Establishing choirs at the elementary level is extremely beneficial for several reasons: It is a means for interested students to do more than what is done in the classroom. It is an alternative for students who, for some reason, cannot join a beginning instrumental class It is good public relations for the elementary music program It gives elementary students something that's "their own"

Before jumping right in, a group like this takes careful planning for success. The first thing you need to do is get with your principal and figure out answers to the following questions: Will you be able to schedule rehearsals within the school day? If they must be after school, could you possibly get a stipend? How will the budget for music and travel be funded? How often could you feasibly rehearse? Should this be an audition group, or open to everyone? Will you be allowed to remove students from the group because of poor behavior or attendance? (That should be a given, but never take anything for granted!) Could a booster group be organized? Who will accompany the choir? (You should avoid doing this yourself if possible) Must the group be limited to students in the district, or could it be opened to students at other schools in town or home-schooled students?

If some of the answers aren't exactly what you dreamed of , decide the pros and cons, based on your own personal life and student benefits.Next, PLAN! Get everything in your mind on how you'll handle it all within your limits. Here are some suggestions: If possible, go for 2-3 rehearsals a week for 30-40 minutes. Remember the elementary attention span! Unfortunately, this didn't work for me. I rehearsed once a week (with an extra rehearse thrown in several times a year), for 45-60 minutes, but the kids got short breaks. I also motivated them for good rehearsals with "recess" time and soda sales (more on that later). In addition, I made rehearsal tapes (more on THAT, too!) If you rehearse after school, type out transportation arrangement notes to have returned (for your own legal protection). Strongly emphasize ending times and pick-up deadlines. You have a life, too!

Decide what your talent and behavior expectations are and get those in writing. This plus the transportation arrangements could go in a letter to the parents at the meeting. The students need to know the limits for choir as they do for the classroom. Since mine is after school, I'm slightly more lenient, but not much, because we do sing at music festivals for a rating. Decide how often you will accept new members during the year. I have a fall cut-off date, then accept new members at semester, when we begin rehearsing for something new. Have an accompanist ready and a couple of alternates. Get together with him or her and make a master copy of a rehearsal tape. This will come in handy for the kids, plus it's a good emergency measure in case your accompanist can't show up! Finally, have your goals, expectations, and some ideas for your parent's meeting, but be flexible enough to consider suggestions from parents, other teachers, and the kids themselves.

OK, time to recruit! Like I mentioned, put it in your newsletter and have a return section for people to indicate interest in more information. This can give you a basis on how aggresive you need to be. Please, however, don't expect miracles the first year. The best recruitment is word of mouth from former members. You might need at least the first year to build a reputation and have kids tell their friends. As I mentioned earlier, decide if the members will be limited to just your school. Thomas Robertson told me (in recruiting members for a recorder ensemble) that he did not get many responses from public school students, but when he ran an ad in a home school newsletter, his phone rang like crazy. If you're limited to your school, you might consider personal invitations in the mail or by note to kids that you feel would benefit or be a positive contribution to the group. Better yet, pull them to the side and talk to them personally. Nothing makes a kid feel better or more needed than to have a teacher personally seek them out. Arrange an exchange concert with a neighboring district. Have an established group do an assembly at your school, and you plan to reciprocate in kind in the spring. This would end up being a sort of "Hey, cool! I can do that!" attitude. Please bear in mind, though, unless you're the totally patient kind, that a small group of truly devoted students is better than a huge group that includes some goof-offs. I had kids that ended up quitting (before they had to face me telling them to quit) when I asked them why they were in the group, when they did not seem interested in singing. Their answer? "It's something to do". Oh, well! Athletic coaches wouldn't tolerate that. You shouldn't, either. This also goes for the kids who are in it because their friends are. When I initially had the kids fill out an information form, one of the questions was "Why do you want to join?". If anyone answered that it was something to do or because my friends are in it had a serious talk with me. Chances are good, though, that the slackers will quit just because it's too much "work".

