Working with a younger age group definitely has its challenges. Especially when music theory is often pretty dry. I have always loved to balance lesson plans between, performative/creative assignments and theory heavy assignments. However sometimes the kids, often the younger ones, lose interest during the theory assignments. That is why it is so important to gamify as much as you can!!!
For those who dont know that gamifying is, it is a way to make often mundane tasks fun by changing the structure and adding points and rewards. I know all you teachers out there agree with me and have done this with your class or your private lesson students. However now that we are online there is an even greater need to gamify.
One thing Ive adopted for my online lessons is a challenge of some sort that I would assign to every one of my students with a point based system. For example I would create three videos of me doing an easy, medium and hard dictation and send one out to every student based on their music reading level. They would write down their answers and send them in to me. I would mark them, give them points and tell them how well they did amongst their peers. Keeping in mind that everyone is competing with not the same thing, but rather something that is an appropriate challenge for their level. Ive also hosted a music reading gameshow for the Junior Drumline! There were four rounds, each challenging them on a different aspect of reading or writing. Anything to get them excited about the ‘less fun’ parts of learning an instrument! And some friendly competition isnt bad either.
Hilary