Upcoming Skills Workshops

Each online session will dig into a specific topic related to teaching Music Together family classes and include both large and small group work/practice and support you in your continued commitment to professional development. Online skills workshops are $15 per teacher, are two hours in length (including a short break), and will be scheduled at varying times throughout the year. These workshops are eligible to active teachers and licensees only. Certain workshops may be recommended for MTWT and MTIS teachers and specialists. If you have any questions regarding our online workshops, please email teachers@musictogether.com. Current Skills Workshop Topics are…

Lesson Planning: Creativity within Structure

The brilliance of the lesson planning model that Ken and Lili developed years ago hasn’t changed much over the past 35+ years! Why? Because it works! The recommended 12-activity lesson plan framework shapes the ebb and flow of energy throughout class—from quiet, focused moments, to high-energy peaks, and all the connective tissue in between. That lesson plan arc (along with many other things, of course) keeps families engaged and re-directs energy throughout our 45-minute classes. There are a lot more nuances to the why’s behind each of our activities and how they shape the big picture than meets the eye. Understanding these nuances and educational benefits of our activities within the LP structure can inform your lesson planning at an even deeper level. Come join us as we dig into the subtleties of lesson planning and how it can inform your creativity and even classroom management! Whether new or experienced, we think this workshop is valuable for teachers at all levels. 

Parent Education: Sharing the WHY Behind the WHAT in a Music Together class

Whether you’ve been creating and serving “meatball sandwiches” for a semester, a year, or a decade, it’s incredibly helpful to revisit why and how we deliver high-quality Parent Education Moments (PEMs) in our classes. Join us for this skills workshop and acquire a deeper understanding of the underlying purpose, content resources, and techniques for delivering effective PEMs. We’ll work as a large group and also in small-group breakout rooms to maximize learning and engagement, and you’ll come away with new “ingredients” to make your “meatball sandwiches” as tantalizing as possible!

Classroom Management: Responsive Strategies for Successful Teaching

In this skills workshop, we’ll discuss both adult and child behaviors and work on strategies and techniques for handling the most difficult of these with grace and respect. Managing a classroom with children at different ages and stages requires an understanding of what’s developmentally appropriate. We will explore how to honor a child’s natural stage of development while still maintaining the joy of making music together. You won’t want to miss this one whether you teach family classes or in school – you’ll leave with a much bigger “toolbox”!

What’s in a Song – Beyond Beginning/Middle/End

Song development and presentation –it’s at the heart of what we do. In this workshop we’ll dig into the many facets of developing and leading songs, from the fundamental principles of beginning, middle, end to the nitty gritty of micro-planning. So, whether you’re a new teacher who’s looking to add to your bag of tricks or a long-time teacher who’s stuck in a song-leading rut, you’ll come away from this workshop with fresh ideas and techniques to make your song planning easier, more effective…and more fun! Come join us and we’ll jumpstart your creativity and give you practical tools to take back into your classroom!

Music Development: See it. Hear it. Share it.

In this skills workshop we’ll discuss the predictable sequence of tonal and rhythm development milestones and explore the tools and techniques needed to recognize and reinforce children’s emerging music behaviors. Together, you and your colleagues will have an opportunity to sharpen your observation skills, practice taking “snapshots” of children’s music behaviors, and learn how to help grownups recognize and support their child’s inner musician both in and out of the classroom.

Working with Babies in Mixed-age Classes

Join us for this skills workshop to learn how to engage babies in your classes. You’ll learn how babies develop musically, how they develop in general, and how to adapt your teaching to be more inclusive for families with infants. We’ll also share teaching techniques used in Babies Classes and explore ways to integrate them into your mixed-age classes.

Tonality and Tonal Patterns: The Basics

In this skills workshop, we will explore the resting tone, the pitches that make up the resting tone chord, and the intervals in a Major scale. We will also take a deep dive into the framework for creating tonal pattern strings, with a focus on the Major tonality. Participants will have the opportunity to practice leading and improvising tonal patterns for songs in Major keys, and creating parent education moments about “the why behind the what” of tonal patterns.

Advanced Tonality and Tonal Patterns

In this skills workshop, we will decode and demystify the Music Together Tonality Chart, apply the tonal pattern string structure and chord functions to a variety of tonalities, and practice leading and improvising tonal patterns. In advance of this workshop, we highly recommend participants view the Teacher Blog post on Unlocking the Tonality Chart.

1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2: Breaking the Code of Asymmetric Meter Songs and Chants

In this skills workshop, we will join together for an immersive experience in asymmetric meter and learn how to break the rhythmic code behind these rich pieces of music. Through this workshop you’ll learn a system for unlocking the asymmetric songs and chants (and their rhythm patterns!) that you already know – and the ones you’ve yet to discover.