In the last few posts we've been talking about strategies for teaching choir when you have no accompanist and little to no piano or solfege skills.
In Part 1, I wrote about the starting point of the process, where many teachers feel stuck and don't know which direction to go. Part 2 included some "band-aid" strategies to keep things moving while you start to transition to a more acapella, solfege based approach.
In this post I want to share some resources that have worked well for me. Maybe they will work for you too!
Where we started:
I shared in Part 1 a little about where I started in this process, which was ground zero. I had no solfege training in the entirety of my music education preparation. The previous teachers in my district had not used it either, so the students and I were all newbies. I had tried a few sight singing books and Sight Reading Factory , but I felt like my students would "get it" for the first few lessons, and by lesson 5 or 6 they were lost. There wasn't enough foundational information for students who had no previous experience with the method.
Enter "S-Cubed".
How it's going:
I stumbled upon this curriculum on Teachers Pay Teachers. It looked amazing, but I needed to know more before I felt comfortable with the price tag. In 2022 "Mr. D" did a session on his curriculum (which he built himself through trial and error with middle schoolers who had no previous solfege experience!) at the Nebraska Music Education Conference. After learning more about the program and seeing how he REALLY goes step by step for an older age group with no previous exposure, I was ready to dive in.
I am so glad I did! (I am NOT being paid for this review, it's just been amazingly helpful for me!)
S-Cubed is broken down into teeny tiny, achievable steps with all the details included. He even has links to videos of himself teaching each lesson to actual middle schoolers in the real world. I needed something that would 'hold my hand' through this beginning process, and this was it!
Like I said, there may be a little sticker shock, but the program is broken up into levels so you can try one at a time, and Mr. D frequently does givaways and sales of this product if you follow him on social media (In The Middle With Mr. D)
Where we're headed:
I started S-Cubed in the spring of 2023. I look forward to finishing Level 1 with my students this coming school year. We will move on with subsequent levels, and I feel like by that time, Sight Reading Factory will really become more useful for us.
The students will have a foundation from which to work forward, and we can start realizing that dream of "No accompanist? Just do everything acapella!"
Who else has faced this challenge? How did you solve problems along the way? Comment below so we can continue to learn from each other!