I spent the first three days of my holidays in Queensland attending the Step Up mini conference celebrating the launch of Kodaly Qld's new DVD for middle primary (I posted about it here, I highly recommend checking out this resource!).
The conference was a fantastic opportunity to catch up with like-minded colleagues and share ideas. I was able to crystalise my thinking about a number of aspects of teaching such as assessment and advocacy as well as picking up some new games and ideas.
And some books, too. Always some books!
The three day conference was kicked off by Deb Brydon, president of Kodaly Queensland, who gave a wonderfully uplifting keynote about the importance of taking time to step back and reflect on why we do what we do, and the power of what it is we are giving our young people - not only music, but identity, self-confidence and belonging.
One of the guest presenters was the wonderful Aileen Miracle, of Mrs. Miracle's Music Room, all the way from Ohio in the U.S.
She had a number of excellent sessions on American folk songs & games, centres in the music room (if you're curious about how to use centres, you can read some of her blog posts on the topic here) different ways to encourage improvisation in the music room and also some ideas to run Musical Programs
There was a fantastic panel where a number of presenters discussed different ways they use assessment in the music room and featured everything from Kaboom Percussion's resource packs to comparative listening analyses to form a "Responding to Music" task.
Winner of the 2019 Katalin Forrai award Gail Godfrey led us through a Guided Imagery and Music experience (which was a welcome moment of zen in an otherwise hectic conference!) and talked about the educational and therapeutic benefits of GIM.
I attended both musicianship and choir sessions run by the outstanding Reka Csernyik, in which we covered a wealth of repertoire and gained some wonderful solfa games and warm ups.
Finally, we were given a sneak peak into Kodaly Queensland's newest DVD release: Step Up. This DVD provides a series of activities for Years 2 - 4 and is jam-packed with printable and editable resources, song sheets and video demonstrations of all activities with real classes!
I can't wait to explore this resource further (oh well, there go my holidays!).