I’ve got a month in between classes and trying to get myself into the writing mood, enjoy a  little satire piece to end your Friday!

We all know the phrase “Duct Tape fixes everything!” but does it really? Here’s 10 things that duct tape can do to help make your day to day life in your music class a little less stressful. 

1.) Instrument Repair!

2.) Recorder Karate Belts

3.) Hanging Posters

4.) Last Minute Bandaid

5.) Covering Home Made Rhythm Sticks

6.) Earplugs

7.) Quick Clothes Fix

8.) Decorations

9.) Fixing Music Folders

10.) Claiming What is Yours!

*Making your Finish Line Flag for the Last Day of School*

You’re sitting in a room with the rest of your building co-workers. It’s a workshop day, you’ve been talking about the mysteries of tracking student math data to meet state standards for the past hour. What’s next after you finish this topic? Writing standards! Yay!……..

You’re bored aren’t you?

I knew it.

Don’t hide it, you’re a music teacher learning about math. It’s ok to admit that you probably won’t ever use this information in your teaching and could benefit from something completely different. It’s common for arts teachers to get stuck in professional development workshops that will never assist them in their daily teaching practices. You have different needs than the normal classroom teacher. What you might not realize is that many administrators are open to alternatives, you just need to know how to ask. They will probably oppose a proposal of “sitting in your classroom lesson planning” so plan something structured.

Try some ideas like these:

Getting the group together– It could be your district colleagues or other colleagues from the area. Find a place to talk shop, maybe have a genius hour, have everyone bring instruments and try out a few new pieces together, build manipulatives for activities, you could even plan a large collaborative project you could all do together!

Virtual discussion– If you can’t get together in person, then do so online. Using a venue like Google Hangouts where there can be 10 people speaking at the same time can make things go very smoothly. You can collaborate on resource documents, talk shop and connect with your peers.

Presenter– Bring in an expert to speak. There are a whole slew of presenters out there who can come to your district to speak to your group. From Orff and Kodály experts to technology gurus who can be brought in for the day for a small price. Most administrators are use to paying a few thousand dollars to bring in a speaker for a district PD day. Ask politely and provide sound reasoning for why you would like the presenter to come.

Webinar– There are thousands of webinars available to watch during a PD day. Some may be live and some may be pre recorded. Most will be technology webinars, but in today’s digital age, a lot will be useful to your daily teaching. Most webinars will have some sort of questionnaire at the end so you can receive a PD certificate to put in for hours.

Going to a workshop– This might be a little more difficult to schedule depending on the area you are in. Lots of local education centers offer professional development workshops and educator get togethers. You might get lucky and find a conference on that day you could attend too!

PD is important part of growing as a professional. How you do it is up to you, you can make it boring or you can make it useful and exciting!

Has it really been over 4 months since my last post? I feel so ashamed and dirty. Now, it use to be every Friday evening I’d sit with my burrito and type up a long brain dump about what happened over the week. Sort of my “I need to do this to sleep at night” release. Now I spend my Friday nights either still trying to get caught up on actual work from work or attempting to squeeze in a little more grad homework before the weekly deadline, (because who doesn’t want to define objective behaviors on a Friday night, right??)

I see them all the time when I travel from classroom to classroom watching music teachers from all over do their thing. Being a manipulative geek myself I use to live and die by them in my classroom. Pieces of laminated paper with everything from quarter notes to NASCAR race cars, popsicle sticks, pool noodles, magnets, even foam dice. If it littered the aisles of the craft section of Walmart, I pretty much found a use for it in my classroom.

The main purpose of a manipulative is to make the lesson or activity more interactive. To give students an actual visual to play with and help understand what you are try to teach them.  Manipulatives can be physical pieces of craft material, pre made products specifically meant to be a manipulative, or they can even be a virtual product able to be used on a piece of technology. I’m sure you are sitting there thinking (How in the heck was this tech wizard able to figure out how to use and make such crafty manipulatives? and how did she get them to work with her lessons?) I know a lot of teachers out there tend to swing in either direction, you are really all about tech or really all about non tech. What you might not know is there is a happy medium! Yes, tech and traditional ways all mixed together into a perfect lesson.

