Having beginning students prepare a solo is good pedagogy. However, sending kids to the practice room with a solo and no instruction can leave them in the dark.
To help, we’ve created a select set of Performance Plans to accompany KJOS’ popular collection Festival Solos, Book 1. Based on rubrics and assessment tools Kjos has published to complement the collection, our set of Performance Plans includes supplemental content for every solo in the book. For each solo there are 24 progressive exercises, and these are provided for beginning wind and brass instruments as well as mallets.
Each exercise is short, focused, and specific to the corresponding title:
They are organized so students can work on up to six exercises each week, progressively building skills in areas of rhythm, note accuracy, sense of ensemble, articulation, and musical expression. As a result, beginning students can access a four-week path to learn and perfect their solo in SmartMusic.
Simply assign any of the titles in Festival Solos, Book 1 to your standard or premium students, and they can access the associated Performance Plans from within each solo. These performance plans also appear within SmartMusic as a method, so you can assign specific plans or pin them to a class.
We encourage you to try these new Performance Plans with your beginning students as they prepare their first solos. Then visit the SmartMusic Community Page to let us know what you think of the idea of Performance Plans, or how they might be improved as we create them for additional content.