Alright, now it's time to meet the parents! At my parent's meeting, I went over the rules and had the parents fill out and leave the information sheet, including the transportation arrangements. If there's time, Open House might be a convenient situation to have the interested parents meet, because they're at school anyway, and the schedule is usually pretty flexible.Tell the parents what your goals are, and ask for volunteers. Don't wait for them to do so, because they won't. Tell them what you need. Get ideas for performances. Many of these parents will belong to civic groups that would just love to have a kids' group sing for their awards dinner. (And what great school PR!). Ask for booster officers, especially someone reliable to handle the money. (Best bet: make sure there need to be two signatures on the checks. Of course, get two parents that won't have trouble getting in touch with each other, or make sure one of the signatures is yours). Tell them how you plan to fund the choir, and get their ideas on fundraisers. Or, you may discuss the idea of charging a nominal fee for joining. Just for some ideas: we had soda sales at the end of each rehearsal. You can buy soda by the case, then sell it for soda-machine prices. I rotated the "consessioniers" each week. For our Six Flags trip, we had a major fund raiser, with one catch: whatever each student netted went towards their own ticket. That way, some kids wouldn't get a free ride for nothing. Extra money went towards chaperone tickets, transportation, or was saved.

OK, you have your choir organized What are they going to sing? If you're strapped for money, you need a subscription to K-8 Magazine. For around $95, you can get the bi-monthly magazine with a good variety of songs (often 2-part) and accompanying CD that has the full performance and accompaniment only (great if you had difficulty landing an accompanist!). Best of all, you have copying rights to the songs. If you have friends in neighboring districts who have established young choirs, they may be willing to loan or sell octavos to you. If you know you will establish fund-raisers, you can order the music yourself and have the booster club reimburse you, like I did. It was much quicker to put music on my credit card (sometimes, I would get music within 3 days from J.W. Pepper by using my card, then getting the money back from the choir account. In selecting music, you should look for 2-part songs that are repetitive (maybe something where the 2 sections have the parts switched), partner songs, or simple harmony in thirds. Don't go for anything complicated. Check the range. Anything higher than f3, and your sopranos will be stretching it. If you get something higher than that, make sure you choose only a select few that can handle the higher parts. Also, think about the strength of the kids who sing your second parts. Do you have any strong leaders there? If not, you might consider music in which the two parts sing in unison quite a bit, and where the second part is also allowed to have the melody. Most music companies will let you order an octavo on approval, or might even send out demo tapes upon request. Also, the Pepper site has audio clips for some of their songs, as well as segments of the octavos themselves (which require the Adobe Acrobat reader plug-in. However, the best places I have found to get a good idea of what a song is like is at reading sessions. I know that it's usually well-trained teachers singing the songs at these sessions, but you get to hear the whole piece, and have first dibs on the new arrangements that are out. Plus, you'll find out if you have trouble sight-reading it, chances are an elementary group is going to have trouble! And keep in touch with those other teachers! Find out what has worked for them, and what they like. After all, teachers are the real experts here!

Here it is, the first rehearsal. What are ya gonna do (besides panic?). You won't, because you're prepared! At the very first rehearsal, you should talk with the kids about the expectations, performances, and rules (yes, rules) of the rehearsal. You may not want to phrase it as rules, but as behavior necessary for a good group. How much will you allow the kids to talk? Will you allow them to do homework while you are working with a different section? What is your attention signal? It's a good idea to post behavior for successful rehearsals at each practice. Also, what will happen to the students who do not comply with these rules? These are things you and your principal should decide ahead of time. Also, emphasize to the kids the fact that your accompanist has the right to make sure that students are behaving correctly, and that they will let you know of any problems. What kind of awards will you be giving? Will you have any special privileges for good rehearsals? Actually, the best privileges come unannounced, when kids are motivated to do well just because they want to. Often, after a good rehearsal, I would just announce that there was spare time, so they could go play on the playground. The students need to know right off the bat the expectations for the year, just like they would in the classroom.

