EEi Webinar: Starting Beginning Band Students with EEi

Welcome and the three pillars

[00:00:00] Hi and thank you for joining us and welcome to our EEI webinar. My name is Steve Smith and I work here at Hal Leonard and I work specifically with the Essential Elements Interactive website and kind of a lot of things that go into that website. I'm excited that you're here so that we can talk about Central Elements Interactive and the resources and different things that you can use

[00:00:23] with your students here at the very beginning of the school year. I know you guys are getting ready or maybe some of you have already started the school year but when I kind of walk through what EEI has to help your students and really set them up for success right here at the beginning. So I'm gonna hop off screen we're gonna dive into EEI and kind of walk through these helpful resources.

[00:00:43] Thanks for being here and let's get going. So today we're going to be talking about getting your beginning band students started. The initial stages and kind of getting them off and on the right foot playing their instruments getting into the book reading music all those type of things and really talk about how Essential

[00:01:03] Elements Interactive can really work with the book and with you to help them in a number of different areas. And to kind of put a framework on this we're going to talk about three different areas that every beginner needs to develop kind of throughout the entire year and develop them kind of all at the same time but separately. We're going to talk about music reading skills,

[00:01:23] instrument fundamentals, and practice habits and self-evaluation. And when we talk about this we're talking about music reading skills being able to read music, rhythms, and truly understand the music theory behind it. Instrument fundamentals, how to play their instrument, how to get good sounds, excuse me, how to articulate, how to have a great fundamental setup, and then

[00:01:44] practice habits and self-evaluation. We're really going to talk about how to do a great practice session when they go home. So let's focus first on music

Music reading skills

[00:01:53] reading skills. And I think we all know this is an important part but to kind of put some perspective on it I think a lot of us have had students who've come into our programs and they have a strong piano background and they are just ahead of everything. They understand music and that's equivalent in many ways to a child who enters kindergarten already knowing how to read and they can

[00:02:15] understand not only the assignments are given but they understand what the teacher is talking about in front of the class. They're just kind of ahead of the game. They're instantly ahead. So we're going to talk about that a little bit and then I'm going to talk about some of the things that we're going to focus on today. So I'm going to talk about

[00:02:28] some of the things that we're going to focus on today. I'm going to talk about a lot of the things that we're going to focus on today. So I'm going to talk about the things that we're going to focus on today. So I'm going to focus on some of the things that we're going to focus on today. So I'm going to focus on some of the things that we're going to focus on today. So I'm going to focus on some of

[00:02:36] the things that we're going to focus on today. So I'm going to focus on some of the things that we're going to focus on today. So I'm going to focus on some of the things that we're going to focus on today. So I'm going to focus on some of in kindergarten or is in school and doesn't know how to read but is being assigned a book report it can be overwhelming and instantly they can be high be behind and frustrated so these music

[00:02:49] reading skills are really important and we want to try to work to get everybody on the same level as quickly as possible and continually throughout the year so it's a lot of times it's a good idea there's a lot of teachers that practice the idea of separating the learning of music theory from the performance on the instrument instead of just teaching them the notes that they're playing at that particular moment they actually teach them just separately how to use music theory to read

[00:03:15] music and then they apply that skill to playing the instrument so it should be a part of the class and a constant practice during class and you know a good goal to have is that a student should understand the music theory concepts that they're going to use before they play them on their instrument that way they're not simultaneously trying to learn four or five or six new things at once and so with eei we've kind of taken those music theory concepts and we've provided them to

[00:03:43] you in kind of several different ways to start if you just get into central elements interactive and if you go to the resources section there are a lot of different ways you can organize the resources and we'll start by showing you the music theory part of the resources pages so if you go to topics up here in your teacher account and if you click on this and you see here you can see that there are a lot of different things you can organize the resources and we'll start by showing you the music theory part of the resources pages so if you go to topics up here in your teacher account and if you click on this and you

[00:04:05] scroll down you're going to see several different options for ways to sort it so if we sort it by music theory and we just leave it at all instruments and we click go here are 12 different music theory sheets that you can use and these sheets you can share them with your students digitally over eei or you can just click on them and now you have a pdf that you can print and these pdfs are you know music theory concepts and worksheets and lessons that you can use with

[00:04:35] students and those pdfs you can again download them print them and you can copy them and kind of get them to your students it's very easy to access these music theory worksheets and lessons the concepts that we cover in these music theory sheets basically are all of the concepts that are introduced throughout entire book one for band you have the introduction of the staff which we just saw treble clef bass clef there's also alto clef in there for our strings friends for teaching

[00:05:03] viola note values rest values intro to measures and bar lines time signatures accidentals key signatures dotted rhythms there's a lot of different things that uh that students can can learn in these music theory sheets and we provide them to you again some of these are actually lesson lessons from other music theory books here at hal leonard that we have pulled from they're excerpts from those books this one for example is from 30 days

[00:05:28] to music theory and so these are great resources that we've pulled but we've pulled the concepts that are really important for beginning band students if you happen to click on that book in the pdf you would end up seeing that book if you wanted to get the whole book but we've just taken excerpts and again these are reproducible you can print these and photocopy them and give them to your students in class and give them a really good start

[00:05:51] so again we have those concepts that you can work with your students and really get them to develop those music theory skills and understanding of music theory and really help them really and really get them on the right foot before they even get in the book and start start reading music out of the book something that we have coming this fall is going to be some music theory sheets some kind of checkpoints

[00:06:15] kind of in the form of what could be like a quiz but you could use these as an as a quiz or an overview use them as a pre-test if you want to see what your students do know before you even start working on music theory and working out of the book but it's just a chance for them to kind of have a catch-up and kind of see all of their music understanding from a music theory standpoint now something else that we have in there from the beginning again with music theory once you

[00:06:42] get that basics under then then you're going to have to have kind of some repetition and the ability for students to really understand several different concepts the first one we're going to talk about is going to be note naming and so we have several note naming sheets that are available and they're available by clef and these note naming sheets are kind of put out there in a couple of different varieties but you can see they are simple again

[00:07:07] they're pdfs that you can download have the kids write the note names in and really understand how to read their clef understand how to read music from their clef instead of maybe just reading the five notes that they're playing and just get used to that they're going to actually learn to read music which is going to pay off a little bit later on these note naming sheets are kind of set up in a certain progression so note name number one is just a basic introduction

