Sight Singing 101-Full Curriculum is also known as the S-Cubed Sight Singing Program for Beginners, and Mr. Duncan is the creator of that curriculum which is used all over the world by music teachers with their students.

For this class, you need a chair to sit in.  Make sure you have a quiet work area without distractions.  Avoid eating food or chewing gum during this class since we will be singing!

#Creative

Lesson by lesson we learn new tools one step at a time to ultimately build confident, capable, independent sight singers.

Week 1-  February 13-  We learn the solfege hand signs through the game "Forbidden Pattern"
Week 2- February 20-  We learn "Follow the Hand" which is an activity to help students find pitches using the Curwen Hand Signs
Week 3- February 27-  We work on Ear-Training and we learn Sharp/Flat and In Tune
Week 4- March 6-  We learn "Silent Signing" of the Curwen Hand Signs and we sight sing an example in stepwise motion from the staff.

In lesson 1, we learn "The Game"-Forbidden Pattern.  Students play against the teacher while they practice the Curwen Hand Signs. This game is used in every lesson as we build the skill sets needed for the language of sight singing.

In lesson 2, we learn "Follow the Hand" which is a tool that helps them prepare for reading their first notes off of the page, and we also begin training the ear.

In lesson 3, we continue ear-training, and students will actually sing their first sight singing example a capella without any help from the teacher.

In lesson 4, we begin training the eye to avoid mistakes reading ledger lines and stems.  We also learn a practice tool called "chaos" designed to give students independent practice time to work at their own pace.

In lessons 5 and 6, we begin working on rhythm.  We learn about accenting and steady beat and time signatures.

In lessons 7 and 8, we are beginning the initial stages of preparation for reading skips of the arpeggio, and we are preparing our students to deal with key signatures.

In lessons 8 and 9, we incorporate a rhythm skill called "Pulsing" to help students prepare for more difficult rhythms.

In lesson 10 and 11, Tools in your Toolbox, it's all coming together! In the previous lessons, we assembled and sharpened all of the tools that our students need in the toolbox to successfully Sight Sing varied rhythms and stepwise pitches, and now it is time to put those tools to use in the most challenging Sight Singing examples yet!

In lessons 12 and 13, we harken back to an earlier lesson in the S-Cubed training system where we focused on training the eye. In this lesson, we start the process of helping the students to recognize rhythmic patterns and intervals in their examples.

In lessons 14, 15, 16 and 17, our beginning students are confidently and fluently sight singing unison melodies that include varied rhythms using the numerous skills they’ve learned since starting the Forbidden Pattern game and other exercises weeks ago in Lesson 1.  We learn about "The Secret Code", so that we create a bit of mystery as we begin the process of helping our beginning students unravel how to use key signatures to determine where DO is located.

Also, in these lessons, we introduce the hand signs for the Chromatic Scale through the game Forbidden Pattern. Using Chromatics in the game helps to refine the ears of our students and that will help tremendously with our performance songs too! The training in the S-Cubed system will start to pay for your choral program off in ways you can’t have imagined!

Lessons 18/19/20
Giving our young, inexperienced Sight Singers a Circle of Fifths and saying “GO” is a sure fire way to make their eyes glaze over and to lose your audience. They are a tough crowd. So, we present this all-important lesson about key signatures in the typical S-Cubed fashion by presenting it as a mystery code that they have to know in order to unlock the information.

The preparation is done, and now our students are ready to have the Secret Code REVEALED!

I tell my students that it’s time to start on our path toward reading music the “Grown up” way. The goal is to get them to use the key signature to determine what the first pitch of the song is, and that is exactly what they learn.

Lessons 21/22
We are approaching the half-way point on our Sight Singing journey with our Middle School Children! The students have mastered stepwise sight singing examples with some difficult rhythms. They have the tools in their toolbox to deal with many challenges, and they can figure out many things on their own.….and all of it is done acapella…with success!

We have been preparing skips for weeks. Now, it is time for us to help our beginning students learn to see, interpret and successfully sign and sing skips on the actual staff.

Lessons 23/24/25
*We will help the students discover ways to read skips quickly.

*We will begin giving students strategies for successful 2-part sight singing through the Group Rhythm Exercises.

*We will continue refining the ears of our students by using Chromatics during the game “Forbidden Pattern”.

*We will challenge the ears of our students by Scoring the Scale using the Chromatic Scale.

*We will continue to refine our students ability to sight sing skips of the major I Chord while using all of the “tools in their toolbox” that they have learned along the way during the previous lessons.

Lessons 26/27/28
MILESTONE!

