Many teachers have found that notation software is an excellent medium to encourage composition and to reinforce theory and other concepts. Are you and interested in finding ways to integrate music notation software in the curriculum? There are some articles, lesson plans and books that are available to help.
Lesson Plans and Web Resources
Some excellent notation lesson plans are located on thehttp://www.soundtree.com/lesson-plans site. All of the articles here are written by practicing music educators. I have several articles on notation software on this site and there are others. Each article includes the necessary resource materials for the lesson.
The Vermont MIDI site, www.vtmidi.org is the longest running site that has been dedicated to student composition. I have been following this site for years. There are some archives of student work and some lesson plans by educators located at http://www.vtmidi.org/AtoC.html
If you are looking for elementary/middle school notation lessons, than check out Karen Garrett’s site at http://www.musictechteacher.com/lessons001.htm. Karen has posted her lesson plans and materials that can be downloaded on a variety of curricular areas including using Sibelius notation software.
By the way, If you are an elementary teacher and interested in technology, check out Amy Burns bloghttp://amymburns.musiced.net/
Both Finale 2010 and Sibelius 6 have worksheets that can be used to enhance the teaching of music notation software.
TI:ME, Technology for Music Education www.ti-me.org has more than 500 lesson plans on music notation software. The database is only open to members and is located in the “Members Only” section of the website. The annual membership cost is $40 per year. This is rich resource of lesson plans on all software applications in general and music notation in particular.
Method Book
I am one of the co-authors of a new series by Alfred Publishing, the MusicTech series. There are currently three books in the series and one is dedicated to music notation software entitled Composing Music with Notation. The book comes with a CD that contains all of the lesson files and it is a turn-key solution for integration notation into the curriculum. It I available from all of the typical music book resellers.
http://www.alfred.com/alfredweb/front/ProductDetail.aspx?itemnum=%20%20%20%20%2025565&pubnum=0
Are there other resources that you use when working with students and music notation software?
Making the Most of Notation Software 