Here’s an example of an activity that would use the manipulative above and a projector and teacher computer:

Objectives:

1. Students will create 2 measures of rhythm using quarter notes, quarter rests, and eighth notes.
2. The class will perform selected rhythm compositions from their classmates.

Procedure:

• Have students get into groups
• Give each student a pre made bag with a handful of popsicle sticks and a selection of beat cards.
• As a class, have everyone build the same composition together. Write on the board and have students build along with you. The cards make up the rhythm and the popsicle sticks are the bar lines.
• Students will now break off into groups and compose their own piece together.
• The teacher will go to https://www.QuaverMusic.com and log into the free side of the kids website. Then make their way to the QBackbeat creative.
• When students are done, the teacher will explain how the program on the board works and will ask for volunteers to help put their rhythm into the program.
• Once they think they have it correctly into the program, the class will listen, perform back the rhythm, and then the teacher will ask the volunteer group if the rhythm that was performed is that they thought it was going to be.
• This process of putting rhythms into QBackbeat will continue until every group has gone.

Possible assessment:

Have students in the small groups perform their rhythm to the class before it is played and compare what they have played to what is written down. 

How easy is that? No fancy technology required and not a lot of effort into the manipulative (And something you can keep for more activities later!) What kinds of manipulatives do you create to use with your students? 

Topic: The Day the Crayons Came Home

Recommended Grade Level: 1-4

Objectives:

• Students will recall the different colors of crayons from the story and important descriptors for each crayon.
• Each student will choose a different crayon color from the crayon box and write a postcard for that crayon’s personality.
• Students will design and build a new house for their crayons out of cardboard and other materials.

Materials:

• “The Day the Crayons Came Home” book
• Used crayons (big bucket of broken and used crayons)
• Pencils
• Card stock
• Cardboard
• Tape
• Scissors
• Molds
• Heat source

Essential Questions:

    How do you design a project? How do you build it?

Lesson 1:

• Introduce students to the bucket of crayons.
  • How many colors do you think are in here?
  • What do your crayons come in?
  • Have you lost any crayons before?
  • How do you think they feel about being lost?
• Read “The Day The Crayons Came Home”
• Students will now choose a new friend from the crayon bucket to write about.
• Pass out pencils and paper. Students will write their postcard rough drafts on paper before cardstock.
• Once students finish their rough draft they may move to card stock where they will also decorate their final postcard and draw a picture of their crayon traveling the world.

Lesson 2:

• As a class, discuss the home the boy made for his discarded crayons again. What special things did he think about? What did he make it out of? Design a home for your crayons together on the board.
• Have students break off individually with pencils and paper. They will begin to design their crayon houses on paper. ( they will finish their postcards before doing this step.)
• Once done, students will make sure to label all of their features and highlight the materials that they will use a majority of in their buildings.
• They must approve their plans through their Forman (the teacher) before they start building.
• They must spend the rest of the time working on their crayon buildings.

Lesson 3

• Students will come right in and continue working on their buildings.
• Have them pick a few extra broken crayons from the bucket to live in the building.

Lesson 4

• Students will finish up their buildings.
• They will display them their tables, the class will go around to each crayon home and talk about what they did.
• Each of them will get a cupcake wrapper with their name on it. They will take the crayons that lived in their crayon homes and take off any wrappers and break them smaller before placing them in the cupcake wrappers. The teacher will bring them to the kitchen oven to repurpose the old crayons into new ones. These crayons will go home as little gifts.

Assessment
At the end of this activity, students will take a mobile device and write a paragraph of their buildings and why they built what they built for their broken crayons. This will include photos and building plans. Students will describe the process and what they learned to demonstrate meeting objectives and improved critical thinking skills.

Wow, I have really gotten out of the blogging swing of things haven’t I? I feel a little ashamed of neglecting my poor little blog. Between work and grad school things are a little  busy these days!

21st Century Skills, a frame work for educators that keeps in mind skills that are necessary for students to practice and eventually master before they enter life after school. How to cook, how to balance a checkbook, operating a computer, listening, being flexible, creative, knowing how to collaborate with others, simple skills that you might be teaching already or might not be. I know when I went to http://www.p21.org and started to look at what these skills were, I reflected hard and realized I could have been doing so much more.

