How to Structure a Recorder Lesson

Believe it or not, teaching the recorder is one of my favorite parts about teaching general music (at least in the beginning of the unit–I do reach my limit eventually!) Over the years, I’ve structured my recorder lessons differently. Here is what works best for me:

Before the Recorders Arrive

During the covid years, I made fake recorders out of dowel rods with the holes drawn on. Students learned how to hold it and what the fingerings were at school, then played the recorder at home. While I would never want to go back to that method (it wasn’t effective, but it was the best we could do!) I now start every recorder unit with the fake dowel recorders.

Before the real recorders arrive, we use the fake ones to practice hand position, fingerings for BAG, and this is when I first mention tonguing. We spend about 5 minutes on this for 2 lessons. When students receive their real recorder, they already have some background knowledge on how to hold them and make the first three notes. This has been great because I’ve found that nobody really wants to listen to me the first time they hold a recorder; they just want to blow into them!

The First Lesson

The first lesson is going to be loud and chaotic. I set some ground rules (no blowing as hard as you can, no blowing in someone else’s ear) but otherwise, I let students go for a little bit while I finish passing out all the recorders. Pretty quickly, everyone agrees with me when I say our ears need a break.

We then review hand position and start playing a B. Students echo a variety of rhythms all on the note B. I purposely play some faster rhythms that won’t work without tonguing so that students see why tonguing is important. We repeat this for the notes A and G.

After that, we do more echo patterns with 2 note and 3 note combinations. By the end of the lesson, we’re playing hot cross buns by rote.

At the end of the class period, we divide into our two recorder groups.

Recorder Groups

I used to do whole-group lessons every single class. However, there was a year where the class size was much larger than what I was used to, and I couldn’t catch individual mistakes as they happened, because there were too many kids to focus on. So, I decided to try splitting the class in half and teaching the same lesson twice. One half would work with me on recorders, and the other half would do independent work, which was usually note reading exercises (more about that later!) Halfway through the class, we switched.

I did not assign the groups based on ability. I asked for volunteers to be in Group A (which they later renamed) and volunteers to be in Group B. Pretty much every kid raised their hand to be in Group A, so I chose a group that I thought could complete independent work without me. If there were two students who I knew didn’t get along or who would distract each other, I would only pick one of them to be in Group A. I’m sure it seemed like I was just randomly picking kids, but it was strategic.

Independent Work

Splitting the class in half was only successful because of the independent work that was assigned when students were not working with me. This created a bit of up-front work for me, but once I had a bank of activities to choose from, it wasn’t too bad coming up with that week’s independent lesson.

We usually alternated classes with a worksheet-based activity and a digital activity. Here are some options for both:

Worksheet-Based Activities

Color by Treble Clef notes

One of my students’ favorite ways to practice note naming was through coloring. I gave them two different types of color-by-note style sheets.

Mystery Grid Pictures (Space Themed) ($2.50) There are 6 mystery pictures in this set. One picture uses only line notes, one only space notes, one is BAG, two are either A-F or A-G, and one uses middle C, low D, and the G and A on top of the staff.

Seasonal and Holiday Color-by Note Sets (1 set for $3, 15 sets for $29.95) Pretty much any holiday or season you could want is included–this link will take you to the bundle, but if you only want one, you can click on the set you like best. These are not mystery images, but they are still fun to color. Each set has three color-by-treble clef pictures that include line notes, space notes, and all 7 notes. There are also 3 color-by-rhythm pictures that range from just quarter notes/rest and eighth notes, to sixteenth note/eighth note combinations. Beyond that, there are color-by-dynamics and musical symbol sheets as well, which is great for beginning recorder students!

Recorder Fingering Diagrams

In my Free Resource Library, you will find a few worksheets that ask students to color a recorder with the correct fingerings for various notes! Sign up for my email list to receive the password to the Free Resource Library!

Digital Activities

Quizizz

My students loved it when they saw a Quizizz pulled up on the screen. This was slightly less independent than what we did on other days, but they were able to run the game without me. I assigned one student to start the quiz when everyone was logged on so I could focus on the recorder group.

You will need an account (free!) but the students won’t. They can go to joinmyquiz.com and enter the game code for the quiz you want. I was able to search “recorder” or “recorder fingering quiz” and find tons of good quizzes made by other teachers. I tried to pick quizzes that were at least 20 questions long.

Google Slides Activity

Admittedly less fun than quizizz, but still valuable, my students completed this Digital Independent Recorder Activity ($2) for the notes BAG. It asks students to match notes with fingerings, fingerings with notes, letters with notes, and letters with fingerings. I put it in our Google Classroom and made sure to click “make a copy for each student.”

Dr. Musik

One of the best ways to make note reading fun is a dungeon game! This site has tons of great games, but the Staff Dungeon was the biggest hit. Students do not need an account to play. In order to advance through the dungeon, students have to name each note.

Recorder Curriculum

This is the easy part. I think one of the reasons I like teaching recorder is that the planning is very minimal compared to planning other elementary music lessons! We use the Be a Recorder Star book from Macie Publishing to introduce new notes and concepts, but that’s really just a means to an end for the Recorder Karate book. The students LOVE advancing through recorder karate. Since I split the class in two, it’s much easier to listen to each student play individually than when I only did whole group lessons. When they earn a belt, they receive a rubber band to put around their recorder.

Final Thoughts

I will never go back to whole class teaching for recorder. We accomplished so much more in smaller groups, and it gave students a bit of time to do their own thing instead of listen to me the entire class period. Of course, there are class periods where I want to quickly show the whole class how to do something, so we start with that for a few minutes and then get into our groups.

Like everything else, you can change the curriculum you use, how the class is structured, the brand of recorders you buy, etc. next year if something isn’t working. There are so many ways to make teaching the recorder a good experience for your students (and you!), so give something a try and adjust as you go along!