Rocking Structured Literacy YouTube playlist!

 Hey Rocking Dan fans, my Science of Reading/Orton Gillingham YouTube playlist now includes animated music videos for 6 syllable types, 3 types of syllable division, single vowels, y as a vowel, schwa, the doubling rule, digraphs and Sound it Out (The Orthographic Mapping Song). Go and check it out now! The Science of Reading never sounded so good! Your students/ children will be singing and dancing along to these catchy tunes as they are learning and reinforcing important structured literacy concepts at the same time! It's a win-win that is for sure. I've had lots of great feedback from teachers, parents and Orton Gillingham/Structured literacy therapists about the songs and videos which is amazing! My class loves the rockin' tunes too! It is so wonderful to know that my music is helping dyslexic and non dyslexic children all around the world with their literacy learning. Make sure you subscribe to my channel too! I have a number of songs and videos I am currently working on. 

Click on the link! Science of Reading/Orton Gillingham playlist

In other news, I've had the great pleasure to represent The Code Read Dyslexia Network at a number of Learning Best Practice Conferences over the last two school terms. It's been wonderful to talk to so many parents and educators about dyslexia and what can be done to help dyslexic children in school and in life in general! I have really enjoyed talking to people about Code Read's report Saving Money by Spending: Solving Illiteracy in Australia. It's an important document! If we help dyslexic children we are in fact helping all children as we know " Explicit teaching of alphabetic decoding skills is helpful for all children, harmful for none and crucial for some." (Snow/Juel, 2005). It's vital for children that they become literate in order to give them choices and opportunities in life. We know what the cognitive science tells us about how the brain learns to read and what the evidence tells us about the most effective way to teach reading for everyone is.

If you would like to know more about dyslexia or my personal experience as a dyslexic person and dyslexic therapist or my advocacy for dyslexics and for evidence based reading instruction then you can check out my most viewed blog post from 2017 My Dyslexic Journey

You can also read the interview I did for Distinct Magazine dystinct.org/magazine/issue-4-july-2021/ or you can listen to one of the interviews I have done on a number of podcasts and Facebook lives including Dear Dyslexic and Human Chapters

Here is a short video I a made about dyslexia for Distinct Magazine!  

I have to say it is wonderful to be an Accredited Member of the Australia Dyslexia Association. It's great to be able to work with dyslexic children and help them with their learning! 

It was also a great honour to be interview by Jocelyn Seamer and be featured in her book Reading Success in the Early Primary Years. It was wonderful to be able how to plan and teach a structured literacy block in the early years. 

My Virtual World Tour wrapped up a few months ago! What an amazing experience it was to play 571 virtual shows to classrooms across 14 different countries over two and half years! It was great to play so many of my structured literacy songs during the concerts and to promote evidence based teaching while entertaining the children and the teachers at the same time! Of course I had the chance to discuss the Science of Reading and dyslexia with the teachers after the shows! It truly was privileged to be able to share my music with the world! 

That's about it for now! If you haven't done so yet, go and check out my YouTube channel Rocking Dan Teaching Man! Make sure you subscribe! Until next time Rock on!

Rocking classrooms all over the world with 400 virtual shows!

I just played the 400th show on the Rocking Dan Virtual World Tour in Auckland, New Zealand! It's been an amazing experience so far. I've been lucky enough to play virtually in classrooms all around the world via my YouTube channel Rocking Dan Teaching Man.

I started the virtual tour in response to schools having to teach remotely back in January, 2021 and therefore not being able to have live incursions. I was going to wrap the virtual tour up at the end of the 2021 school year, but I just had so many requests that I kept it going. The first virtual show was in Delaware, USA for Cindy Price's 1st graders at Southern Elementary. The 50th show was in Nashville for a Kindergarten class. The 100th show was for Kindergarten and Year 1 at Riverwood in Sydney's south. The 200th show was for a Kindergarten class in Newcastle, NSW and the 300th show was for a 1st grade class in L.A, USA. I have now played for schools on every continent! The songs I have played on the tour are about important literacy, numeracy and social skills concepts for early learners. I always start each show with "Be Kind to Everyone" and every set has included such classic Rocking Dan tunes as "The Friends of 10" (a song about the addition facts to 10), "What Makes a Good Friend?" and many other favourites from my YouTube channel including "Hey, Hey They're the Vowels", "Hey, Yeah I love to read" and "Dancing Doubles."

 I am forever grateful for the opportunity to play live music for so many children in so many classrooms around the world and to be able to help them with their learning and put a smile on their faces. It's wonderful to share my music outside of my own Year 1 classroom!

The response from teachers and children has been amazing! 

"Absolutely awesome! You are such an inspiration and an important part of our teaching!!! Your music truly helps all Students learn the skills that we are trying to teach them! Thank you for all you do!!!"

"You are AMAZING! A little sunshine in our week, thanks again the kids loved it!" 

 "Rocking Dan, I can't express how much we appreciate you taking the time to put all this together for the kids. Ending term 3 with a BANG! Thank you Dan! You are a legend!!!!" "

"THANK YOU ROCKING DAN! This is just the pick-me-up our classes needed today online."

 "My class loved the show! The expressions on their faces when you greeted us was priceless!"

"Oh my goodness the show was AMAZING!!!!!!!! Thank you so so much!!!!!!! The kids loved it! We will be singing the songs all day!!!!!"

"Oh you’re too good, Rocking Dan. Thank you SO much! What a legend. Your time, thoughtfulness and kindness are so appreciated. The show was so good! The kids loved it."

"WOW! That was awesome. Thank you so much. My kids were stoked."

