Welcome to the FAME events page!
View a full calendar view of our upcoming teacher certification course classes and workshops below.
Unlock the magic of early childhood music with the First Steps in Music curriculum! Join this 24-hour teacher certification professional development course to learn how to create engaging, tuneful, and artful experiences for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Learn interactive techniques, understand the research supporting the curriculum, and have an opportunity to ask questions and deepen your understanding. Perfect for educators looking to enrich their music classes with proven strategies and timeless songs!
Fall 2024
Tuesdays, 6:30-7:30 pm Eastern (New York)
Dates: October 8, 15, 22, 29; November 12, 19
Credits: 1.5 Grad Cred or PD Cert. Hours
Prerequisites: FSM and/or CS Levels 1&2 required
Friday October 24, 2024
8:30–9:45 a.m. | Allard Hall | Room 11-463
Teaching the “Tuneful, Beatful, Artful Part” of Singing to Music in Elementary Grades
4:45-6:00 p.m. | Allard Hall | Room 11-463
Teaching the “Tuneful, Beatful, Artful Part” of Moving to Music in Elementary Grades
Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024
3:15–4:30 p.m. | Allard Hall | Room 11-463
Sing in Parts: Pedagogy Ideas for Beginning Part-Singing by Ear and By Eye
Description
- Music and Movement in the Early Years: Developing Tunefulness, Beatfulness, and Artfulness
- An Ear-First Approach to Musical Thinking the Feierabend Way
Description
Students’ first attempts at part-singing can sometimes be very frustrating, but with careful planning and an understanding of the complexities involved, part-singing should be a rewarding and effortless experience for all involved. Participants will explore a developmental approach using diverse partner songs, rounds, and baseline melodies, as well as an introduction to choral improvisation.
Transform your elementary students into confident choral singers with “Next Steps to Singing in Harmony.” This course offers practical strategies to seamlessly transition your students from early elementary Tuneful activities to upper elementary choral excellence. Learn how to repurpose familiar First Steps in Music and Conversational Solfege repertoire to build harmony skills, improve tone quality, and foster musical independence. This course is perfect for educators looking to maximize limited singing time and create a strong foundation for their choirs.
Learn More and Register now!
Conversational Solfege Upper Levels Overview Mini-course – “An Ear-First Approach to Harmony and Improvisation for Middle and High School Performing Ensembles”
Unlock your ensemble’s improvisation potential with the “Conversational Solfege Upper Levels Overview Mini-Course.” In this dynamic 3-hour session, you’ll explore John Feierabend’s Ear-First Approach to teaching harmony and improvisation to middle and high school ensembles. Learn how to guide students in tonal analysis, melody creation, and jazz-style improvisation, starting from the basics of “Discovering the Bass Line.”
This workshop is perfect for upper elementary, Middle, and high school ensemble teachers who have completed Conversational Solfege Levels 1-2 and aim to expand their curriculum and deepen their older students’ understanding of harmony and improvisation in an interactive “ear-first” way.
Learn more and Register Here
Unlock the power of music literacy for your students with Conversational Solfege! This transformative course, designed by Dr. John Feierabend, equips educators with research-based methods to teach rhythm, melody, and improvisation across all levels—from elementary classrooms to collegiate ensembles. Dive into a literature-driven curriculum that makes reading music notation as natural as speaking.
This course is ideal for educators who want to adopt a proven, research-based method for music reading that enhances listening, responding, and improvisation skills. Get ready to feel inspired and motivated to elevate your teaching and your students’ musical thinking!
Learn more and register for the course
Description:
Multiple Intelligence in the Music Classroom: Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence suggests that individuals do not have just one intelligence but, rather, possess a portfolio of intelligences, Music being one of them. What is becoming increasingly evident is that while developing our students’ music ability, we are also helping to support the other intelligences. When we invite our student to sing, move, play instruments, and respond expressively, we are helping to nurture, strengthen and develop their Verbal, Linguistic, Logical, Mathematical, Bodily, Kinesthetic, Visual Spatial, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal intelligences, as well. Because our content is developmentally appropriate, almost everything we teach in the music classroom can have an equally significant impact on the general classroom. Feierabend will discuss the Theory of Multiple Intelligence and its implications and applications in the general music classroom, and also explore ideas and lessons designed to be shared with classroom colleagues in their classroom.
John Feierabend’s 2018 reissued book Conversational Solfege Level 3 (a.k.a. “Upper Levels” or just “CSUL”), is the same Ear-First Approach to thinking musical thoughts that sets Conversational Solfege apart, and it’s geared towards MS/HS performing ensembles. CSUL picks up the sequence where Level 2 left off, guiding students to think, read and write in most keys, meters, and regions of the staff. CSUL also offers a curriculum to teach musicians a conversational knowledge of major and minor diatonic harmony, and its application to teaching improvisation and composition with performing ensemble classrooms. Building on the conversational skill of “discovering the baseline” to create a harmony, introduced in Level 2, this curriculum leads students to use a bass line to inform tonal analysis to reveal the corresponding diatonic chord tones, and the many melodic contrapuntal possibilities that weave harmony together. Come prepared to sing.
Description
Listening to stories is an incredible way to broaden our understanding of ourselves and others. By incorporating a story with an attached song, John Feierabend’s First Steps in Music 8-part musical workout gives students a “cool down” time while the teacher models expressive singing and storytelling for the students. Want to enhance your musical storytelling? Join teacher trainer John Crever and learn powerful musical techniques to take your expressive storytelling skills to the next level.
Description
“Often a single experience will open the young soul to music for a whole lifetime. This experience cannot be left to chance. It is the duty of the school to provide it.” Zoltán Kodály: Children’s Choruses, 1929
This course is perfect for upper elementary general music, as well as middle school and high school choral and instrumental teachers.
Description
Transitioning from unison to part singing can be challenging for upper elementary and middle school students. Proven strategies for developing part-singing by ear and eye are critical for the preparation of choral singing in the later grades. But where to begin? And how? This session will address the part-singing challenges that upper elementary and middle school students encounter while transitioning from unison to parts and from ear to eye in the development of part-singing competency. When we set up an appropriate sequence of learning, all of our students can be on their way to not only singing with understanding and joy during their school years but will have the necessary skills to sing independently and with others throughout their lives.
Improvisation plays a crucial role in music development, but when to begin, and how? With appropriate prompts, engaging methods, and active participation, even young children can successfully improvise. “The Nutcracker ” (Movement Exploration) and “Hansel and Gretel” (Arioso; vocal improvisation) provide two distinct opportunities, and the inspiration and tools necessary to aid creativity. What a wonderful way to start, even our youngest students, on their path to a life-time of confident improvisation. Join us as we dance each character and discover the delight of moving expressively and musically to many of the Movement Exploration themes in “The Nutcracker,” and explore the many opportunities for Arioso in “Hansel and Gretel.”
This course will provide participants with insights and practical knowledge to implement developmentally appropriate musical activities for children under three years old. Folk songs, rhymes, and Classical music are highlighted as primary source materials. Research findings and pedagogical techniques will be discussed, giving participants a solid foundation to support very young children to become Tuneful, Beatful and Artful.