[00:07:32] it's going to be like notes on the staff and then your lines and your spaces and just really get them to understand how to read the music on the clef then you've got kind of mixed up notes on the staff and then you get timing noting number three is going to get you notes below the staff so it's going to be a worksheet that really focuses on notes below the staff for your clarinet players your trumpet players who spend a lot of their time in those beginner stages maybe in that area and

[00:07:57] then start to move a little bit lower when they're ready to do that those notes are their tuba players as well they're going to get you notes below the staff so it's going to be a worksheet that really focuses on notes below the staff for your clarinet players your trumpet players who spend a lot of their time in those beginner stages maybe in that area and then start to move a little bit lower when they're ready to do that those notes are their tuba players as well they'll have those sheets that they can work on then notes above the staff when you're when you're instrumentalists and your saxophones and your flutes uh end up going and even some of your low brass end up going above the staff you have sheets that are focused on that then you move into

[00:08:17] accidentals and flats and accidentals and sharps and each of these sheets as you can see you know it's kind of a chance for them to kind of write in the note names and really work hard some of these two if you look in here uh give you a chance to do goal times and we always talk about you want to be accurate with your note naming but you also want to eventually have them to where they can go even faster through

[00:08:41] this and kids like games so this is a chance for them to challenge themselves and once they can really get through this and name these note names very quickly that can be really beneficial you can also use these before they even write in the note names you could use these as a sign of note naming chance where they could kind of go in and say the notes out loud if you want to put the metronome on and they say a note every two measures it's a chance for them to get used

[00:09:03] to saying notes as they see them on on the staff and kind of helping them understand how to read read those notes out loud it's going to be beneficial later on when they're trying to play on their instruments and then you can take these exercises and you can apply the note naming and the saying notes out loud to their music in the book so when they start doing rolling along now if they've been doing note chants or they've been doing note naming

[00:09:29] sheets they can start to say these note names out loud before they play them and that's a really good exercise is to have them used to saying note names out loud eventually saying them and fingering them but with these pdfs you can print them you can you can copy them you can have them do them many times multiple times you can have them really kind of do some very purposeful repetition and writing in note names on those pdfs so you can start doing rolling along now if they've been doing note

[00:09:53] chants or they've been doing note naming sheets they can start to say these note names out loud before they play them and that's a really good exercise is to have them used to saying note names out loud on those pdfs so that they don't need to write them in in the book because if you have a student i think we all know we have students sometimes that write note names in in the book and then that becomes a crutch and they're actually reading the letters they're not reading the note names so

[00:10:07] with those pdfs it kind of gives you an alternative to having to write note names into the book and that's something can be really beneficial again for uh for your students uh coming soon we actually have number seven and number eight which is going to be mixed accidental sharps and flats and key signatures we'll start to move into all the key signatures that are in book one uh look for that in the next coming months or so and uh have even more note naming sheets and we'll we'll keep adding

[00:10:33] to those as we go each of those sheets by the way is just a really good chance for them to really get to understand reading music and so that's something that's that's kind of a a simple thing for them to do but an important thing now obviously along with note naming uh rhythm counting is going to be really important and so we actually have 15 rhythm studies that are available again these are these pdf downloads and you can start to use these to really help your kids

[00:11:05] understand rhythms and understand how to how to count rhythms this is going to be in the format of the rhythm studies that are in the back of the book only we've separated them out by the concepts throughout book one and so we have 15 of these and the concepts are going to go through the basic introduction of rhythms and then into eighth notes uh two four time ties and dots three four time dotted quarter notes and eighth rest and again they're correlated to uh sections of the

[00:11:34] book so if you see right here for example uh this is going to be related to page one through ten this is where we introduce eighth notes and the concepts also have two pages two to three pages for every concept so you see on the left you have intro to eighth notes so this is going to be an introductory page you've got your basic eighth notes quarter notes and then how they relate to eighth notes and then you know just the simplest way to count eighth

[00:11:57] notes or to have eighth note rhythms and then on the right you see the eighth note exercises which is going to be eighth notes but incorporated with other rhythms that have been introduced in the book up to that point so you're not going to have rhythms on this page that they haven't seen in the book or rhythms that are unique to them that aren't haven't been explained this is going to be eighth notes combined with other rhythms in the book so every page has that we have an intro to 3-4

[00:12:22] uh eighth notes and different rhythms in three four same with dotted quarter notes and tied rhythms and things of that nature now in addition to counting rhythms it's important that students understand how to write the counts in underneath the rhythms and these pdfs are a great place to do that and we've also provided a template or a guideline for how to write in those rhythms we've actually provided three of them this first one you can

[00:12:47] kind of see that we give them kind of a way to look at rhythms the rhythms are written in very evenly for this particular writing system we have sustained notes that have an arrow over the count so for this whole note you're going to count one two three four and the arrow shows that it goes all the way to the bar line same with the half note so it gives them a good visualization of how to sustain notes and then for silence or for rests we have those put in parentheses

[00:13:12] so that they understand you still need to keep counts going during silence keep the rhythm going during silence but those are silent notes so we've denoted that with with parentheses and you can kind of see how that works through there this particular sheet right here is the one and counting system that many people use and you can kind of see how that plays out gives them an idea of how to write those counts in but we also if you don't use

[00:13:37] that system maybe use the one taste system we have that available as well so we have a guide that kind of shows them how to write in counts for one tay as well same exact thing this is all the rhythms that you're going to see in the rhythm counting studies that we have so they can kind of use this as a parameter and perhaps you don't use you don't

[00:13:57] like this particular writing system we've we have right here or you don't use the one tay or one and we have provided also a blank rhythm writing guide where if you wanted to download this you could actually write in your own system and then copy that and give it to your students so that they're all the same and that's the key is you want them to have to have a system for writing in their accounts under the rhythms and you want them to be able to

[00:14:22] uh to have a way to look at that so they know what the parameters are and then if it's consistent then that allows them to kind of work through that and so something you could do now that they're in pdfs and it's not in not in the printed book form is perhaps for example this rhythm study number four you could have them uh write in their counts underneath the notes underneath the rhythms for this particular page and that'll give you a chance to check it give them a chance to see it and

[00:14:49] understand it and then you can kind of have you can kind of have you can kind of have them kind of that as a reference and if you take that and you print it and then you photocopy it and you do a two-sided photocopy with rhythm counting four on both sides they can have the counts written in on this side and then if they flip to the other side you can leave it blank because when the students want to count the rhythms out loud you want to make sure they're doing that without the

