The goal of the SmartMusic blog is to share actionable advice that music educators can put to use in the classroom. While we all have our personal favorites, these are the top five SmartMusic blog posts of 2017 according to you:

5. Considering the Hidden Curriculum in Music Classrooms

Hidden curriculum refers to the unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons, values, and perspectives that students learn in school. Colleen Conway challenges us to recognize hidden curriculum in our music classroom (both positive and negative) and to consider which we’d like to retain.

4. Using Differentiated Instruction in Music Lesson Plans

Incorporating differentiated instruction into your classroom can help meet student needs, empower them, and help them learn new skills faster. Here are five concrete ways you can build differentiated instruction into your lesson plans.

3. Improve Your Lesson Plan with Questions

Ensemble class typically takes the form of a back and forth. Students play, then the director tells them what to change. While this feedback is great, students aren’t fully accountable for their learning with this approach. Learn how powerful asking questions can be in this context.

2. Matching Students to Instruments: The Selection Process

One of the most exciting and important events in the life of a prospective band student is when he or she selects the instrument they are going to play. Bruce Pearson offers eight principles you can use to give each prospective student the best and most helpful information to assist in their decision.

1.Teaching Rhythm Logically from Day One

What if we taught rhythm first? This would give every student in the ensemble, even those who are missing supplies, a chance to participate fully in the lessons. More importantly, building a foundation in rhythm before students learn to make sounds gives form to their initial tone production. There is never a moment in which students are holding random lengths of sound.

Of course the SmartMusic blog also occasionally talks about SmartMusic. Among the most popular posts about the new SmartMusic were articles highlighting benefits added over the summer, and our November progress report.

Thank you!

We hope you’ve enjoyed our “best of 2017” recap; we certainly enjoyed working with our contributing authors to share their expertise with you. And we’re very thankful for you, our readers, for making it all possible.

Are there topics you’d like us to cover in 2018? Please let us know on Facebook or Twitter.

We wish you all the very, very best for 2018!