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Primary Junior Arts: Music Teacher Resources

This library guide provides Queen's teacher candidates with recommended resources for teaching music and for integrating music into primary junior classrooms.

PJ Education Librarian

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Brenda Reed
Contact:
brenda.reed@queensu.ca
613-533-6000 x 77644

We support your Music teaching with:

  • an alert to a 1-year free  membership in the Ontario Music Educators' Association
  • rhythm & other small musical instruments, posters, big books, puppets
  • student textbooks for K to 6 with accompanying teacher guides
  • children's picture books with connections to music
  • information books about music and musicians (shelved in the M section!)
  • professional magazines for PJ teachers, including current issues of The Recorder (OMEA) and the Canadian Music Educator (CMEA)
  • hundreds of professional resources for teachers of music, including lesson plans, instructional strategies, ideas for connecting literacy and music, and more
  • MusicPlay from Themes & Variations ( set up your account here for Queen's Faculty of Education)
  • Ebooks for children & teachers, including Tumblebooks with its Tumbletunes
  • Video from curio.ca (CBC), Campus (NFB), & On-Core

Why Integrate Music into Your Classroom?

Docrat, Y. (2020). Why generalist K-12 teachers should use the arts to support students with exceptionalities in mainstream schools (even if they don’t consider themselves to be artistically inclined). schoolrubric.com

Edutopia.(2020, February 7).  Arts Integration: New Studies Link the Arts to Crucial Cognitive Skills.

Conti, G. & Sloan, A. (30 July 2024). Five Ways Music Can Improve Student Mental Health. ASCD.

Korbey, Holley. (2022, April 22). How Music Primes the Brain for Learning.  Edutopia.

People for Education. Arts Education, 2018. 

People for Education. Annual Report, 2019.

Royal Conservatory of Music. (2014). The Benefits of Music Education.

Royal Conservatory of Music. (2014). The Benefits of Music Education infographic.

Upitis, Rena. (2003). What is arts education good for? Education Canada, 43.4.

Upitis, Rena. (2011). Arts education for the development of the whole child. ETFO.

This guide is related to this article:
Rowe, M., Rowe, Kirby, A., Dahbi, M. & Luk, G. (2022). Promoting language and literacy skills through music in early childhood classrooms. The Reading Teacher Nov. 2022.
https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/trtr.2155

Copyright Information for Teachers

Cover of the Ontario Arts Curriculum, 1-8.

Music Play Online

 MusicPlay Online is available to Queen's teacher candidates!

Faculty of Education students, staff, and faculty: your username and password for MusicPlay is on the Passwords for Licensed Resources page.

The MusicPlay binders and CDs are in our Teacher Resource Room Kit collection, and we have many of the other Themes & Variations materials in Teaching Collection on Floor 2.  Just ask for recommendations about where to start your music lesson planning or for assistance finding the logon information.

How to Integrate Music into Your Classroom

Focus on arts education. (Dec2018 / Jan2019). Educational Leadership.

Upitis, R. (2011). Engaging Students Through the Arts. What Works? Research into Practice. Student Achievement Division, Ontario Ministry of Education.

Upitis, R. (2014). Cultivating Student Engagement Through Interactive Art Strategies. What Works? Research into Practice. Student Achievement Division, Ontario Ministry of Education.

Companion Site for This Too is Music!