Hey everyone--

I will be starting a teaching job next week where my responsibilities include teaching 3-5 grade strings. I am much more comfortable teaching band but am open to this experience as well. I`ve been searching high and low for some sort of general curriculum guide to tell me where I need to have the kids at the end of each year. The main thing I`m starting to worry about is: when do students start to learn shifting? I`ll be teaching groups of 8-10 kids half hour lessons every week, so we won`t be moving very fast at all.

Any links to helpful websites would be appreciated as well...

Thanks!
Alison

If they`re beginners then you won`t need to worry about shifting for YEARS if you`re in a group situation.

liz

Thanks--

I figured as much, but then one friend asked me and I realized I had no idea.

Back to practicing so at least I`ll be better than my 8-year olds...I was an oboe major in school....

:-)

Shifting really depends on their ability. But generally, I would make em shift after 1-2 yrs. But they won`t get to do tedious passages with ridiculous shiftings yet...just some simple ex on the A string to D( 3rd position) only...which eventually leads to D major scale, 2 octaves(3rd position). And the rest will fall in nicely in place.
But some kids are really slow, they have difficulty even in the first position...the hand shape somehow just doesn`t seem to work...so if that`s the case, forget about trying to make em shift...and focus on building foundations. If the foundations are good, shifting is only a matter of time. And then there`s the super type that can do good enough shifting in a year`s time. It really depends on their learning ability and the group size. Apparantly the bigger the group, the slower paced things might be. Even simple things like playing full bow seems to take forever.
And if you`ve tackled shifting, it`s good to think about vibrato also. Normally I like to teach vibrato earlier. I teach them in their third grade, so that they really feel comfortable with it by their fifth grade. I think that vibrato is a must from grade 5 onwards.
Hope that helps. Good luck.

Alison, I remember when I was in grade school and learning the violin we were taught with the All For Strings series by Gerald E. Anderson and Robert S. Frost. It starts with Book one which begins with "This is a violin, viola, etc..." and takes you through EVERYTHING you need to know. They publish teacher`s editions, which I have, that accompany the books and are EXCELLENT teaching/learning tools.

Again, thanks for the suggestions! I am getting nervous for school to start (it appears that I`ll have about 25 violins and 5 violas in third grade alone!) but I`m starting to think everything will be ok. I`ve been practicing and have pretty good control of first position...

I`m sure I`ll be posting with more specific questions as school goes on!

-Alison

I agree that Vibrato is better to teach early. I was not introduced to it until I had been playing for 5 years and it was a really difficult battle to beat. Catch the bad habits while they are young because it is hard to get rid of them as they get older.