Grab your Pick and Pick Quaver’s!
By Kristin Clark Taylor
The Game-Changer
Are you an elementary or middle school music educator looking for a new way to teach guitar that’s user-friendly, flexible, and just plain fun?
Here’s some good news:
Your search is over.
In music classrooms across the USA, educators are discovering that Quaver’s Guitar Course is hitting all the right notes and strumming all the right chords.
Bryan Sanders, a former band director and middle school music teacher in Sumner County, Tennessee, wholeheartedly agrees.
Before he discovered Quaver, Sanders readily concedes that he “wasn’t all that thrilled” with the tools that were at his disposal.
“I really had to search for supplemental resources to reinforce certain topics because the book I was using only had one or two exercises per concept,” he reflects.
Fortunately, Sanders didn’t have to fret for long. (Yep, the pun is intended!)
As soon as he brought Quaver into his classroom, good things began to happen:
- Enthusiasm ignited.
- Engagement levels increased.
- Self-confidence soared.
Sanders puts it plainly:
“Quaver was the game-changer.”
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Lessons that Leap to Life
What is that makes Quaver’s Guitar Course so special? What distinguishes it from the other available resources out there?
Only everything.
Sanders offers some specifics:
“Quaver’s visuals are phenomenal,” he says.
“The live performance videos are extremely helpful because they offer an up-close look at the performer’s hands from different angles.”
When students can watch a guitarist actually playing the instrument on-screen, Sanders says, “a human connection is formed, and the lessons come to life in a way that’s personal and relevant to them.”
The fact that the musical notation appears at the bottom of the screen adds yet another layer of instruction, Sanders says.
“They see, with their own eyes, the performer’s strumming hand, the hand on the fretboard, even the performer’s overall posture,” he says, “and it allows them to own their own learning!”
Take a look:
“The live videos create a human connection,” says Sanders.
Color-coding is another way that Quaver’s Guitar Lessons bring learning to life. With this technique, a teacher assigns a color to each note, thereby simplifying the learning process tremendously.
“I had a couple of dyslexic students in my music classroom,” Sanders notes, “and when you’re dyslexic, the notes just seem to fly off the page.”
Color-coding the notes, he says, “gave them a home base and a visual frame of reference,” he says. “It’s an extra tool that helps make learning a little easier, and a little more fun.”
Sanders, who is also a singer-songwriter in Nashville, says that he himself benefitted greatly from the color-coding technique.
“My primary instrument is the piano,” he says, “so when I first started teaching guitar, I’d color-code the notes so that I knew exactly where to go when I brought it up on the projector. It was a great tool for me, too!”
The Perfect Recipe for Success
When it comes to learning – and teaching — the guitar with any degree of success, Quaver’s course provides the perfect recipe. Here are some of the ingredients:
It’s User-Friendly: “I could get to different parts of my lesson with just the click of a button, which is very important in maintaining the pacing and engagement of my classroom,” Sanders says.
A Teacher’s Dream: “The lesson plans are already written, and the concepts are carefully scaffolded. You don’t have worry to about scope and sequence because Quaver covers all of that.”
“The resources I had to use before I found Quaver weren’t always paced correctly,” he remembers, noting that they were either too fast or didn’t provide exercises that allowed the students to reinforce the concepts.
Not so with Quaver.
“Quaver’s pacing never felt rushed,” Sanders says. “And the fact that they provide lessons in lots of different genres and styles really keeps students interested, engaged, and having fun. They feel like they’re part of the process!”
The ultimate message that Sanders conveys is deeply rooted in the principles of social and emotional learning.
“This course teaches guitar, but it also teaches students to be confident,” Sanders says. “It gave me a stronger sense of confidence, too, as the teacher!”
He reflects for a moment before finishing.
“This is when you can really foster a love of music – in an environment where everyone is confident, engaged, and having fun!”
Want to create this same environment in your classroom while you’re teaching guitar?
Grab your picks and pick Quaver.
For more information, go to QuaverEd.com/GuitarCourse.
Kristin Clark Taylor is an author and a journalist.
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