Smart Organization: the Smart board

Smart boards are a GREAT tool in the Music room! If you are one of the lucky ones to have a Smart board in your room or in the rooms where you teach, it can make your lessons flow and keep you on track.

If you have no Smart board BUT you do have a projector and screen you can use this same strategy using Powerpoint or Google Slides.

This saves you from hauling a dozen posters with you to every room you teach in. It's in the cloud or on your flash drive. Let's take a look at this amazing tool slide by slide.

1. The board is displaying a message for your students to read as soon as they enter your room, ie. What can you tell me about Mozart? Or can you name a percussion instrument and explain how to play it?

I love "would you rather"s. Rachel Lynette has a bunch of free ones.

After briefly discussing the responses, you continue with the next slide.

2. In this slide there are pictures that link to various song lyrics in Powerpoint or other Smart Notebook files. Each picture represents a song for a grade level so if you teach 5 grade levels then you have 5 pictures.

I totally LOVE Music K-8 magazine!
They have created the powerpoints for you!

3. Rhythmic reading can be slide 3 (and 4, 5, etc. depending on how many grades you have.) One slide for each grade level. Rhythmic passages that scaffold from one grade to another help to keep you on track when teaching multiple grades. Students read the rhythms with syllables, clap them, and even add hand percussion.

4. Following the rhythm slides are the slides that display the main activity of each of your lessons. These are the slides where you have different types of locomotor and non-locomotor movements for 2nd grade. Or on the next slide you might visually break down the 3 body percussion parts of the 5th grade piece.

Make it interactive. Have the kids come to the board and circle their choice.
Thanks to David Row at Making Moments Matter.

5. Nearing the end of your music lesson, you might calm everyone with a listening activity. Slides that introduce or review a certain style of music or specific composer.

Or again make it interactive

Now you have reached the end of your lesson. Your students exit your room and you start the presentation all over with the next class. If you have different grade level classes every period, this can really save your brain! 

It's all contained in one place. 

It goes in the order YOU want the lesson to go. 

It is highly visual in a class that is basically auditory. 

It gives your students something to look at while learning and listening.

Does creating this presentation take time every week or every 6 days or however your schedule falls? Yes it does- the 1st year! Is it worth it? ABSOLUTELY! Just like writing plans or creating lessons takes time, it is an investment in your future as a teacher. The beauty of these presentations is that once you've made them, you can use them next year and over and over. It bears repeating - it is totally worth your time.

If you do something different that works for you, I would LOVE to see it the comments below!

Happy Honking! Ellen

2 ways to create calm transitions in your classroom

When I first started teaching I was so concerned about music content and materials that I didn't really consider transitions or even protocols for activities. The kids behaved so calmly in the halls with their classroom teachers but once they came into my room, they forgot all about that.

I told myself that was OK because I teach music, right?
And music is a noisy subject, right?

But honestly it felt chaotic to me and it kinda wore me out. I didn't realize that having structure, procedures and protocols for behavior in my classroom didn't make me a control freak. It made me a good teacher.

I needed to take charge. After all this was MY room and I wanted to be comfortable in it. When I'd ask the kids to be "good", that wasn't specific enough. So I decided that my music room needed some FORMAL routines for pretty much EVERYTHING.

I created a step-by-step protocol for entering the room and exiting the room.
Posters of the entrance and exit routines were hung in the front of the room for visual cues.

 

And then we PRACTICED them a few times in each class and not just at the time of the transitions. I made sure that transition looked and sounded like I wanted it to. And if the behavior slipped once in a while, we would review the expectations and do the transition again and get it right.

LINING UP

I also chose CALM activities that came right after entering and right before leaving in order to make the transitions smoother.  For example, you will notice we do "brain hook-up" right after sitting down.

Later on I even added a poster listing the order of the activities in the music class so students could anticipate transitions.

Having the students know the expectations gave them a point of reference. They knew how they were supposed to enter, exit, hand out materials, collect materials, etc. And when they were ready, I assigned leadership roles to students to give them more influence in creating our classroom atmosphere. See my earlier blog on JOBS.

By giving students guidelines to follow, they knew what I wanted them to do and that made a world of difference for me.

Happy Honking! Ellen

4 Time Saving Hacks for Lesson Planning

I am one of those teachers who has to have a lesson plan. Yes I've had to "wing it" from time to time but I'm truly at my best when I have a plan.

Over the years, I have spent WAY too much time planning. Hours, days even thinking and rethinking. Finally I figured out how to create a good lesson plan in far less time and then have some time for other things.

I fill in the blanks! Yep it's that easy. Here's what I do.

