NEW! 123 Ukulele Play! : a curriculum for ukulele in the classroom
also on Teachers Pay Teachers and on Amazon. Find AUDIO here.

Review by Karin Kott

Full disclosure: I received this curriculum for free to review. I am starting a ukulele club in my middle school and this curriculum will be one of my resources.

This curriculum is a great resource for teachers. Intended to be used at the elementary school level, it is jam packed with information. One thing that I particularly appreciated was Mr. Taylor’s inclusion of interesting historical tidbits to give context to the songs.

At first glance, it seems as though quite a few concepts are introduced all at once: strumming, rhythm and note reading, chord diagrams, basic music theory, to name a few. Reading through it again, it becomes plain that Mr. Taylor has actually built in a great deal of flexibility into his curriculum.

For instance, the introductory songs are short, which is good—having the students learn short songs sets attainable goals, and therefore gives students a sense of rapid progression and accomplishment; second, this allows the teacher to revisit the song at different levels (once the melody or chords for the song are learned, the students can then revisit it but with specific strums, etc). This structure allows the teacher the opportunity to layer (scaffold) concepts on a familiar song while encouraging mastery.

Of course, as the curriculum progresses, the song selection becomes more diverse, the songs longer and more challenging, with more complex meters and rhythms, with more challenging techniques, including (but not limited to) IUC, Island, chunk/chnk strumming, and even some finger picking.

If you are thinking about starting up a uke program, I’d recommend checking out this curriculum.

Post filed under All UkulelePlay! Blog Posts, Ukulele Education, Ukulele Learning Material Reviews.