[00:15:11] counts written in underneath the notes because as we know a lot of students will actually just read the numbers and the symbols and not actually be counting the rhythm and that's not as it's not as applicable it's not as easily applicable to the music if they're just reading the numbers and the syllables so on one side of the page again they can have the notes written in and on a duplicate side same rhythms on the other side they can have it blank so they

[00:15:37] can practice counting uh out loud and i know a lot of people count and clap uh on these rhythms and we're going to talk about something here just in a second with that but you can have them count and clap it you can have them write them the note names and they again because these are on pdfs you're able to do that and and kind of separate it from what's happening in the book and do it as many times as you want have them write them in and then take

[00:16:00] them out and have them write them in that again that purposeful repetition that's going to allow them to read music and understand music at a higher level now talked about clapping and counting something that might be really helpful for your students is if you count and touch the notes and this is something that a lot of students do a lot of teachers have their students do and it's a very tactile way uh to do this counting and clapping is good too that's it's

[00:16:26] and we you know recommend that you do both but i want to show a video this is a group of students that i got to work with a while back and we did counting and touching and i want you to see the the clarity that happens when they have to count and touch rhythm last thing will you make sure that you're really precise with this we make sure that it's one day two take three like you're really touching picking up and touching those notes here we go one more

[00:16:50] time very precise one two ready take go one take two take three four two three take four take one two three take four take one three take four take would you yeah so i'm going to back this video up just a little bit so you can kind of see a couple things but uh first of all it just counting and touching really guides their eyes you know this person is about to start and clearly they they know where we're starting so that's the first thing and if you're behind the students when

[00:17:23] they're doing this you can really see what they know i remember the first time i did this as a teacher and it was with a class that i thought was really great at counting rhythms i had students whose fingers were a full measure or two measures ahead of where the class was rhythm counting it really showed where their eyes were it really showed what their brains were but if you watch this girl i'm going to play this again if you watch this girl count and touch these

[00:17:44] rhythms there is zero doubt that she understands the rhythm she understands this perfectly and you can see it in the way she's counting it and pointing at the notes so that's just something that you can do and really have them count and touch those notes it's it's a really great way to see what they understand and then again you've practiced this on those rhythm studies you've practiced this on those pdfs separate from

[00:18:19] the music now you can come in and you can apply all of that rhythm knowledge and their understanding of music theory and rhythm knowledge to the exercises so here you have skip to my loo number 42 have them count and clap this have them count and touch this with a metronome and it's it can be really helpful for them to understand that that's a way to break down music and to practice

[00:18:39] music and it's important for them to do it a count and clap count and touch the notes i'm going to back up a little bit and after you've been doing note naming separate it's important that you also have them say the note names out loud so through this you know this person can come through and do e e e c c c e e g they could even sing it if you want them to have come through here and sing it you don't have to necessarily work on them singing great but if you sing it and they kind of come back

[00:19:05] and sing it with you then that that's another great way for them to learn that when they practice music it's not just playing their instrument over and over again you can break it down you can break down the rhythms you can break down saying note names but again these pdfs and all of these extra materials are going to allow them to do that and if you make counting music and saying note names a regular part of your music learning in class then they're going

[00:19:29] to do that and understand they can do that when they go home so you can see that as far as music reading we're trying to give you lots of materials to be able to use with your students a basic understanding of music theory for all the concepts throughout book one note naming sheets for purposeful repetition for them to really understand those note names and how to read music on their staff not just the notes they're playing and then rhythm studies again for them to be able to write

[00:19:54] in the counts and then also be able to count and touch the notes or count and clap the notes and really develop that understanding of how to read music if they go through this on a regular basis walls are going to start to come down in front of some kids that have have been frustrated in the past just simply because of the inability to really really read music so we're hoping to help help provide many more materials for you to do this from a music reading standpoint

[00:20:19] so if you work with this stuff regularly and you really plan it and put it into your rehearsals again these pdfs you can photocopy them you can you can reuse them you can use a lot of different levels if you continue this throughout the full year and give students even things to work on at home you could send it home with them they can print it at their house and they can work on it at home but the whole idea of continued development on music reading is going to allow

[00:20:43] them to fully master that and it's really going to translate into a higher level of playing for them and a greater enjoyment so as you can see that's the music reading skills part of that we've hoped to add a lot of different elements of that to your class through those pdfs and through a lot of the different things that are available there now of course through their first year they're going to really work to develop their pedagogy and the understanding of playing their instrument and

[00:21:09] the fundamentals of their instruments so let's kind of see how eei can help with just the basic instrument fundamentals you know when uh you get into the book you've got you know let's we're going to use the trumpet book as an example uh you know every method book has some you know limitations in the fact that it's a 48 page book or and it's it's a printed book and they have some resources that

Instrument fundamentals

[00:21:29] come with it but when you first open up the book you get these basics pages pages two and three and there's a lot of correct a lot of very good information on these pages but it's something that needs more to it you need more information to be given to the students more demonstrations more ways for them to experience this and eei really allows us to expand and enhance these two pages of the book and i'm going to kind

[00:21:54] of show you some of the materials that are available in there and if you go into the resources section and again you do that drop down menu and you choose startup resources and you choose the instrument that you're using that you're wanting to teach we have quite a bit of resources for every instrument and these are instrument specific videos and instrument specific sheets and so for example we have instrument startup resources we have

[00:22:18] section studies and this includes parts of the instrument basic tone production full tone production first notes changing notes articulation we have a lot of different things that we're going to provide to you and show that to you and in addition we have video resources that go along with those as well and show you know kind of basic type of things and these are all in small bite-sized chapters shareable videos through eei they're in bite-sized type of things and on top

[00:22:45] of that all of the pdfs that we have are also things that you can print off one at a time hand them to them as you as you get ready to do those in the class so let's just take a look at these first two pages let's start first of all with parts of the instrument and taking care of your instrument and kind of understanding those type of things about the instrument two really important things but they need some explanation maybe some follow-through on that so we actually have in eei

[00:23:10] parts of the instrument worksheets where you can kind of download these and they can write the names in you can use this as quizzes if you want to they can you can share this with them and they can print this off at home and can write the names in and just give them a chance to really you know do some more learning with that and some follow-up with understanding what the parts of their instrument are especially at those early stages and again these are for eei users these are reproducible

[00:23:35] pdfs that you can print and and get to your students send it again through their eei account and let them do that as much as they want to so those sheets are really helpful even at home the other thing you'd like to have is reinforcement when they go home and maybe you don't want to send their instrument home with them right off the bat you want to send these pdfs home and you want to send home these videos so that they can really

