Teachers Guide for the pBuzz Journey Method Book

pBuzz – A Natural Learning Instrument for Elementary Students

Discover the joy of music in seconds. Learn to play in minutes. Enjoy for a lifetime. More eye-catching than a recorder, lighter than a drum and easier to play than a xylophone - the new brightly colored, lightweight and smooth edged pBuzz makes music fun for early learners! 

Offering a truly authentic musical instrument experience, the pBuzz has a range of 6 notes through its movable slide. The slide positions are outlined by color, note name, and slide positions numbered 1 - 6. Students can coordinate these instrument markings with either traditional notation and or a note color system.  This helps aid understanding of pitch and varying length. 

Children who have early exposure to musical instruments develop areas of the brain that relate to social behavior, language and reasoning skills, as well as memory. The pBuzz can also help develop a child’s sensory and fine motor skills, encourage self-expression, stimulate imagination and creativity, build confidence and nurture their natural music talents.

Teacher Welcome/Introduction

Welcome to the pBuzz Journey! We’ve created this method book and teacher's guide to help more teachers and students enjoy the learning of foundational music skills. The pBuzz experience can motivate a student to further musical pursuits, including brass, woodwind, string, voice, and even percussion. Here’s how:

• First, students learn that they CAN play a real instrument – that translates to any instrument.
• Next, learning the concepts of how a tone is produced is much easier when it’s external, like with a mouthpiece, and can even promote a better understanding of how the voice box works for singing.
• Gross motor skills such as slide movement translate easily to bow movement and percussion movement. Learning to use air (i.e., breath support) gives every wind and voice student a much larger palette of sound.
• pBuzz provides a learning experience for the foundational music skills an elementary student needs to learn:  How a tone is produced, how to adjust for and maintain pitch, and how to use air (breath support).
• pBuzz provides for six notes (on one partial) and it’s easy for the teacher to lead a group and monitor individual performance at the same time. Call and response is a great way to encourage listening skills.
• pBuzz can be taught through remote learning as well as in a large group setting or individual one-on-one lessons.  
• pBuzz is intrinsically more exciting for active students through kinesthetic movements.

In this teacher guide, you will also find other great resources to help you and your students, including:

• Method Book Guidance, section by section
• Overview of Lesson Plans and Learning Objectives for pBuzz Instruction.
• Supplemental materials, links, and videos for teachers.
• Supplemental Resources that can be introduced to students at the teacher’s discretion.

Let’s get started!

END OF OVERVIEW / INTRODUCTION                                               NEXT:         CREATORS OF PBUZZ JOURNEY

Learn More:

Each segment listed is linked to a new page.  You can move through the Teachers Guide sequentially or jump to any segment you desire.