Leadership stood out in this list of skills necessary for students to master. Why? because we certainly have started to do less and less of it and we need to do so much more. I know so many teachers who have a hard time giving up the front of the room to someone else. In order to teach students how to lead, the best teachers give a little bit of their time to their students. I remember having one student who was the most quiet one in the class, I coaxed her to lead one activity, and by the end of it she had gone from the quietest to the most outspoken but in a great way. She went on to do great things and always thanked music class for helping her break out of her shell.

Leadership encompasses other skills like responsibility, accountability, and flexibility into one super skill. They learn so much by just by learning how to lead.

What things can you do to promote leadership in your music classroom?

Leading Activities: from showing off their mad recorder skills and teaching the class their next song to using interactive activities like the ones in Quaver. It doesn’t have to take a full class. 5 minutes of time to lead an important part of the day while you step back to guide and support can be such a difference. Have a new “conductor” each class, or have a “teacher assistant” who takes attendance and starts off class or ends it. Teaching and learning is a collaborative effort.

Discovery Learning: Can start out as a project, or maybe just a center or even the motivation to go learn more! Give students the responsibility and choice over some of their learning and let them go where their interests lie. It relates to their life, they feel like the leaders of their own educational ship, and it allows you as the teacher to step back and give them a bigger role as they sail their own learning ship.

Choice: Biggest out of all three and so easy to do. Give them a choice at the end of class on how to line up, choose a song to move to, maybe even fix up your agenda to a way they want it. If you set down lines early they will know how far they can go without going too far.

Little things like this make them better, ready to make the world an even better place because they are not afraid to stand up and make it right. How do you practice being a leader in music class? What activities do you do that they can lead?

Has it really been a whole month since I’ve posted? Wow I’ve got to get back on schedule. It’s been a whole lot of travel, grad class work, and real work. Life huh? 

So as I’ve been traveling around my mind has constantly gone back to best ways to show student progress. How can we step away from number and letter grades and truly show student growth through physical product and having students actually demonstrate learned skills? Let’s face it, an A, a 4 or even a 99 doesn’t mean much when you try your hand at the real world. Its the skills you’ve mastered and the things you’ve done that truly count and what students should be striving for.

How does this translate into music? One of the rebels standing up for performance and demonstrating ability rather than stamping a grade on creativity. Easy, taking those performance opportunities, those composition activities, and even the small victories in class and archiving them. Taking those curriculum standards and create phrases like “I can” statements or status markers and connect those statements and markers to the archived moments.

For Example: Timmy videoed himself singing a “Do Re Mi” pattern. He showed mastery of the skill so in his portfolio he has that video with a statement “I Can Sing Do Re Mi On Pitch”

Imagine showing that to the parents/family instead of an A on a piece of paper? Means so much more. Also showing them products students created in class.Many website creatives now offer the ability to email parents while they are at work. Shows them in real time what their students are accomplishing, and you can save and store most of it when it comes time for report cards.

Top 3 things I can always put into a portfolio of student work:

1.) Videos of performances: They are already showing their mastery of a concept while performing it to a crowd, video it and archive it for their portfolio showing off their hard work. This also goes with taping in class performances and such.

2.) Recordings: Do you know how easy it is to whip out a recorder and carry it around the room with you as the class practices their songs or does their warmups. You can do it as a class or have them say their name as you go around and continue singing of playing. Soundcloud was always a favorite recorder app because I could record and instantly share.

3.) Compositions: There are so many composition tools out there now thanks to the World Wide Web, have students show their knowledge by creating and composing and then save their work to put away for later. Stuff like the Quaver Creatives or Incredibox are perfect examples of this.

Need some ideas of programs to keep student work? Check these out:

Three Ring – Awesome app that allows you to capture right there in the moment!

GDrive– A lot of schools now are Google schools and have access to GDrive easy and free!

Evernote– My favorite. Can be synced from any device and holds a lot of portfolio artifacts.

If you could throw out grades, how would you document student growth?

Technology now a days changes at the drop of a hat. One day CDs and DVDs are the new thing, next thing you know you have issues finding any machines that can use them because digital downloads have become so popular. Laptops use to be the new and innovative one to one device for schools, now Chromebooks and iPads have taken over the technology departments and classroom carts. Why? not only are they cheap but they last longer, meets student’s fine motor skills more on their level, and they have hundreds of thousands of apps that can be used to enhance student learning and experiences in the class environment.