It’s called MILESTONE because it is a BIG one in the process of teaching our young upper elementary and middle school beginners how to sight sing. I developed this method because most of the books and methods I found started where this lesson picks up, and my students failed miserably.

Instead, with S-Cubed, we have set down a solid foundation for our students.

Because we haven’t skipped any steps in our teaching process, our students are ready to tackle the big advances offered in this lesson! By methodically building the skill sets they need to succeed, I have no doubt that your students will meet the challenge offered in this important lesson in the S-Cubed Sight Singing series!

They take the BIG step: Your students will perform a sight singing example that includes skips and steps combined with challenging rhythms.

*Teacher will assess their ability to accurately name the notes using “Do, Re, Mi, etc.” using only the key signature to help them.

*We will awaken the students to the importance of developing speed in their ability to identify note names using solfege

*We will continue using Chromatics to refine their ears.

Lessons 29/30
AWAKENING!

“When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

Well, it’s time to help our students take a big leap toward being ready to receive!

It’s called AWAKENING because the primary objective on the first day of this 3 day lesson sequence is to awaken our students to where they are headed for the next 9 lessons! S-Cubed is all about daily Success…except on this one day!

I use my S-Cubed program to prepare my own students for their adjudicated festival in Georgia. The standard for Middle School Sight Singing is extremely high in this state. At this critical juncture in the S-Cubed training system, I want to take a moment to let my students experience the high level of skill that will be required of them at the event. I want them to feel and experience what it would be like for them to walk into the Sight Singing room unequipped with all of the tools they need to do well under the pressure they are likely to feel at the event. So, on Day 1 of Lesson 19, we re-create the exact experience of the day of adjudication. On Day 1 of AWAKENING, for the first time, we deliberately set them up to fail by over-challenging them, and we use the failure to help them (and us) wake up to the work that still lies ahead in the process. We follow it up with a discussion. Because students really want to be successful, this experience helps them buy in to the final phase of the learning process of S-Cubed and trust that you know where you are headed and that you have the skills to get them there. Over the final 9 week period of S-Cubed, they will listen better and work harder as they continue to learn new skills and tools to help them become effective sight singers.

We will go back to the preparation process, and you will start moving in the direction of sharing new tools like drilling, working to improve balance and increase confidence in sections by using 2-part rhythm exercises. You will continue to develop their ability to locate pitch as you increase the difficulty of the “Follow the Hand” exercise. You will also begin preparation for the “RE, FA, LA” tool through the game Forbidden Pattern.

Lesson 31
DOUBLING!

The hard work is certainly paying off for you! Let’s keep it going! There are about 7 lessons left until our students will be Sight Singing 2-part exercises that include dotted-quarter eighth note combinations and very difficult skips, so it’s time to arm our students with tools to deal with eighth notes in their sight singing examples! That is what these lessons are all about! We introduce the concept of DOUBLING to our students, and we give them sight singing examples during which they implement and use this new concept. It’s the latest tool we are adding into their toolbox!

Lesson 32
MATH CLASS

We have almost arrived to our destination of teaching our young singers how to sight singing 2-part exercises that include dotted-quarter eighth note combinations and very difficult skips.

Cross-Curricular work is always a good idea, so we are taking our students to MATH CLASS in order to reenforce the knowledge of note values, and to help our young singers avoid confusing quarter notes with singular eighth notes as we make final preparations for our students to read dotted-quarter eighth note combinations.

We will work on increasing their comfort level with the “RE, FA, LA” tool, and we will work toward helping them find the correct pitch for the more difficult intervals included in the “RE, FA, LA” tool.

Lessons 33/34
SYNCOPATION

Your focus and determination to learn to sight sing will likely pay off for you in ways you never imagined!

In SYNCOPATION, we will encounter our first syncopated rhythms in an actual sight singing example. We will help them navigate the unique feelings that can occur when they actually have to sing and sign an example with the difficult dotted-quarter eighth note combination.

We will also continue to increase their comfort level with the “RE, FA, LA” tool, and we will work toward helping them find the correct pitch for the more difficult intervals included in the “RE, FA, LA” tool.

Lesson 35

FIND/HOLD/DRILL. We actually take our students through the process of using this valuable pitch-finding tool seven times on  in order to raise their comfort level in using it.