[00:23:58] understand those different parts of the instrument we do have videos that again if you just send that first chapter home they can look at the parts of the instrument how to take care of their instrument and really how to you know to understand their instrument in a lot of different manners so they can have that home reinforcement reinforcement of the things that you are doing in class as well now

[00:24:20] the other parts of this is posture and breathing and kind of putting the instrument together how to hold the instrument and we again have videos that are available for this and we'll use the trumpet as an example and kind of give you a chance to see what some of those videos look like to sit correctly make sure your back is away from the back of the chair keep your spine elongated and tall but keep your shoulders relaxed sit with your feet flat on

[00:24:50] the floor about shoulder width apart with your ankles directly below your knees it is important that you are comfortable when sitting correctly so practice sitting like this whenever you play your instrument so this is a great video for reinforcement and for the kids to use when they go home but it's also great for the parents to be able to see this so they kind of understand how their child should be sitting you know when they go home and practice

[00:25:14] and of course you know she demonstrates how to hold the instrument all the the proper things of that nature and so that's just kind of an expansion of that part of the book and a lot of a lot of method books have that that expansion of that but here's something that's unique to ee and eei and that's you know this this segment here where the the student we're talking about trumpet here or all brass really you've got a lot of great information in these two areas that i've highlighted

[00:25:38] but this is such an important part of playing the instrument this is their first sounds on their mouthpiece this is their first sounds uh where they're they're going to start forming their embouchure and getting their tone quality set and so we've taken this and we've actually expanded this as well and we've provided section studies and these are instrument specific studies and in this particular one this is just going to be an entire page just focused on placing the

[00:26:02] mouthpiece getting the air going and making sure that the lips are vibrating the right way and so you see here they have that great visual example of what it looks like to place the mouthpiece correctly what it looks like uh to have the embouchure set correctly how to breathe and they've got things they can do in two like first they put an x every time you place your mouthpiece and sit still for 15 seconds and you know so they understand how to place it and and be correct we recommend

[00:26:29] using mirrors a lot so they can see what they look like try and match what the picture looks like what the video looks like all of these sheets also have videos that correspond to these sheets you can see this is mouthpiece video number two and three first mouthpiece sounds so then we get the moving air through the mouthpiece just to get it all focused into the mouthpiece and at the bottom they start making their first sounds and so this is just

[00:26:51] an entire sheet focused on them doing this all-important first step uh really in the right manner and it really expands the book and this is specific for trumpet we have this for all brass instruments and for all all instruments all wind player instruments as well then we go back here and again so they're working through this and they've they've worked through page two and three really expanded that and they really understand how to hold their instrument how to make great

[00:27:17] sounds on the mouthpiece you turn the page and all of a sudden there's a lot of information on this page there's a lot that students need to be able to do to perform this and you know no matter what book you have you're going to have steps to the next to the next thing where they're going to be there's going to be a lot of things that kids have to learn so if you look at this page there's really a few different things that kids need to learn and again ei allows us to expand

[00:27:42] these two pages and enhance these two pages and so if you look at this with all the things they have to do there's really only about six categories that really need to be taken care of and we're going to we're going to help you on that so kids need to understand how to perform long tones we did that mouthpiece sheet so that they really understand how to get a great sound on their trumpet then for this and we're going to focus again as the trumpet as an example they're going

[00:28:04] to need to be able to move around a little bit so we have mouthpiece sirens they're going to need to be able to be flexible on their mouthpiece and for this page they're going to be need to play that c and that g partial that second and third partial it's going to be important for them to be able to be successful on this page and then you know this is their first five notes they have the first five notes they're going to learn c d e f and g and then there's going to be times on this page where

[00:28:27] they're going to change notes within the measure and and have to continually play and move around and then of course they're going to have to learn how to articulate so we've got you covered so we've got section study sheets that cover all of these uh all of these topics so section study number two is going to be all about the mouthpiece sound and starting to siren starting to move around and keep the sound uh really consistent and kind of make sure that we

[00:28:52] understand what it should sound like and again there's videos that go along with this we'll show you one here in a second but this one gives lots of specific comments on how to keep the sound good how to keep it correct and start to move around and expand their range on the mouthpiece and do it in a gradual manner and then also start to move up so it gives them that flexibility really trying to get on the range of the mouthpiece and do it in a gradual manner and then also start to move up so it gives them that flexibility really trying to get

[00:29:12] on the mouthpiece to have that flexibility to do those two partials and to play all of those different notes and get them to understand that and again like i said there's a video that goes along with this in the video we even use a visualizer so they can kind of see what their lips should look like so let's give you a sample of what that video looks like you can show to your students listen as chelsea demonstrates a mouthpiece siren for us

[00:29:33] in the mouthpiece visualizer so they can see what the aperture actually does inside the mouthpiece so lots of tips on those on those videos a lot of places worked on to kind of see uh what they should what they should do so now that they've got the mouthpiece siren moving around it's a now it's time to kind of get them really centered on both of those uh partials really get them kind of uh really comfortable

[00:30:11] with that so now in in beginning brass a lot of times you have some students that hit the lower partial and some students that hit that upper partial kind of naturally and we've kind of accounted for that and on this section study number three we have two different versions of this so if you've got students that naturally hit that upper partial that g but maybe

[00:30:30] have a hard time getting down to that lower partial c they can start on g play on their trumpet and then work through on the mouthpiece to try and get the sound and get the pitch comfortable down that low c and so if they get through their first sounds g page they get to the bottom and they have two really well established partials conversely you might have students that play that low c much easier than the g and you can do the opposite you can work up you can have them work

[00:30:56] up to the g and do it in a very systematic manner and allow them to be successful on both that c and that g partial so the goal with section study number three is to provide flexibility in how your students start in their instruments but the ultimate goal is for everyone in your class to have those two partials ready to go all of the brass pages have this kind of functionality to try and get those two partials for that the first exercises from the book

[00:31:22] once they have those it's time to just kind of fill in the gap in between so now we've got the two open partials now let's start to put some fingers down and let's start to really get some correct pitches through the instrument and this one you know we have this order place g you know long tones g you've got the fingering charts the fingering diagrams next to the new notes and they can play through this but as they go through this you're going to have specific information

