards,

Ian Henning

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