Introducing the Habits of a Young String Musician COURSE in the MusicFirst Classroom
The MusicFirst content team has been hard at work over the last few months, bringing a brand new publication from GIA Publications into the MusicFirst Classroom - creating an exclusive COURSE for music teachers to use with their students alongside PracticeFirst - our revolutionary performance assessment program. This course includes all of the incredible instructional materials from the new Habits of a Successful Young String Musician book, and breaks it down by individual lesson plans and assignable tasks for every single exercise in the book. Combined with the unique functionality of the MusicFirst Classroom, where teachers can simply drag and drop these lessons and tasks into a class calendar, this exclusive offering from MusicFirst is a MUST HAVE for any string teacher at the elementary or middle school level. Here’s how it works.
When you click on the Content tab in the MusicFirst Classroom, you will see seven different categories, including Orchestra. When you click on Orchestra, the first piece of content that you’ll see is the Habits of a Successful Young String Musician course.
If you click on the title of the course, you will be taken to the course page, where you’ll get a preview of what is included. The Habits of a Successful Young String Musician course has over 220 lesson plans - enough for multiple school years. By clicking Use Course Now, a new class in the MusicFirst Classroom will be created with all of the materials from the course now assignable to your students. You can import your students manually OR through the numerous different SSO options that we have, making it very easy to have a year-long curriculum up and running in a matter of minutes. Because you can also add your own content, lessons, tasks and assessments, the MusicFirst Classroom is the perfect option for string teachers who need to engage their students both during and outside of rehearsals.
Once you have the Course imported, the best way to assign content is to click on the Class Calendar. This is basically your online plan book. You will see every one of the lessons in the left hand column. To assign them to your students, all you need to do is drag the specific lesson to the day you want your students to see them, and then drag the associated tasks to the day you want them to complete them. It is really that easy.
Each lesson plan has several high quality videos that show a professional string musician playing each part. This is an exclusive feature to the MusicFirst Classroom, and in my opinion, an incredible teaching resource. Providing nearly 1,000 videos of musicians playing each exercise serves as a wonderful model for the students. They can hear what the instrument is supposed to sound like, as well as what each exercise sounds like. After viewing these videos, the students are then pointed to that same exercise in PracticeFirst so that they can practice the exercise and submit it for assessment when they’re ready.
No other product delivers this kind of comprehensive solution for teachers and students. We firmly believe that if you are going to provide students with online resources, they should serve as encouragement, motivation, and always be of the highest quality possible. The way that the MusicFirst content team carefully builds these courses, always with a sharp pedagogical eye, is something that we are very proud of.
If you would like to take the new Habits of a Successful Young String Musician course for a test drive so that you can use it with your students this Fall, just sign up for a FREE 30-day trial. Summertime is the perfect time to check out these types of resources. Enjoy!