[00:31:49] that they can they can use but you know you might you might play this one through five g all the way down to c you might start on c and go up to g but again the whole idea is for them to be able to put the fingers down and actually get through the first five notes and kind of get that taken care of as they're learning those notes great to see if they can get through those notes so that's a great time to start on fingering worksheets so

[00:32:14] they can really start to memorize those fingerings and start to kind of have some ways to do that we have several different worksheets that are in there we have worksheets where students get the fingerings and they fill in the notes we have worksheets where they have the pitches on the staff and they fill in the fingerings and then we even have some blank templates so you can see there on the right where you can create a fingering worksheet that works for what you want them to do

[00:32:36] so we've put these in there again these are those reproducible pdfs so now i'm going to go ahead and show you how to do that so we're going to go ahead and show you how to do that so we're going to go ahead and show you how to do that so we're going to go ahead and show you how to do that so we're going to go ahead and show you how to do that so we're going to go ahead and show you how to do that so we're going to go ahead and show you how to do that so we're going to go

[00:32:48] ahead and show you how to do that so we're going to go ahead and show you how to do that so we're going to go ahead and show you how to do that so we're going to go ahead and show you how to do that so we're going to go ahead and show you how to do that so we're going to go ahead and show you how to do that now something that's a little bit unique is that we do have this whole page about changing notes and i know a lot of times kids start to play and they have that very separated sound like when

[00:33:01] they're playing merrily we roll along they've got da da da da da and they really separate every note has a separate airstream so something we've offered as possibly a solution to that is this changing notes page and really what we're doing is getting them to understand that the air should not stop between note changes and we've introduced this kind of a new uh new articulation if you will once this dashed slur which really what we're talking about is

[00:33:32] trying to have them actually start to slur to change notes and slur before they add the tongue in and so this page really works on changing notes working their way down and moving notes without introducing the tongue so they understand that the air should flow and it all goes stepwise so they don't have to we're not making any large leaps but if they sustain that first g for a good amount of time and then they realize they just do that same thing but

[00:33:55] then they can start to see that if they just carefully move and instantly move to the f then back to the g they can start to see that the air can stay the same the embouchure can stay pretty much the same and they can change notes and it kind of gives them that little that stair step and so it'll also kind of help with their airflow and then later when they learn how to articulate which we'll show you in a second they can actually come back to this and then work

[00:34:17] on incorporating the tongue into this so that's kind of why we put that dashed line there so that they can practice this slurred and then later come back and practice that you know coordinating the tongue movement with the finger movement as well and so this gets all the way down here and then we have this for the brass we have this kind of simple broken up kind of five note scale that they can use down here so this is a chance to get them to

[00:34:40] move around their instrument move their fingers and keep their air flowing before they start to articulate but they are going to need to learn to articulate of course and so we've broken that down by itself as well and so this initial articulation page has a couple of fun things in there a couple unique things first of all we've broken that down by itself as well and so this initial articulation page has a couple of fun things in there a couple unique things first of all we've gotten kind of this diagram of what it should look like you know because they can't

[00:34:59] really see inside their mouth but this kind of gives them idea that the tongue needs to stay out of the way quickly touch you know the back of the teeth and then get out of the way again and so they can practice saying this they can practice doing this on air on their hand with this number one say air and then play it they can play it on their mouthpiece and really kind of try and get the pitch to be steady on their mouthpiece get the air to flow when they're playing

[00:35:20] saying it and playing it on air and then they can move it to their instrument and so when they get to the instrument they have lots of helpful information and they can start playing articulations on g and really start to keep that air flowing keep it going and just focus on keeping the air flowing in the long tone and keeping that air flowing through the articulation the quick tongue movement so it allows them to to work on articulation separate from anything else

[00:35:44] so once they've done this they have again all of these concepts long tones mouthpiece sirens getting to the different partials first five notes changing notes and articulation once they have that down first of all they've worked through six pages what seems like six pages of the book but now we're really back to page four and then this music is now just reading music and playing the concepts that they've already learned it's

[00:36:11] not something that is is overwhelming they're not having to learn to sustain a note and articulate and change notes all at the same time it allows them to truly apply the fundamentals that they have and the fundamentals that they know to reading music and playing music in the book now this is how we kind of approach the brass instruments but we have these startup resources for all of our instruments and we're not going to

[00:36:35] have time to go through every single instrument but i do want to kind of run through the clarinet book for example to kind of see show you a little bit of what the difference is between the brass and maybe say the woodwind type of startup resources that we have so again once you get into the clarinet book you start off you have these two and page two and three and again eei allows us to really enhance both of these pages in much the

[00:36:55] same way we'll walk through some of that here in just a little bit uh you turn the page you got page four and five again similar type of things but different uh different needs for clarinet so that's why we've chosen to do these startup resources as pdfs they're instrument specific they really allow the students to understand what they need to do on their instruments and what they need to do to uh to perform really well for clarinet though you're gonna have long

[00:37:18] tones you know mouth sounds you're going to have long tones you know mouth sounds you're going to have long tones you know mouth piece and barrel sounds we're going to have to get correct embouchure hand position is going to start to be really important really going to cover those tone holes and make sure there's no leaks you're going to get your first five notes and you're going to have changing notes and really making sure that as you change notes those fingers

[00:37:33] those hand position doesn't change and cause issues and then of course articulation which on clarinet is again it's a different thing than articulating on trumpet and so we've allowed us to kind of expand this and again we've got you covered on all of these concepts so as you can see we've got six section studies here for the beginning of the book uh for clarinet you get your mouthpiece and barrel first sounds and then you got starters with your left hand and then some

[00:37:59] more first downs and then articulation uh so for these very beginning stages again you've got your embouchure and mouthpiece and barrel sounds and again we encourage them to use mirrors so they can see if they look the right way if they're forming the correct embouchure and get some airflow and then get their first mouthpiece and barrel sounds and so you can see again we've got videos that go along with this but they can start to play and really establish a really good solid

[00:38:23] fundamental sound get their embouchure set correctly get that chin flat and so this one gives them credit every five times they make a flat chin with their bottom lip placed correctly put an x so it gives them a chance to really focus on that flat chin which is an important concept in clarinet playing mouthpiece and barrel placement make sure you get the right angle make sure that it's all set correctly you can see the pink part of the corners of the lips

[00:38:44] make sure they get that armature really set correctly and then go ahead and start moving air and making those first mouthpiece and barrel sounds and you know we've got videos that go along with that really get the them to establish that mouthpiece and barrel sound uh from the beginning but something we're going to add that's coming soon so we do have those videos that go with this but we also are going to add this call and response type of video and this is a video