1) use a template - include all the things I want to cover in every lesson, ie. rhythm, listening, singing

2) plug in my material, ie. songs I want to sing, rhythm, composer I want the kids to study

3) choose an music making activity - I love K&D GamePlan,

 I don't use all of their material but they have wonderful activities.
You could use music series texts or activities that you learned at a PD - just make sure YOU enjoy it. That energy will translate to your students. And... you might be teaching the lesson a few times so make sure you like it! 😉

4) look forward to having fun in your class without the stress of worrying what to do next. You know what you are going to do, you know what materials you'll want to use, etc.

I put all of my elements (songs, rhythm, etc.) into a Smart Notebook file and the lesson practically runs itself. (FLASH: More about the Smartboard in Music in another blog post.)

Here is an example of my template and how I fill it in.

They say....repetition, repetition, repetition...AND they are right. I choose a song (usually about the time of year or season) and we sing it for the whole month (3-4 times). By the 3rd or 4th time, the kids have heard it enough to sing it. I choose songs from Music K-8 magazine and I show the lyrics on the screen as a powerpoint.

I focus on a couple of rhythm patterns for each grade level and we practice them every class! I have an 8 measure rhythm example that includes several patterns that the grade level is working on. Yes, we say/clap it at each lesson for a month. Remember... repetition.

Then we do a music activity. Maybe we play recorders or boomwhackers or bar instruments or dance or ... something else. This is where I plug in a GamePlan activity.

Finally we do some listening to our monthly Musician in the Spotlight.

My kids LOVE this part of the lesson. I mix up the musicians with a different genre each month, ie. jazz, pop, soul, orchestral (what non-music folks might call "classical"), etc.

At the end of class, we do some rewards and housekeeping and the kids leave.

That's it! Easy-peasy. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment.

Here's to less time doing lesson planning and more time doing what YOU want to do!

Happy honking!

How to Create Recorder Tutors

As I mentioned in my previous post (Recorder Belts...), I started using recorder belts to motivate my students to practice the recorder. It had a bigger impact than I expected. Actually all the kids wanted to do was play recorders - all the time! As much as I love these squeaky instruments, there were other songs/dances/activities that I wanted us to sing/dance/play.

Also after a while, I had a wide span of levels that all these kids could play. Some were just emerging while others were quite accomplished. So...I created Recorder Tutors. During each class, I chose a few students who were afraid to play in front of the whole class or who needed some extra attention and paired them with another few students who had mastered a higher level. Of course, EVERYBODY wanted to do this but I found it worked best with just a few.

So while the rest of the class participated in an entirely different lesson, tutorial tooting was happening.

 

I set them up in my "office", each pair on a music stand. The white packet of songs had letter names underneath the notes. These were for practice. I didn't let the students earn belts unless they could play the song without letters. If the tutor felt that the student was ready to play for a belt, they removed the white packet and used the yellow packet (no letter names). I even gave these tutors the authority to award belts. Very big deal to them!

This became so popular that tutors and "tutees" came to the Music Room at the start of the day before I had classes to play. I LOVED how much confidence was generated with this strategy! Both the tutor and tutee felt special and progress continued WITHOUT the teacher (my ulterior motive)!!

Side note: I no longer refer to playing on the recorder as tooting since that word now has the connotation of a certain bodily function and creates quite a round of  laughter when used. I call it HONKING. So as I tell my kids as they leave me...

Happy Honking!

How Can I "Write the Room" in Music class?

I have longed to do some of the activities that classroom teachers do. Because there are so many classroom blogs, I seem to see their activities more often. I get excited and then deflated when I realize I really can't do that activity with my 1300 students that I see only once every 6 or 7 days.

However this past year I decided I would challenge myself (and my students) to "Write the Room". It was a GREAT success and here's how I did it!

Materials: clipboards, sharpened pencils, paper, posters all over the room to get info from

Presentation: I showed this slide in my daily Smart notebook file

When I give directions, I have them written on the board, I say them aloud and then I ask the students to repeat the directions to a neighbor. This seems to help visual learners, auditory learners and social learners.

Then... I let them go! The info they were looking for was on the walls. I used the Beatles MITS- each member's poster set was on a different wall. Their mission was to write down 2-3 pieces of information in each square of the paper. Each square was labeled with a Beatle member's name.

Some of my SpEd kids needed to write less and/or a partner to lend a hand, some of my gifted kids wrote more (their choice). I loved being able to sit back and watch them gather information ("Ringo is allergic to pizza??") 

I look forward to doing this again. I believe I would stick with members of a band to give a sense on cohesiveness but it might be fun to choose a STYLE of music and use 4-5 musicians from that genre, ie. Rock 'n Roll, Cool Jazz etc.