I can’t tell you how many classes I’ve walked into in the past year and heard “They gave me iPads/Chromebooks, I want to use them but I just don’t know how”

Normally you would hear a response of “Well, you can use this app, this app, and this app” but to properly use these new devices in the classroom..don’t you normally have to see what the classroom is like first? Focus on the skills being taught and the activities or projects being executed in order to properly use the devices in a way that will make meaningful experiences in the environment.

Let’s take on iPads

See them in action in an actual music room:

iPads in the Music Room

There are 10 categories you can divide up iPad use in the classroom with:
As a teacher presentation tool
As a guest lecturer
As an e- reader
As a music device
As a note-taker
As a “center”
As a “writing tool”
As a review tool
As a research tool
As a content support

How would you use an iPad in each category? Would you project it on the screen and use a notation app to teach quarter notes? Covering as a music device and as a teacher presentation tool?

Or how about having a research center where students look up student questions and write them down in a collaborative glossary? Can you imagine instead of stopping class to answer a question, saying “why don’t you go find the answer for us and report back?” Turning spoon fed robots into innovative thinkers!

    The toughest thing sometimes is finding apps that fit what YOU want them to do. There are thousands of apps out there but not all of them work the way you want. I love those innovators that teach their students how to code apps that fit their needs but if you aren’t too comfortable with that yet sites like App Crawler help teachers discover programs that will help them with activities and lessons they are planning.

Need some ideas for your music class? Check out some of my previous posts on apps and iPad use:

https://celticnovelist.com/2012/02/03/5-ipad-recommendations-and-how-to-use-them/

https://celticnovelist.com/2013/06/07/the-ipad-club/

https://celticnovelist.com/2015/09/04/connecting-with-your-ipad/

           Integrating devices can always be difficult at first, but planning out your lesson first and then figuring out which activities would be enhanced by a device and THEN seeing which apps would fit into your plan. The more you do it and the more you do it right the easier it becomes!

 How would you integrate mobile devices into your music room?

Substitute.. Most arts teachers cringe at the word just knowing whatever plans we create are most likely going to be thrown out the window by a non music trained sub who turns on the nearest video or presses play on the CD player opting for the zoo like dance party. So how can you prepare so this does not happen? Unless you know you are going to get an actual music trained sub it is hard to leave full lessons behind. You have to come up with activities that anyone walking off the street can do… Unless they have their own agenda..did you know that one time I had a sub come in and did her own lesson on Shakira?? I don’t know why either..

Here are some things I’ve done in the past for subs:

Projects– If I knew when I was going to be out a few weeks before hand, I would create some project that reflected as an assessment or review to what we were learning and would explain everything to the kids the week before. So as soon as they walked into class with the sub the next week they knew exactly what to do. I had them writing songs or poems for lyrics, maybe coming up with a play about a composer, or even write graphic organizers around  a topic you have been discussing to visually map out their new facts and thoughts.

Video instruction– Leave the teaching out of the equation for the sub and you do it! Film a mini lecture or the instructions you want to give the students and have the sub just play the video and facilitate the activity. Make it fun and pretend to be in an exotic location and make part of their activity to guess where you are and the links to the music they are studying.

Movement breaks– I had a huge list of dance videos and left my computer logged in. All the sub had to do was get online and click the YouTube Dance List in my BookMarks Bar to access everything. Link to the Playlist There are so many videos in here it could keep the average student occupied for HOURS.
Madlibs– You can take pre-existing mad libs or ones you create yourself and have students put in music vocal words they have been learning.

Movies– Another great assessment tool, could be about composers or styles, maybe you want them to write and perform a song for you. You would need a handful of mobile devices such as iPads or iPod touch for this to work but if you have a 1:1 school or a small cart you can rent out from the school media center it would work great. Go a step further and have the kids email the videos to you while you are out so you can keep tabs on their work!

OR 

I know movies are simple to leave and to have kids watch, make sure to leave something for them to do while they are watching such as a worksheets or graphic organizers.

Writing– Simple and straightforward, have them write a play using song lyrics only, or maybe an opinion piece on a certain period in classical music. You could also have them write song lyrics or reflection papers on the unit they have been working on.

What do you leave for substitutes while you are out?