[00:39:09] this is something you might do in class for this video play along with kelsey and work to match her tone quality and fundamentals using the concepts we've learned so far be sure you set your embouchure correctly using these important tips we discussed before and these are all things that have been kelsey will start then you will answer following the music on the screen something you might do in class with your students so she's going to start as the example

[00:39:36] and then your students answer in the silence and they'll play right here and they answer and they have that visual and audio visual and audio example so once they get their sound established and they really have a great understanding of the basics

[00:40:05] this is a chance for them to practice and have repetition purposeful repetition and really get those fundamentals established really really well so that's a video that's coming and we're going to have videos similar to that for all the instruments chance for them to do call and response type of things at home with those just quick you know one minute practice videos for those students

[00:40:25] for their section study number two now they're going to start to get into actually playing on the instrument and again there are videos for this hand position videos chance for them to kind of really understand how to get their hands set correctly for this particular sheet again you can go in whatever order you want to but we have them again focusing on the mouthpiece and barrel get that air embouchure everything happening correctly and then apply it to the instrument

[00:40:47] now we have on this sheet started with c and the idea that you get their hands set correctly really get their fingers dug into those holes and if they can play that c with really great hand position then they move to d and then they move to e and f but also holding it with their left hand gives them a little bit more stability in the beginning especially if you have a younger player or smaller player if they're starting on open g they don't they don't have a whole lot of control their left

[00:41:11] hand is not touching the instrument at all and their right hand a lot of times is just that thumb so starting on c gives them a little bit more control over the instrument and then as they lift the fingers up they can maintain that hand position and then end up on g in the upper and up that second line g so uh but if you'd like to you can start in g and work backwards go g all the way back down to c you're gonna you're the teacher

[00:41:35] you're the expert in your school and you're you if you want to start on g and go backwards that and that works better for your kids absolutely that's what you can do you have that flexibility here to do that once they get that set uh it's time to have them start you know getting a really good hand position and getting comfortable moving their fingers now with woodwinds uh we have a very similar thing to

[00:41:55] what we have with the brass but with the woodwinds they can actually move maybe a little bit uh quicker they can move their fingers uh because it again it's not quite the same as playing on a brass so we have them actually move it says quarter notes here but this is not necessarily a timed exercise but it's we did this to give them a little bit more repetition going back and forth um you know for brass players that's not necessarily the best thing to do right off the

[00:42:18] bat but they can maybe move to that a little bit later but here again you see you're getting very specific comments for uh for clarinet players for each exercise you know establishing the correct airflow hold your fingers down for the entire beat do not lift them early you know make sure that you're keeping your fingers close to their assigned tone holes as you lift them up so really specific things and then at the bottom you've got another five note scale for them uh to

[00:42:43] work on and so this is it's a it's a chance for them to start moving their fingers changing notes and getting comfortable with that again in a slurred manner and then later if they want to go back they can do it articulating now that gets you through the first five notes but for woodwinds we've actually gone ahead and moved even further if you want to so if you want to get them all the way

[00:43:02] down to the low f for uh for the you know for the clarinets for example you could do these long tone studies again back on the mouthpiece and barrel getting back to that c which was one of their first notes that they learned and then and then moving on down adding the right hand getting that right hand involved and and we chose to do this with the woodwinds because it is important to get that right hand

[00:43:23] going for example for the clarinets and for the saxophones and get get those fingers moving and get them comfortable with that so this gets them down to that low f and then we have with that we also have the finger movement right hand starters and get them moving their fingers in this manner as well and starting on that b flat to c movement and getting comfortable with that and then we have the five note scale

[00:43:49] there as well so if you want to start getting them down there and getting them comfortable with that then you know this is a way to do that and kind of get them moving from there we also again have the articulation page and on clarinet it's so important that they understand how to properly articulate understand that the embouchure stays set keep that chin flag get the air flowing and understand exactly where their tongue needs to be in their mouth and where they

[00:44:12] need to touch on the reed so you've got the visual there for them again and again they can say it and do it on air and they can play it again just like we had before and they can really start to do some really good work with articulation and so this page is there for them and they can again work through the different notes and kind of work their way through the first five notes on articulation

Practice habits and self-evaluation

[00:44:33] and so again once they have worked through this and again you can kind of see that we have these things that you can use to help your students and then you come down here and you know it's easy to work through those and kind of find all the resources that you might need to need need to need to use and that you can use to help your students so that's just kind of the the way that we've been doing this for the last couple of years so i'm going to give you a little

[00:44:59] bit more of an overview of what we've done and then i'm going to give you a little bit more of an overview of what we've done and i'm going to give you a little bit more of an overview of what we've done and then i'm going to give you a little bit more of an overview of what we've done and then i'm going to give you a little bit more of an overview of what we've done and then i'm going to give you a little bit more of an overview of what we've done and then i'm going to give you a little bit more

[00:45:07] so that's just kind of the the fundamentals that we have for uh for your students some extra things for them to use and then in the very beginning stages uh you know we have the music studio and eei and we're we're going to talk more extensively about it later but just want to kind of show you what we could use the music studio for in the beginning stages because you know they're just playing long tones it's it's early but we do have professional musicians

[00:45:32] playing in the music studio it's one of the great features about eei is every for book one all of the exercises have professional musicians playing in the clear and here at the beginning you know if you come in here and you're going to have your students this could be in class that you're doing this with them or at home they have the music on screen right there but we're playing this f and you have this menu of options for accompaniments if you choose none and leave the

[00:45:57] melody checked you're actually going to get just a professional trombone player playing this is the professional trombone player from the indianapolis symphony orchestra and they can hear what they should sound like just on an f ready and play then they get again and play yeah so they have a chance to go home and actually hear those sounds you can play them in class so

[00:46:34] they can hear them they can play them in class they can play them in the classroom they can play them in the classroom so they can hear them they have that chance to kind of rest and take their time to reset in between they can play this on their instrument they can practice this on their mouthpiece and really try to match that pitch on their mouthpiece if they choose section this is actually going to provide a low brass section for them to play with and they're actually going to

[00:46:51] play an f chord that they're going to hear but we have that f really brought to the front so they can still play that f and feel comfortable ready and play yeah so you can see that that f is really to the front so they can still focus on that f still play that f really solid but now they can kind of feel like they're playing with a full uh full section if they changed a concert band now we're on a different note a b flat they're going to get to

