how to use recorders in your curriculum

Recorders For All: Providing Recorders to ALL Students (And How To Make Recorders a Useful Part of Your Curriculum)

Hello Readers! So this week I am headed off to the FMEA Conference (Florida Music Educators Conference) in Tampa. And I’m excited to be doing a poster presentation on a grant I got last year. I was set on making sure every students could have a recorder of their own.

Up until that point, I had a class set of recorders that had to be sanitized at the end of every day. I didn’t like it (who has time to sanitize recorders every day?). My kids didn’t like it (who wants to think about putting your mouth on a recorder that someone else used the day before)?

So, luckily, with the help of a grant from FEMEA (the elementary wing of Florida’s music education association), I was able to get the funds to make my goal possible. Check out this post to find out how to make this happen in your own classroom, as well as links to helpful resources for using recorders in your classroom.

Getting Funding

If you are in my old position and have just a classroom set of recorders you have to sanitize, then I strongly encourage you to look into your options to get personal recorders for each student. Here are some possible ways to make it work:

  • Apply for a grant. Consider your state professional association, your county, or other local chapters of professional organizations like Gordon, Orff or Kodaly. You’d be surprised how often chapters have money to give away and nobody applying for it!
  • Ask your PTA for money.
  • Ask your principal if they can fund it out of a school account.
  • Sponsor a fundraiser.
  • Do it a little bit at a time.
  • Request donations from fifth graders at the end of the year. Many of them will not have a need for their recorders going into middle school, and you can get a bunch of recorders for free!

As a side note, I still give my students the opportunity to purchase a recorder of their own. I would say 50%-70% of my students purchase their own recorder, so I only have to provide recorders to those students who don’t already own one, which makes the whole process much more feasible.

Getting Organized

So once you’ve got the money, I recommend buying recorders that come in a bag of some sort. This is an extra barrier from germs and helps with labeling recorders as well.

Here is a link to the recorders I bought with my grant money. They are incredibly affordable but still have good tone and come in a little plastic bag. One warning: the bag is super cheap and can rip easily, so the little strap at the top that is supposed to hold the top flap has broken on several, but they are still functional. I bought mine all in the same color (white) so nobody would be complaining about not getting the color they wanted.

Here is the storage that I used. You can read more about that here.

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Procedures

My students have one of three things happening with their recorders.

  1. Brought their own.
  2. Have a rental from me.
  3. Forgot their recorder at home.

For students who have their own or have a rental at the school, they are all set. The students who forgot theirs for the day have to use a borrower. Those are the old ones I had before – the classroom set that has to be re-sanitized after each use. I have a clean bin and a dirty bin, and now, even with three grade levels playing recorders, I only have to sanitize them about once a week. The kids are much more accepting of this than before, as they recognize that the only reason they have to use these recorders is because they didn’t come to class prepared.

*EDIT: I changed this policy. Now if a student forgets their recorder, they get a practice recorder (one without the top on it). They can practice fingers only for the day. It was much more motivating for them to remember their recorder next week.*

As of right now, students with rentals must keep their recorders at school. I do have one class that I have allowed to take theirs home. They are my “test group.” And based on how good they are at returning them at the end of the year, I may allow more students to take theirs home (or not) next year.

My Recorder Unit

Here are some helpful links on how I structure my recorders within my classroom.

My fifth graders do an extended recorder karate type of unit. While I don’t use the specific “Recorder Karate” system, I love the idea of structuring songs into levels from easy to hard and allowing students to work at their own pace (with a little nudging for those kids that would allow themselves to slip through the cracks and do nothing!).

I also have my students do a self-assessment of their playing at the beginning, middle and end of the recorder unit (my unit takes about two quarters – or 18 weeks, and is usually done alongside another unit, since there is other stuff to learn besides recorders).

Finally, at the end of the recorder unit, we do a composing unit where students get to use motives they learned in the recorder songs and arrange them the create their own song.

Other Fun Ways To Tie Recorders in with Curriculum

In addition to my big recorder unit, there are lots of other ways that I tie recorders in within different parts of the curriculum.

I hope this gets you off to a good start with some useful resources. And don’t forget to follow my blog! Or follow the Sunshine and Music blog on Facebook and Instagram to see new posts there. Have a great start to the new year!

11 Responses

  1. I must purchase new recorders for the 3rd graders each year, since this is the group that begins playing them. They use them until they “graduate” from 5th grade, then they are theirs to take home and keep.
    For a comparable price, you may like to consider the Harmony H100 Soprano Recorders sold by West Music. They are one piece, and come in a cloth bag.

    1. A one piece recorder! I like that idea. That would keep kids from deconstructing their recorder during class (who knows why kids do the things they do!). And the bags are DEFINITELY better quality than the ones I have. I wish I had the resources to buy recorders for every student every year. What an amazing gift! How are you able to afford the cost? PTA? Parent donations? An amazing music budget?

  2. Is there a requirement for elementary school music teachers to have a unit playing wind instruments? We did this from 3rd to 5th grade at my elementary school and I was wondering if it is a teaching standard or legal requirement? Oddly enough, I’m doing research at university studying the effects of this and patterns of access.

    1. Hello Madison! Great question. I have never heard of teaching recorders (or any specific instrument) to be a requirement. I have taught in 3 states in very separate parts of the country and in NONE of these states or districts was it a REQUIREMENT to teach a wind instrument. State standards are going to be much more general and can be used with a variety of different instruments. I know many music teachers who do not teach the recorder at all – preferring singing, ukuleles or xylophones. Maybe some specific district might have this as a requirement but I am not aware of them.

  3. Many of my kids chew the recorders a lot. Some chew the loaner recorders and there are many that chew their personal ones too. What do you do? Despite telling them not to? Do you check mouthpieces and give star points etc for not chewing them etc?

    1. Hi Liz! That’s a great question. Students always seem to come up with the craziest ways to destroy supplies! I haven’t worked in this specific issue very much, but have worked with similar issues, here are some of things I would try. First I would try getting at the root cause – what is making them bite it so much? Are they having tight jaws while playing? Work on breath work, echoing rhythms on “TU” with gentle air as they imagine making a candle flicker but not blow out. Are they doing it unconsciously? That makes me think their recorders are in their mouth too much. Maybe set some routines around rest position, or taking turns playing with partners. Recorders should ONLY be in mouth when playing. Finally, you could have a recorder monitor (or do this yourself). Check recorders as they are returned. I had a similar problem with my sit spots being ripped up off my floor. I turned it into a no tolerance policy. Any time a circle got ripped off the floor, it breaks our rule of respecting our classroom, and I lower (warning) our “respect” star on our board. If it happens a second time, I remove the star from our board for the day and the class doesn’t get that point. You can decide what level of consequence you want to have. Finally, part of the reason I haven’t dealt with this issue very much is because we didn’t do recorders every day of the year. It was a unit of study. So reflect on how often your recorders are being used and what level of wear is just inevitable. No matter what you say, there is a portion of your population that will miss the mark sometimes. Maybe having a small budget for replacing a small portion of recorders over the years would be prudent in this case. It’s a tough problem to solve. Hope this helps. Best of luck!

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Hi, I'm Erin!

I am an elementary music teacher, blogger and mom on a mission to make teaching and lesson planning easier for you. When I’m not working, you can find me at home enjoying life with my husband, daughter and two cats.

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