Hi all

On my PGCE at the moment and starting tomorrow lunchtime I have been given a group of about 12 kids who want to do some vocal training. They will be coming up to get some tips and prepare a film song for the concert which is coming up.

Any tips/ideas/song suggestions would be great

Debs

get yourself some warm-up exercises that work as a group. I tend to favour "The Chicken Tikka" set which you buy as a CD Rom +Audio all on the same disk. Don't necessarily use all the exercises but make sure you cover, breathing, placing, vowels and diction.

Then select an easish song. "Vocal Solos for Kids" and "More Vocal Solos for Kids" contains a reasonable selection, and then find an approach to teaching the song that works for you. LEarning through Aural feed-back line by line is normally effective.

You must be prepared to sing to them. You cannot teach sining unless you have the confidence to sing to them too. All of these publication come with backing-tracks so you have a choice whether to lead from the keyboard or direct to a backing track.

An ideal range to sart off with is A below middle C to E a twelfth higher. That covers average kids ranges. Don't let them know what the highest note they are singin is or they'll just complain they can't sing that high!

Jo