[00:47:20] play and have a b flat and play a b flat major chord with a professional concert and play so just kind of play with that f really solid but now they can kind of feel like they're playing with a full section if they change to concert band now we're on a different note a b flat they're going to get to play and have a b flat and play a b flat major chord with a professional concert and play so just kind of giving them a chance to kind of play uh in you know a little bit different environment uh and play it multiple times and that's one of the one of the things we try to do in the music studio is get the students to play things play the same thing many times so you know

[00:47:49] we know that when they do long tones they need to have that repetition and this is maybe a way to have them do that repetition without it feeling like it's repetition so they can play with a professional player they can play with a section they can play with a concert band and and so that's really a helpful tool for them so again with these fundamentals this is really going to help get them going at the beginning of the year and you can come back to these if there's

[00:48:10] ever issues you see you can come back to these sheets and kind of use them as warm-ups use them as reviews and allow them to constantly develop those fundamentals throughout the year and if you do that again now they've got their music reading skills hopefully continuing to develop and develop initially very strong and then we've broken out all of those fundamentals throughout the year and if you do that again now they've got their music reading skills hopefully continuing to develop and develop initially very strong and then we've broken out all of those

[00:48:30] fundamentals throughout the year and if you do that again now they've got their music reading skills hopefully continuing to develop and develop initially very strong and then we've broken out all of those fundamentals so that their initial fundamentals are really strong as well and so if you keep those both going separate but also you know at the same time then that's going to help as they get get into playing in their book and playing music and and things of that nature

[00:48:45] now the last thing we're going to talk about today and we're going to touch on this briefly but it's an important part of having a student learn instrument the first year and that is going to be practice habits and the ability for them to self-evaluate and And we actually have another webinar from earlier in this year, in January.

[00:49:05] And if you want to go to eiblog.com, you can actually see this webinar on demand. You can also, by the way, see this webinar on demand if you want to go back and review things and see it again or share it with other friends who are using EEI, share the link so that they can see this. But we have another webinar that was on demand, that is on demand, that really talks about how to engage kids online and create assignments and have them, you know, keep them on track.

[00:49:31] And that gets into some details about recording assignments and things of that nature. What we're going to talk about today is just these initial stages of developing proper practice habits. You know, learning a musical instrument is not like math, science, history. It's unique. It's different. And those other subjects obviously are important, but it's important to realize, too,

[00:49:53] that when a kid goes home to practice, practicing an instrument is very different. They need to understand their practice expectations, like what at this early stage, what is expected of them? What should they expect of themselves? And even more importantly, how do they evaluate success? You know, with math and with reading and certain things like that,

[00:50:11] when they go home, they can have their parents help them, and they can have their parents help them understand how to succeed. Math, if it's right or wrong, sometimes there's answer keys, and it's unique for band. There isn't necessarily an answer key, and in most cases, parents cannot help their kids. They're not really sure what to do, even if they were in, you know, a band earlier.

[00:50:33] They may have played a different instrument. So, learning how to practice is really important, and the best thing you can do for your students is the things that you think are important, the concepts that you value, you need to make those important in your class every day, because those are going to be the same things that your students value

[00:50:49] and consider important in their playing when they go home. And as best you can, make these ideas engaging and positive. If you want them to sound good, make having a great tone important. Make it fun.

[00:51:01] Make that the thing that you celebrate. If you want them to count rhythms great, make that the thing that you celebrate and you talk about regularly. If you want them to sit well, all of the things that you want them to do, breathing exercises, things of that nature,

[00:51:13] it's important that you do that in your class on a daily basis. And if you make them fun and you make them engaging, the kids are going to remember them, and the kids are going to gravitate. So if you have this consistent class organization and how you structure your class,

[00:51:28] that's going to lead to productive home practice. I always like to ask this question. If a student went home and repeated the class that you did that day, would that be a good practice session? You know, would they have missed anything?

[00:51:39] Sometimes when I do clinics, I ask teachers, "How many of you feel like breathing exercises are an important part for wind players, an important thing for wind players in learning how to have a good sound?" And almost everybody pretty much raises their hand. And then I say, "Keep your hand up if you do breathing exercises in your class every day."

[00:51:56] And inevitably, no matter where I go, about 75% of the hands go down. So there's a disconnect there. They think breathing is important, but they don't do it in their class. And so their kids, when they go home, they don't know that that's an important thing and they don't do it at home.

[00:52:10] That's just a small example, but whatever you think is important, you want to do that at home. You want to do that in your class, I should say, so that your kids do do that at home. Now, a typical request is,

[00:52:22] a teacher might ask them, "You need to practice 15 or 20 minutes." And it is important that they understand that playing an instrument does take time. It's not something that you can't practice and expect to be successful or get better at. But saying practice 15, 20 minutes,

[00:52:38] you may have a different time frame that you like to do, but that's kind of a typical request. But I think that what teachers really mean when they say that is that they want students to go home and practice some type of warm-up and then play scales or technique or whatever they've done in class,

[00:52:52] and then play music. They want them to have some type of structure to their practice, and they hope that that structure and that practice session lasts 15 to 20 minutes. But I think what teachers really, really mean is they want kids, for example, for their clarinet,

[00:53:09] they want the kids to go home and practice breathing, and then they want them to play on their mouthpiece and barrel to get their embouchure and sound correct, and they want them to play long tones to really work to get a good sound, and then play scales, and maybe they're only doing the F and the G scale,

[00:53:22] and then do some rhythm counting. So they learn and establish really good rhythmic skills, and then practice exercise 35 and 36 from their book. And they might add some other songs in there that they don't want them to do, and then they should say that that should take about 15 to 20 minutes.

[00:53:36] And if you look at this, if this was how a class was scheduled, a class was organized, that would be a great class, and then likewise that would be a great practice session at home. So the goal is how can we get kids to do that when they go home? And you can suggest it,

[00:53:51] and you can organize your class, but with EEI, we're going to try to find some ways that you can kind of guide their home practice. Because, you know, a student may be a great student, but they might have your class at 9:00 in the morning, and then they come home and they practice, you know, eight hours later,

[00:54:05] and they may not remember exactly what you did in class. So with EEI, you can actually set up, you know, systems so that when they go home and log in, they are reminded. You know, like, for example, in this one, I created some assignments so that when a kid goes home, he sees that he should do breathing exercises, and rhythm studies, and section studies,

[00:54:21] and note naming, and that's a chance for them to kind of do that. That's just one way you could use EEI. They also have an assignment section. You could actually have them do recording, you know? Have them do a breathing exercise in AllMusic Studio.