I have had such a a great time on virtual tour and I am looking forward to keeping it going until the end of 2022! Thank you to all the teachers who have supported my tour. It means the world to me.

If you haven't done so yet, head over to my YouTube channel Rocking Dan Teaching Man and check out my new songs all about syllable division. While your there click on the subscribe button! Until next time Rock on. 

Rocking Dan

rockingdantm@gmail.com

Rocking my Long Service Leave with a fun filled free educational musical tour of Australian Primary Schools!

Year 1 Ferncourt Public School 

Long after the roar of the crowd has subsided the memories of the Rocking Dan Teaching Man tour will live on. It was such an amazing experience to use my Long Service Leave in Term 3 to tour around Australia and play my educational songs to Kindergarten to Year 3 children. I had the most wonderful time on the road. It is something that I will treasure for the rest of my life. It is hard to describe the thrill of hearing an audience of a few hundred children singing and dancing along to my music. It was quite surreal and uplifting to hear the kids sing every word of my songs as they knew them from my YouTube channel. At times I had to pinch myself.

Prep St Aloysius Primary School, Queenscliff, Victoria

     

My Largest Audience 400 Prep- Year 2 kids at Yugumbir State School in Logan, Queensland (The friends of 10)

Be Kind to Everyone with the Prep-Year 2 kids at Coomera State School

A huge thank you to all the teachers and principals who allowed me to come to their schools and preform the Rocking Dan show to their children. Everyone I encountered was friendly and welcoming and it made the tour so much more pleasurable. I ended up playing 37 shows in 55 days at 32 Primary schools to a total of 4857 children in 3 states, travelling 6121km in the process. The Rocking Dan tour stretched from Queenscliff in southern Victoria all the way up to Petrie in Brisbane's north. I had the opportunity to play at Catholic Schools, Public Schools, Special Schools and Independent schools.

 Prep at Petrie State School

Over the last decade I have researched the impact that music and movement has on helping children with their learning. Putting educational concepts to melodies with repetition and adding movement helps children learn new concepts and reinforces previously learnt ones. Singing and dancing is also lots of fun for the kids too! Everyone certainly had fun at the shows and it's so wonderful to be able to help children from outside my classroom with their learning through music. It was so rewarding seeing the children smiling, laughing and singing along to the songs. 

Now that Term 4 about to start the Rocking Dan Long Service Leave Tour is over and I am heading back into the classroom as a teacher. Thanks again to everyone who had me at their school!

It's nice to be thanked (Rosehill Public School, Kindergarten)

Dance to the Days of the Week with Rosehill Public School Kindergarten

Finally, I would like to give a shout out to my official charity tour partner Code REaD Dyslexia Network. This is a charity that is very close to my heart being dyslexic myself. Code REaD seeks to raise awareness of dyslexia. At least 10% of children in Australian schools are dyslexic. Early identification and evidence based intervention is key to helping dyslexic children overcome dyslexia. Check out their website for more information about dyslexia and how you can help. https://codereadnetwork.org/  Here is a link to the Australian Dyslexia Association which also has lots of information about dyslexia.

                                                           

It was great to meet some of the amazing members of Code REaD Dyslexia network on the tour and thank them for their hard work advocating for dyslexia awareness. 

Don't forget to check out my YouTube channel Rocking Dan Teaching Man!  While the tour was going on my channel hit 5 Million views! Wow!

On a side note mid tour I had the opportunity to hear Professor David Kilpatrick speak about recent advances in understanding word-level reading problems. The presentation was amazing. It was so informative and gave me a greater depth of understanding about the research, evidence and cognitive science of reading. I highly recommend reading his book Equipped for reading success. 

After the tour I went on a very nice holiday with my family to the USA. It was so great to see my guitar the 58 Explorer on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Contemporary Art (The Met) in New York City in the Play it Loud exhibition!  (used on such classic Rocking Dan recordings such as Be Kind to Everyone)

...and yes I finally made it to Carnegie Hall! 

Come on everybody let's do the floss

A big thank you to my Road Crew for all their hard work behind the scenes putting the show together! I couldn't have done it without you!

By the end of the tour it was time for a nice cup of tea! 

Until next time Rock on with Rocking Dan!

Rocking Dan Road Trip Tour!

Hey Rocking Dan fans!

The Rocking Dan Teaching Man educational musical tour starts on Friday the 19th of August in the small Victorian town of Newham (near the world famous Hanging Rock). I'm taking the term off and using my long service leave to play some free shows in schools around Australia!  I'll be singing all my hit tunes like What makes a good friend, The friends of 10, The vowels song, Be kind to everyone and many more! After Newham I'll be heading down to Queenscliff on the Victorian coast before going back up to Melbourne for some more fun rocking educational shows! Once my time in Victoria is over I'll be heading back up to Sydney for a week of shows (July 29-August 2) before hitting the road again and going up to sunny South East Queensland where I will be performing to schools on the Gold Coast and Brisbane (August 5-9). Then it's back down to Sydney for some more shows. After that who knows where I will show up in the weeks to follow. Exciting times ahead! I am really looking forward to sharing my music with children live in their classrooms and schools. Rocking Dan on YouTube

It will be great to see the kids sing along to their favourite Rocking Dan tunes from YouTube! You can follow my tour here on this blog or on my YouTube channel! A big thank you to all the teachers who have agreed to have me in their schools!

I'll be in and around Sydney for a few weeks this term. So send me an email for your free show! Rockingdantm@gmail.com

If you would like me to come and play at your school or in your classroom for free this term then send me an email at Rockingtm@gmail.com Let's see if we can work something out!

You can also get some amazing Rocking Dan Merchandise from my Redbubble store too!

  Click on the link here! 

Until next time Rock on and see you on the road!