I seriously want to use this book in my classroom. 

This is the one book that I've found that truly takes this instrument seriously, and focuses on music literacy rather than rushing to strumming songs. (We all do realize that you can play melodies on ukulele, right?) In fact, Book 1 does not even discuss chords until the last 10 pages of the book.

The series also comes with a teacher's edition. Score! A method book meant for what we do. One thing to note immediately, though - the Canadian music education system uses linear tuning rather than re-entrant tuning, so the 4th string is an octave lower than normally found in the mainland US, but the book says that it's "High G friendly," so we should be good to go! (More on that later...) They also prefer tuning the ukulele a full step higher than in the  US (ADF#B). This last point is not that big of a deal, since they publish the book in both C6 tuning (US) and D6 tuning (CA).  You just need to know to look for the version you want.

It it starts by teaching each string as notes to be read on the staff - string 4 & 3. The first reading exercise, in fact, is simply quarter notes playing C, G, C, G, etc. I like this approach, since I will often have students need to be reminded that it's an open string when they ask, "where's E again?"

Even better, it gets them singing while they play this simple exercise.  They are encouraged to sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" as they alternate between the two notes.  A very holistic approach altogether.

By page 8, students are playing duets!  Not just one, but 5 different simple duets, all in the first unit. Singing and playing is encouraged all along as they go. I'm drooling by this point.

Unit two works on playing the full C Major scale, and using that scale to practice reading different rhythms; not just playing it on quarters, but 8 different rhythm patterns. (Dang, this is cool!) By the end of Unit 2, they've played several duets & trios, worked on learning intervals by letter names and by solfege, and discuss how to recognize these intervals in C Major. Oh, and Brahms. (I'm sweating.)

Unit three focuses on the F Major scale, and follows much the same format, but steps it up a notch, when students not only play a duet of "Long, Long Ago," but also learn how to fill out a variations on the melody as a solo player.

Unit 4 brings in chords, and only C, G, and F, respectively. It even gives specific strategies and exercises to slowly work those chords into the fingers, then gives students a melody to play while a friend plays the chords. This ends the book, but there's three more books in the series!

So this sounds like your perfect book for classroom ukulele, right? Why haven't I already started using it?

It's that darn linear tuning. The book says it's low-G friendly, and makes some gestures towards it at the very beginning (giving greyed-out alternate high-G notes), but that disappears almost immediately, and it's obvious that it's written for low-G in mind.

That's not to say that I'm not still considering it, but I love the re-entrant sound, and that high-G fourth string does offer some cool options in ensemble and solo playing.  Linear tuning sounds too much like a guitar to me. When I want a guitar sound, I pick up my guitar.  

But that's my bias, and I'm trying to decide whether or not I need to get over it. The fact is, though, that when students leave my room and purchase a ukulele, it's likely going to be re-entrant, unless they buy in Hawaii, Canada, or change the strings and nut to fit linear tuning. (I do have a student who bought her ukulele in Hawaii, and it's linear tuning...)

On the other side of things, I'm using ukuleles right now in my sixth grade chorus. As an effort to break them of the habit of learning their notes by ear and by associating them with words, I'm having them learn to play their choral parts on ukulele. Of course, I have to make sure that none of the music goes below Middle C to do this - unless I switch the instruments to Low-G. 

So there you go. As with all of these books, it's a decision you will need to make as a teacher, based on what you want to accomplish in your classroom, and how much time you have to do it. This would be an ideal book for a long-term ukulele class - semester or full year.

Check out the other resources on the Ukuleleintheclassroom.com website. There are free resources, ukulele ensembles, and all sorts of neat stuff there.

Between James Hill and Walk Off the Earth, there's days that I start thinking about heading north...there's cool stuff happening up there!

Positives:
Comprehensive method book designed specifically for classroom
Includes teacher edition with lesson plans
No Tablature
Includes solo melodies & duets
Waits until other skills are firmly in place before introducing chords

Weakness(?):
Low-G based

This is the book I've used most in class. It was the first method book I purchased when I started teaching ukulele, in spite of several frustrations with the book.  Again, it's important to understand that I'm approaching this as a text to use to teach a class, rather than individual study. I think that when Lil' Rev wrote this book, he had the individual student in mind, most likely working on their own without a teacher.

​It's laid out with all of the requisite parts of the ukulele, history, etc. and introduces individual pitches first. (Excellent!) However, he also introduces Tablature (TAB) right away. (Sigh) Truly, I think there's  a place for Tablature in our teaching; it's a great way for a student to make a note to themselves about fingering, or to show where a new note is. If it was shown on the first example of each set of exercises to help students find the notes, then they had to play the rest of the exercises without it, I would have been happier. Instead, the first exercise of the whole book does not have it, and then every exercise after that does have it.

One of the things I really like about his approach is that as he introduces each string, starting with string 3 (middle C), he gives at least 4 simple exercises reading the 2-3 notes on each string in the first position. Each exercise is only 4 measures long, giving students a chance to be successful in short bursts. The other thing I appreciate about the examples is that each one introduces some sort of change in pattern so that students need to actually look at the music to play it, or get caught off-guard playing a wrong.  

A minor quibble here: the book includes the note names above every note for each page that introduces new notes. I have found that when it comes to the tunes that they have to play to apply those notes (Frere Jacque is the first), they have only been looking at the note names rather than making the connection of the location of the notes on the staff.  When the letter names are not written in, they are unable to recognize them any more, and often feel the need to write in letter names after that.  I would have preferred that the book would do it for the first exercise, then for just the first measure of the next exercise, then maybe just the first note of the following.  Ween the students off of them!

When it introduces chords, things do get a bit strange, however. First of all, when chord diagrams are shown with fingering, there are some strange fingerings suggested. (I find it odd to suggest to use the second finger to play the C Major Chord.) The major issue, however, is that after I think the book does a laudable job of gradually teaching notes & rhythms, it starts with a basic quarter-note down strum for chord changes. Good. It continues with the same strum on the next page, using the finger instead of thumb. (I'm not big on using the thumb for a down-strum, but okay...) Suddenly, the next page, it introduces a strumming pattern that is a multi-finger strum incorporating quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes in a combination of down & up strums.  At this point, we haven't even discussed a basic eighth-note down-up strum! Worse, it's not notated in standard notation, making it even more difficult to figure out exactly the rhythm we should be hearing. It comes out of nowhere, and is a very strange place to introduce it.

When teaching my 9-week course, at the point we reach chords, I teach from the board and handouts instead, since I find this part of the book completely unusable for classroom use.

Overall, you can make this work, but it's certainly not great for classroom teaching. On the other hand, it's one of the better ones out there, which is a rant for another time.

Positive:
Gradual teaching of individual pitches first
Several 3-4 bar exercises per introduced pitch
Familiar tunes to apply newly learned notes

​Weaknesses:
Some odd chord fingerings
Strumming pattern difficulty ramps suddenly
Tiny Tim Syndrome (T.T.S) - A tendency not to take the instrument seriously at the same time as teaching it