Teaching music to primary school children: useful tips

Teaching music to primary school children is a fascinating challenge for the teacher. An experience that can however prove to be a negative experience for students if not approached with the right enthusiasm. The risk is to induce them to a state of intolerance similar to that experienced during a boring lesson.

The first years of musical education not only serve to transmit theory and notions, but above all they have the function of instilling in children the love of music and the need to exploit it as a means of emotional communication. Are you tired of always using the same teaching methods and materials? Here are some useful tips to get rid of boredom from yourself and your students, making teaching more effective.

Encourage practice:

Music is best learned by doing, rather than by reading or writing. Make your lessons active, condensing them full of energy. Think back to the times when you were a schoolboy. What memories come to mind? Certainly not those in which you passively stared at the pages of a book stuffed with theory.

To stimulate attention and make learning more enjoyable, add action, and dynamism to your lessons. Keeping the rhythm of the songs and singing are just a few simple ways to do it, without the need for specialized equipment. Combining listening with creating music is the most effective way to stimulate the teaching process.

Remove boredom

There is nothing shorter than the attention of children. It is not uncommon for these to feel overwhelmed when presented with a long series of tasks to perform. That’s why it is necessary to adapt the lessons to their level of concentration. Avoid building a lesson on a single, endless activity, but divide it into small phases lasting 5-15 minutes each. A single lesson should include:

I listen; 
Playing instruments;
Reading;
Writing;
Composizine.

Teach the music your students like

To get the kids involved immediately, use their favorite songs as a teaching tool. Any type of musical genre can constitute a precious resource for teaching and learning. It is not mandatory to transmit notions using only traditional genres such as classical or baroque music.
Let the children interact with each other

The music room is the best place to encourage interaction between students. Introduce an exchange-based type of learning into your lessons. Divide your students into small groups and assign them projects. Group projects are engaging, stimulate creativity and help children stay focused on a single task for a long time. In addition, they encourage the acquisition of transversal skills such as decision making and problem solving.
Stimulate creativity

Once the children have started to enjoy us and complete simple activities, having fun is the time to detonate their creative power. Such as? Give them a project of musical composition, without a final mark, which encourages them to produce something new following their own personal taste.

To learn music, theory is not enough, but you need to practice a lot. A safe space, free from judgments, in which to express oneself, represents a powerful tool of emotional and sentimental education, capable of promoting the harmonious development of the personality.
Prepare them for a performance

The performance is an important element of the musical and emotional education of young students; a time when children can proudly show their parents what they learned during the year. To close the academic path, organize a great concert involving the whole class.

If it is not possible to organize a traditional one, rely on technology and work on the production of an exhibition video to share on Youtube. A further step could include creating a dedicated channel where students feel encouraged to constantly share their progress