Songwriting has been used in music therapy for decades to help address trauma, alleviate depression and build confidence in both children and adults. With components that great music education models point to--composition, agency, collaboration, and means for self-expression, songwriting seems to be a useful tool for music educators as well. Yet,…

This article presents a project, Shapes of Water, funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, which gave music education students the opportunity to compose children's songs about climate change with the help of artists from two fields (contemporary circus and music) and a scientist (chemistry). The article outlines the ways in which the composing…

Music, movement, and imaginative play are essential for young children to explore and understand the world around them. It is important for educators of early primary students to consider how they can facilitate meaningful learning experiences that are practical, engaging, and allow children to investigate unfamiliar musical ideas in supportive,…

This design case describes how the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) informed the development of SpectrumPlay, a digital tool created to support learning and instruction of elementary music literacy and composition in inclusive music classrooms. The learning supports embedded in the tool enable students with visual processing…

In this column, I discuss a soundscape composition activity that I implemented with primary/elementary music classes. During this activity, students used the iPad app, iMovie, to record, organize and edit sound to accompany photos of artworks that they had created. Overall, I found iMovie to be a useful app for music composition with general music…

In this article, we situate songwriting in elementary spaces as a vehicle for personal and musical expression and informed by popular music practices. We offer insights for how educators can anchor students' work by encouraging them to create songs for a specific purpose like shedding light on social issues relevant to their lives. This article…

The presence of popular music education in schools has expanded significantly in the past two decades within the United States in part due to the expansion of modern band programming. Initially developed and propagated by the non-profit organization Little Kids Rock (LKR), modern band is a term used to describe school-based ensembles that use…

Modern band programs have spread throughout the United States to create learner-centered and culturally affirming school music experiences for children. The four key concepts of modern band, (1) approximation and scaffolding, (2) decision-making, (3) iconic notation, and (4) culturally sustaining (music education), are congruent with many…

The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine elementary music teachers' planning times. The existing literature on planning time is scarce and the literature on elementary music teachers' planning time is nearly nonexistent. The following research questions guided the study: (a) How many minutes of planning time do elementary music…

Mental training has been employed successfully by experienced musicians, but rarely explored with younger learners. Considering its benefits, however, including the use and development of predictive, feedforward processes, identified in neuroscience as being central to playing a musical instrument, this mixed qualitative-quantitative study…

This article reports on a case study in a Norwegian primary school where nearly 50 fifth-grade pupils took part in a creative music-making project. Facilitated by two professional artists, they created an original piece of music and performed their composition for an audience at the end of the project week. A substantial part of the data consisted…

One way to build a comprehensive, inclusive, and equitable music education is through the inclusion of popular music in curricula. However, it can be challenging for teachers to bring popular music into the classroom for many reasons. We suggest that since many teachers are educated in the Orff Schulwerk approach, this can be one way to teach…

The purpose of this collective case study was to examine how four elementary music teachers (from different U.S. regions) integrated modern band into their curricula. Data included semi-structured interviews, videos, emails, and a researcher journal. Teachers integrated modern band to improve student "buy-in" and to gain instruments. All…

Using an action research methodology, I conducted a self-study to improve my capacity to implement creative music pedagogies with Grade 4 and 5 students (N = 43) in a school on the Canadian prairies. Data sources included: field notes, student assessments, video recordings, debriefing sessions, small group conversations, and surveys. Qualitative…

The existence of thematic songs in theme books in Elementary Schools appears to be ineffective in supporting the attainment of learning objectives. In addition to the limited number of songs, the lack of appropriate lyrics and materials remains one of the causes. Due to this, the most possible alternative solution is for teachers to compose their…