[00:54:37] Have them actually record their breathing exercises if you wanted to. And again, there's a webinar on how to make assignments and get kids to send things to you and stuff like that. And we'll talk about a little bit of that here in a second. But they have those assignments in there, and you can remind them of that. And I should — I kind of skipped ahead here, but, you know, over here on the right,

[00:54:54] you see that you can attach PDFs to those assignments as well. So if you send a note naming home, you could attach that note naming assignment to that. Or if you have a PDF that you want to do, you can create your own PDF of what they should practice and attach that to an assignment as well so they have that at home. But again, creating assignments in the assignment section is easy to do.

[00:55:13] You can make it for everybody. You can make it specific by instrument. But it's just a way to kind of be with them when they're at home practicing and reminding them. Remind them of things that they need to do. But when they practice, they need to have goals.

[00:55:26] They need to have exercises and music to practice. And then they need to really understand how to do self-evaluation. And there's a lot of different things that you can do with that. But recording is an important one of that. And here are the early stages, you know, the very early stages.

[00:55:42] You may not want them to be recording, you know, their initial sounds, although that could be a great keepsake later on, you know, for them to hear what they sounded like on day one or day two or day three. But recording is so easy for them to do nowadays. There's so many recording devices out there.

[00:55:55] You have recording devices at home. And we've made it possible for students to record in EEI. Because when they go home, they have to be the performer, the teacher, and the student. You know, they have to play it. And then they have to decide, "Did I sound good?" and evaluate it.

[00:56:08] And they have to figure out what needs to be better and work on it. And if they make recordings, it allows them to kind of separate that and listen to themselves and make that decision, you know, separate from trying to play it. So, you know, for recording here at the beginning, have them record, you know, anything.

[00:56:27] You know, you don't necessarily have to have them recording and submitting to you. But if you make recording a regular part of their practice from the beginning, that's going to be helpful for them. You could make an assignment and have them send something in. And it's very easy to do that.

[00:56:41] But it's just one of those things where you want them to understand every practice session they should record themselves. And here early on, you know, make it as simple as possible. Have them record their first note. Have them record their favorite thing that they played that day.

[00:56:55] And just have them stockpile recordings so that they can hear them. And if you talk about it right now, you're going to say, "You're going to want to hear these recordings at the end of the year. You're going to want to hear the improvement that you've made." So make recordings now and enjoy having fun making these recordings.

[00:57:09] And they can do that through EEI if they have their account set up. And if you move into it, you can have them send you recordings. And again, there's a whole webinar on this. But come in and you can kind of understand, you know, which students have sent in recordings. You can give them feedback through those recordings.

[00:57:29] And we have this whole gradebook system set up. And again, I encourage you to look at that webinar that talks about this because it goes into much more detail. But as you can see, there's color coding for when students send recordings in to you. And you can give them comments and feedback.

[00:57:45] And you can really kind of do a lot of different things with that. But again, check that webinar out. And really kind of see how that works. But I did want to get through that because I want to talk about self-assessment. Because this is something that students can really grasp onto.

[00:57:59] And it can be super beneficial to them if they can learn to truly assess themselves. And assess themselves in the right way. And with EEI, if you're sending out recording assignments, you can attach to it a self-assessment that they need to complete by the time that they send that recording back to you.

[00:58:15] And so, for example, they could write comments. They could write questions in that "My Comments" section when they send a recording to you. And they can review their performance. And this really gets them, again, in that mindset of listening to themselves and trying to get themselves to be better.

[00:58:28] And then you can create the parameters that you want them to judge themselves on. You want them to evaluate themselves on. And so, for this one, for example, I chose posture, instrument position, hand position. Did they do these things? And evaluate themselves. Tone quality, rhythm, steady beat, notes and pitch.

[00:58:44] Whatever's important to you, you can create a custom self-assessment rubric. And have that attached to…

Wrap-up

[00:58:50] to the assignments that they are sending out. And these self-assessments can be so valuable to them. And on top of that, you know, when kids go home, like I mentioned before, you have sometimes where parents want to help out. And, you know, they don't necessarily know what to do or how to help.

[00:59:06] These self-assessments can be really beneficial for parents. So the students can make these recordings. And the parents can kind of come along and, together with the student, follow the self-evaluation and kind of start to understand a little bit about what their kid's doing in your class.

[00:59:22] So, you know, it's just another way that they can do that. And they can learn how to self-evaluate and establish those proper practice habits. But, you know, if they're learning how to read music really well, and they're getting their instrument fundamentals set, then once they really establish those practice habits and can self-evaluate,

[00:59:41] that's when a lot of things can really come together. And I hope you can see that in EEI, we've really tried to design this program and design this site to help your students in all of those areas. And we have a lot of different ways that we can help you with this, a lot of different ideas.

[00:59:57] And if you haven't, go to, well, you've probably been there to get to this webinar, but go to eeiblog.com. We have a lot of lessons and tutorials and ideas that we're going to be posting on a regular basis. But it's a great way for you to kind of understand how to use Essential Elements Interactive, how to, you know, how to, you know, new ideas on how to work with your students in their class.

[01:00:19] It can be a really beneficial thing, and we really hope to have a strong dialogue for that. Also, we're going to make an announcement. We're going to have an EEI user Facebook group, and it's just for people who are using EEI. We're going to go really in-depth. You can request to join that.

[01:00:35] If we check and see that you are an Essential Elements Interactive user, you can be a part of that. You can make comments. You can ask questions of other Essential Elements Interactive users. We'll be on there to kind of provide guidance and provide answers and provide some things for you to kind of look at.

[01:00:50] So look for that coming soon. We'll send an email out and post that in the website as well. But there'll be an EEI user Facebook page that you can use. So trying to give you a lot of resources, a lot of different tools to use Essential Elements Interactive with your students throughout the entire year.

[01:01:06] So again, thanks for joining us. I hope this was beneficial, and I hope that as you start this school year, you're excited about the year and that we provided some information and hopefully some resources that can help you and your students. We're going to have a few more of these throughout the year, and we'll let you know those.

[01:01:25] But if you have questions any time throughout the year, please go to the Help section. Send us questions, requests, suggestions. It's one of the ways that Essential Elements Interactive gets better, is when we hear from you guys, the teachers. So again, I hope this was really helpful.

[01:01:39] Best of luck to you at the start of your year, and thanks again for joining us. And we'll see you again soon.