Lesson 36

HUNT and FOCUS
In this lesson, we focus entirely on teaching each individual child to recognize his own areas of weakness and then QUICKLY hunt for and find the parts of the example that can cause him/her the most difficulty. We teach process. We encourage independent and varied use of tools from the tool box that we’ve developed over all of the previous lessons. It is critical that every child in the room confidently understands what works for him/her and how to refine the problem-solving skills to be as effective as possible as they work an example during the Chaos period. The better each child is at recognizing their own weaknesses and knowing which tools help him/her solve problems, they more successful our singers will be as they approach the all-important 2-part sight singing in Lesson 25! This lesson is our last chance to do just that! If we are successful, they will breeze through the 2-part sight singing examples, and that is our goal!

The procedures in this Lesson are different than previous lessons. It is almost entirely “Sight Singing Example” focused.

Lesson 37
Two Parts!
After preparing our beginning sight singers for months and arming them carefully and methodically with numerous tools to fill their Sight-Singing tool box through successful unison sight singing work, we are ready to tackle Two-Part Sight Singing! All of our careful preparation will pay off in this very exciting moment on the S-Cubed journey. The best part of it all is that the materials and ideas they are learning now in this Two-part sight singing lesson will help you and your students enormously in your performance repertoire too!

In this lesson, we focus on connecting the dots. In past lessons, we taught our students important skills through two-part rhythm exercises. Now, we will take the same concepts from the rhythm work of the previous S-Cubed lessons and transfer them to PITCHES in the Two-Part Sight Singing examples. As always, the examples in the lessons are custom built to teach specific concepts like recognizing unison pitches and unison rhythms. The examples are specifically designed to work for the beginning middle school student. In other words, the problem areas are written to be obvious and clear so we get the answers we are looking for as we help make them literate, successful Two-Part Sight Singers. We work in this lesson to arm them with yet even more tools for their toolbox of successful sight singing, except this time, all of the tools are aimed specifically at how to survive and thrive in Two-Parts. We learn about “Recovery Strategies” and much more.

Lessons 38/39
Our students are now sight singing in 2-parts, but what if it doesn’t go as planned? What will they do? Stop singing and stare at you?

No! We must arm them with new tools to help them be successful as they work to develop confidence in their own ability to sight sing successfully when they are split in half. In 2-part sight singing, there are some new strategies for our singers to learn. We simply have to teach them!

In this penultimate lesson of the S-Cubed Series 1, we begin introducing our students to recovery strategies and important listening skills that are specifically useful in 2-part sight-singing. The exercises in this lesson are custom built to teach the new 2-part tools that your children need to add to their toolbox in order to “beat the page”…and the best part is that these new tools will have far-reaching, fantastic positive impact on the repertoire you are working on in your classroom. With the progression of each S-Cubed lesson, we are creating smarter and better choral music singers.

Lesson 40
Smart Singers! The S-Cubed Finale 

My students love to be called “Smart Singers”. Sometimes I say to them while they are singing, “I am looking for the smart singers” or “I can SEE when you are listening”. They respond immediately by using their very best singing posture and trying to show me how “present” they can be. They respond well when we look for the best in our children, and it certainly helps their singing enormously. By using this positive approach that is such a big component of the S-Cubed Series, we encourage our students to dig deep and incorporate every technique they’ve learned. We want them be able to complete the two-part sight singing example successfully and absolutely independently! This has been our goal all along!

I decided to call the final lesson in the S-Cubed series “Smart Singers” because our students have certainly learned enough sight singing techniques to be deemed as such…and they respond so well to positive strokes. From the beginning, I’ve referred to S-Cubed as a philosophy as well as a method. “Smart Singers” reflects the positive and encouraging approach we’ve used throughout the method with our young singers.

In these lessons, the examples are custom-built to help reinforce our student’s ability to quickly recognize and listen for unison pitch while they sight sing in two-parts. We also learn how to use a technique called “Take that pitch”. We continue to review and reinforce the use of all of the approaches we’ve taught our students since we started sight singing in two-parts.  The final sight singing example is called "Graduation Day"... as our students attempt to sight sing a very challenging example that will incorporate the use of every skill they’ve been taught from the beginning of this course!


What will be taught?  Solfege hand signs, Kodaly Rhythm system, Ear-Training, Eye-Training, Problem Solving
What topics will you cover?  Solfege Hand Signs, Rhythm, Pitch, A capella sight singing
How is your class structured?  Starts with Forbidden Pattern Game, followed by ear-training, rhythm training and a sight singing exercise.
How will you teach?  I am actively engaged from start to finish
What's your teaching style?  I am interactive from start to finish.
How much will learners get to interact with you and each other (mention specifics like: lecture, games, slides, video clips, discussion)?  Students will interact with the teacher and with each other frequently through games and competition.
Any required experience or knowledge learners need?  No.  This class is for the beginning music read with no prior experience.