Adapted Lessons
Today’s symposium meeting was on teaching adapted lessons. Having just finished my student teaching, I was really interested to learn more about working with students with special needs. Everyone had some great resources and tips to share, so I will just talk about some of the highlights:
- There are many educational books and method systems for teaching music theory and piano in a simple and fun way. The key to these books is that they include lots of visuals, interactive activities, and songs that are enjoyable to play!
- Teaching music doesn’t have to just come from a book. Interactive activities such as coloring and using a whiteboard, iPad, or even play doh can make music theory fun and easy to understand because the student is learning through different modalities, including visually, aurally, and kinesthetically.
- The internet is really your friend when it comes to finding creative ways to learn and teach music! A website that we learned about was http://www.musictechteacher.com and it includes lessons and games that make learning about the piano and music theory lots of fun!
I encourage you to use a variety of resources when teaching adapted lessons – in most cases, the more fun you have, the more you learn!
-Nerissa
