Customer Reviews

Making Each Minute Count: Time-Savers, Tips, and Kid-Tested Strategies for the Music Class

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I'm an elementary school music teacher for an Asian country, and I must say that this book has been a very useful resource and I do not regret buying it.

The cons of this book is that stuff like classroom management techniques are highly cultural sensitive - so it is definitely more suitable for the context of American classrooms.

However, many of the teaching techniques mentioned will definitely inspire you to make your lessons more interesting for children. They also seem to correspond quite closely with the 'learning through doing' techniques for teaching music to children that I was highly ingrained with during my pre-service training.

In short, this book is a sensible read and resource for elementary school music teachers who wish to inject a more creative approach towards teaching in their classrooms. It far beats some of those books which boast of a 101 music games etc etc which leave you with a feeling that you are running a circus rather than a music class.

This is a useful book for music educator who works with big classes. However if you are looking for ready-to-use lesson plans this book is not for you. The core idea is how to teach rather than what to teach. The author shares her ideas on classroom management,and presents various teaching strategies on how to introduce the material. I used some of the ideas from this book in the classroom. They worked like magic!

No one knew I was not the magician. Thank you, Ms. Lavender.

I agree with earlier reviewers, this book is a great resource for the music teacher but is not for you if you are looking for ready-made lesson plans. It's formatted in a very user friendly way and I especially love the warm-ups.

This book is jammed with great ideas for music classes or for any elementary school class where the teacher wants to inject a little fun. If you can get past the author's "controlling nature" -- she basically tries to tell you what clothes to wear and how to say "good morning, class" -- it will be well worth your while. I teach music in Los Angeles and use this book constantly.