Time for the warm-ups! You should probably explain to them briefly why they are to do warm-ups, and do them seriously. Make the comparison to a sports team warming up, if you have to. The warm-ups should consist of long tone exercises, breathing exercises, and consonant practice. If you like, you can incorporate technique things into your warm-ups, too, or sections of songs with which they have difficulty, but changing the words. A good breathing exercise is to have the kids inhale through their nose, taking in as much air as they can, then hissing through their teeth, seeing how long it takes them to empty out their lungs. This is a good exercise for diaphragmatic control. Doing ha-ha exercises on a 5-note pattern is also good. Then, there are the fun stand-bys. My kids absolutely love "Mommy made me mash my M&M's" on a 5-note pattern, modulating up a half step for each sequence. (They always liked to tag on "and Skittles" on the modulation!) Something fun for their creative juices: have them substitute two of the yuckiest food combinations they can come up with and change the warm-up ("Mommy made me mash my broc-co-li" "And liver". The grosser, the better). Another great warm-up (taken from an ArtsEdge list thread, which is no longer available:) use Dr. Suess's ABC's. Pick a couple of the cute, nonsense rhymes, any letter, and repeat each one on one pitch, going up either scale-wise or by half-steps. It's loads of fun!

In your actual rehearsals, try to sing songs straight through as much as possible before breaking them down into sections. The kids need to know the continuity of the songs and how they fit together, plus, they need to learn to keep going no matter what. Besides, kids this age get awfully frustrated if you sing and stop, sing and stop. After going through it, isolate the major problem spots, spend about 15 minutes or so on that song, then go on, jotting down notes for the next time. Try not to spend too much time with sections alone. The other sections get awfully restless. If you have a super accompanist and an extra place to rehearse, schedule sectionals so that for the entire rehearsal time, the parts can be isolated without students having to sit and wait. If your accompanist doesn't feel comfortable doing this, ask another music teacher if they would mind helping out. (Offer to buy them lunch or something.) Sectionals make a ton of difference. I always made rehearsal tapes for the kids to check out. The accompanist and I would record the piano part, then I would record and sing each individual part on a tape, plus play the two parts together on the piano. If a demo tape was available, I would include that excerpt. Elementary students need something concrete for their practices, and this is a great way to do it. It may seem time-consuming, but it helps save rehearsal time in the end. Plus, you can see from your check-out list who's the most motivated.

Speaking of practice: I assigned each student a folder with a number, and typed the words to the songs to include in that folder so they could take it home. This saved money on lost octavos. The music itself was saved for rehearsals and performances. Do anything like this to make your life easier. Extra work at the beginning is worth it!

Some other ideas from other educators: From "Beeper": ...I found that a great way to make my weak singers feel important is to have them introduce the pieces we're performing. You can either write a paragraph about each piece, or better still, have the kids come up with what they want to say. Have your weakest singers practice reading one or two of these paragraphs and then choose who will get to introduce each song....Another idea is to feature some of these students in movement routines or dances.

Pam Donkin charges a slight fee for her group, in lieu of fundraisers and in conjunction with the PTA, who gets a percentage of the money. Her programs are organized around a theme. Her groups meet after school, and involve mostly grades K-3.

A terrific resource book for aspiring elementary choir directors is Teaching the Elementary School Chorus by Linda Swears. This book contains great ideas on organization, auditioning, working with children's voices, foundations of choral singing, teaching diction, teaching part singing, organizing rehearsals, and getting ready for concerts.

When you get your group up and ready to go, please contact us! You can possibly have your group featured on the website, complete with audio clips! Next month's topic concerns preparing for subs. (and don't you know that when an emergency comes up, the only one available is the one who can't sing?). There is no need to scare them off.

Your contributions, suggestions, and ideas are THE vital part to this site. Please feel free to submit any suggestions or topic ideas that you might have.