There are many free online resources for orchestra teachers. Here is a list of my favorite:
1. StringSkills.com by Gabriel A. Villasurda
In my opinion, this is by far the best free resource out there for string orchestra. I use just about every resource that he has posted on his site. Every day I have my orchestra students spend a good amount of time playing his resources as warm-ups, from scales to finger patterns to shifting.
I love that the bulk majority of his resources are based on melodies, which I am a big proponent of. Not everyone comes from a musical home, and I believe that too many students in orchestra these days are forced to play harmonies without having a solid foundation in melodies.
Also, any serious violin player knows the importance of the Kretuzer etudes, so I was so excited to find that he adapted one of the easier etudes and turned it into his "Crucial Bowings" compilation. I literally have my students play this etude almost every day but with different bow variations. Not only does this improve students' physical abilities with bow control, but the notes work out the left hand fingers while also training the ear for patterns in tonality.
This site has a lot to offer and is a great way for private lesson students to learn music theory for free. But for orchestra, I admittedly only use the note identification exercise, which is essentially an online version of flash cards to help you learn note names. I like that the exercise can be customized and you have the option to select the range of notes, the clef, and whether or not accidentals are shown.
Every year I take my beginning students to the computer lab to spend a day drilling note names until they get 1,000 note names correct. Just be sure that you have good rapport with your students and that you have convinced them thoroughly about how amazing it is to be able to identify notes quickly, and they will happily do the exercises.
3. ViolinMasterClass.com by Kurt Sassmannshaus
Sometimes band teachers are required to teach orchestra, but they do not necessarily feel comfortable with teaching strings. That's when a website like this one may be useful! The video tutorials on this website have very high quality information about how to play the violin and goes through all the essentials of violin playing from beginning to advanced. However, because the videos are not very exciting, I personally do not show these videos to my class, opting to demonstrate and explain the techniques myself.
4. Bow Warm Ups 2.0 Video by the Orchestra Teacher
Any beginning orchestra student needs to know how to hold their bow. Unfortunately this is a very unnatural thing to do, so repeated practice is extremely important. To make the repetition fun, there are a variety of games that can be played with the bow which helps to physically strengthen students' fingers and bow control. This warm-up video contains a lot of different games that you can play with your students. I personally do not show the video in class, opting to teach the games myself, but the video is definitively entertaining enough to do so.
This list would not be complete without Teachers Pay Teachers. There are so many free resources available here, often posted by real teachers who have personally tested out their own products in their own classroom. Each year I have my students complete an "About Me" worksheet. There are plenty of free versions of this worksheet available here from different sellers. Sometimes I download holiday-themed worksheets to change things up in my classroom, as well as worksheets for when I know there is a sub coming who doesn't know about music. I also run my own store on this platform and have some free resources available for download.
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