Now for the FREEBIE! Last week I mentioned that I had a freebie pertaining to a product I was working on. Tada! 

Click on this link or this picture

and you will receive a complete FREE MITS set of  Emma Bunton "Baby Spice" from the Spice Girls, that attention grabbing girl band from the 90's.

And if you think it would be fun to "write the room", I just released the entire set of the Spice Girls - all 5 members and a whole group set. Get it here @ TeacherPayTeachers

How to Use SQUILT to teach Music History

SQUILT: Super Quiet Un-Interrupted Listening Time

How I use it - Before doing any listening, we talk about what polite listening looks like: silent mouths, silent bodies, distraction free behavior. We talk about how to resist the urge to laugh or giggle: closing eyes, staring at the floor, focus on relaxing the body. Then we practice the desired behavior - first without music to get a sense of how it feels in the body. Then...we add the music.

The first few times we do SQUILT, the music selections are VERY short - 10-15 seconds. The brief selection allows the students to practice the new skills and not become overwhelmed. After a few opportunities to participate in SQUILT, they are learning to listen to what they are hearing.

Following the selection, we discuss what we heard. When introducing this activity, I choose music that is tied to elements of music (ie. dynamics, tempo, timbre, etc). The kids can easily comment about what they heard. Judging how well the class is doing over time, I increase the length of the music (max. 1-1/2 to 2 minutes) and ask for more responses about what they heard.

Once we have experienced SQUILT for a while, then we move from identifying / discussing elements of music to composers
and their music. We still share our thoughts about the pieces using the music vocabulary, we just add the history into the mix.

Now I have been using this fun activity for years. It is a great way to incorporate different styles, instruments and musical periods as well as the previously mentioned vocabulary. But... once I incorporated more pop/jazz musicians into the mix, this activity took on a life of its own.

My students absolutely LOVE this part of the class. I schedule this activity at the end of each music class and if, for some reason, we run out of time and do not get to it, I HEAR ABOUT IT! We focus on one musician a month (Musician in the Spotlight)

and spend about 10 minutes during the first class introducing him/her and then 5-7 minutes in the rest of the month's classes listening and ENJOYING the music. We listen to ALL kinds of styles and make connections between them. We discover the similarities of diverse musicians and the differences between those within the same genre.

Music History can be dry at times and it can be difficult to get your kids to see how this "old" stuff relates to them. Mixing in jazz, pop and country artists with composers from 200 years ago might be just the trick to get your students engaged.

FREEBIE ALERT!! Next week's blog will include a free set of one of the members in my latest MITS bundle. I have been working on a 90"s band whose battle cry was "Girl Power"! Can you guess who they are?

How a Routine can Save your Sanity

After 15 years in the Music Room, I thought "I've got this!" Yes my urban school had definitely evolved into a different place - kids were tougher, teachers were more stressed, high stakes testing was in place. But hey, I was still happy in my little classroom. Until it hit...

That year I had significant groups of students who just seemed to test me ALL THE TIME! The lessons that I had planned for them were constantly interrupted and I felt like I was losing control of some of my classes. I dreaded them!! And of course so did the P.E. teachers, art teacher and even their classroom teachers!

I managed to get through 2 more years like that. I would worry all summer about the behavior of certain kids and how I was going to handle them. It was haunting me and basically I was burning out.

So by February recess one year, I was at my breaking point. With a really tough schedule and some challenging kids, I'll be honest - I wasn't sure how long I was going to be able to force myself to go into school. Yeah...it was bad. BUT...I was determined to WIN this "battle". I re-read Harry Wong's " The First Days of School" and decided that it was time for some SERIOUS structure in my classroom. My students needed a new seating configuration, new routines and a no-nonsense teacher. They got it.

Fast forward to now. I essentially have kept the same routines from that year - tweaking here and there. I've added elements from "Teach Like a Champion" and wholebrainteaching.com but the ROUTINE is in tact.

So here it is...

Threshold
     (I greet everyone of my students as they walk in to my room - a hand shake, a fist bump or a hug)
Brain Hook-Up
     (In order to get the class focused within my room, we start with a few seconds of that - link to video)
Sing
Rhythmic Reading
"Lesson"
SQUILT / Musician in the Spotlight
     (Super Quiet Un-Interrupted Listening Time)
Earned Game Time
     (based on WBT scoreboard strategies)


This super structure allows the kids to be less stressed and more in control of themselves by making it predictable. A poster with each step is posted in the front of the room. The students are also leaders in most of the steps (see my previous post). And ...it saved my career.