calling all music teachers…

I’ve recently begun working on my M.Ed in Curriculum studies, and a big project for one of my courses is to develop a curriculum for the age/subject matter of our choice. I’ve decided to work on a kindergarten music curriculum – currently, kindergarten is not a part of the school system in my province (though it will be in September, 2010), and at this time, such a document does not exist. So really, this is a double win for me – I’ll be doing a project that I’m interested in, AND I’ll be gaining knowledge about what I’ll be teaching next year when kindergarten comes into my school

Here’s where you come in – I am looking for examples of kindergarten music curriculum documents. If your board or district posts them online, please comment and leave the link for me if you can. I would be eternally grateful!

a tip and two stories

I don’t know if I’ve ever told you about the best investment that I have made since becoming an elementary school music teacher: long, plain camisoles. I basically buy them in bulk in black and white. They are a staple in my everyday teaching wardrobe. Now, what does this have to do with music, you ask? Well, as a young woman, it is next to impossible to find pants that go up high enough, but not up to your belly button. With all of the bending and squatting and sitting and moving I do  (especially with my primary students who are almost always doing something on the floor and never sit in chairs) on a daily basis, I don’t really want to be showing anything off that shouldn’t be shown. So. Nice long camis that can tuck into pants let you bend and sit and stand without worrying

Two quick stories:

Two days ago, one of my grade one students gave me a huge “Hannah Montana” sticker and a great big hug because apparently I “sing exactly like Miley Cyrus” – still not sure how to take that one.

I usually wear dress pants to school, but today I wore a skirt. Well, apparently I should do this more often because a grade two student told me in a very matter-of-fact manner that I am prettier when I wear a skirt.

I love my job!!

Christmas Concert Madness

Ok. I’ve been a REALLY bad blogger! I haven’t written a post since August 31st. I apologize. I have been keeping up reading lots of other music educator blogs, but hadn’t found the time to write. I will endeavor to change that! The past few months have been great – very busy – but great! I’m still working half time as a music teacher and half time as a Core French teacher, BUT we have just been informed that due to some rezoning, the school I teach music at will be recieving several new classes, and I will be FULL TIME in the fall of 2010!!!!! I am so excited about that. I can’t wait to be at one school every day.

I’ve really felt the split over the last month as I’ve been trying to get ready for my Christmas concert. Some weeks I only had 1 or 2 days at my “music” school – and that is so not enough time to get all of the rehearsals in that I need! In addition to every grade level performing selections, I have a primary choir, an elementary choir, an “elite” grade 6 vocal ensemble, a quartet, and a trio. I know, I’m crazy. But I love it! The kids want to perform and I want to give them as many opportunities as I can!  I can’t wait until next year when I will have even more students, and even more time to give to them.

Here is what is on my Christmas Concert program this year, in case you’re wondering:

Grade One: “Santa’s Helpers”

Grade Two/Three: “Happy Holidays” and “I Love My Slippers”

Grade Four: “The Little Drummer Boy”

Grade Five: “Christmas Spice”

Grade Six: “Feliz Navidad”

Primary Choir: “Run, Run Reindeer”

Elementary Choir: “Light a Candle”

Grade 6 Vocal Ensemble: “Jingle Bell Rock”

Grade 6 Quartet: “Do You Hear What I Hear?”

Grade 4 Trio: “Somewhere In My Memory”

The concert is next week!!! I’m getting anxious, but I’m also very excited that my students will finally get to showcase all of their hard work!

the start of year two and classroom photos

I guess I will have to change the name of this blog since I am no longer a “First Year Music Teacher”! I officially go back to work on Thursday of this week for two teacher workdays, and then the students return on Tuesday after Labour day. I was working in my classroom all day today, and I am getting excited!

I’ve made lots of exciting changes in my music room. I am going to POST PICTURES once I get everything set for the first day. I’d love to see pictures of other elementary music classrooms…I’ve been searching on google and on youtube for music classroom photos, but they are hard to come by! If anyone of you readers are elementary music teachers would be willing to post pictures of your own classroom and let me know by commenting on this post, I will post a link to your pictures. I would love to see what your classroom looks like!!

Sweet summer

My summer vacation officially started today. I know that sounds strange, seeing as the end of our school year, and the last workday for teachers was June 30th, but it is true! After school let out, I went to work for a week with our Provincial department of education correcting 6th grade literacy assessments with a team of 50 other teachers. It was actually a lot of fun! I admit, it was tough to sit for hours at a time, reading story after story, but I think – as a beginning teacher – nothing could have been better for me. In my province, many music specialists have to take on classroom assignments in addition to their music assignments simply because the schools are too small to accommodate a full-time music teacher. This experience will definitely be useful to me. After that week was over, I had several concerts to play in. Now, for the rest of this week I am completely free!

So now, for the summer I will be working at a local restaurant 2 days a week as a cook, performing in a few concerts here and there, and otherwise, just relaxing! I know it is CRAZY, but all I can think about is planning for the next school year! I have had several urges to head into school and pick up some of my resources and start revamping my unit plans. Isn’t that crazy? I haven’t even been out of school for more than two weeks, and already I am thinking about September!! So far I have been successfully ignoring my impulses, but I don’t know how long this will last. I am so anxious to begin getting things ready for next year!

I kept a list all throughout this past school year with songs and resources that I felt that I would like to use again, and also things that I felt didn’t work. I also have things that I didn’t get to try this year that I would like to try in the coming school year. It’s so exciting! I’m such a nerd, I know. I also just ordered my textbooks for my first Master’s course that begins in September…I am very excited about that, too! Nerd, again, I know. At least I’m sure that some of you out there understand

and breathe…

This past week has been hectic, to say the least. The phys. ed. teacher and I put on a full day of activities this past Monday. We did 14 activity stations in the morning and our talent show in the afternoon. I am SO pleased with how the day went. We worked so hard to make it run smoothly and efficiently – and with the help of our awesome staff – it went without a hitch!

I have to say, I am so impressed at the response to the talent show. In previous years, so I’ve heard, students were really not that interested. Well this year they certainly were! We auditioned over 70 acts (in a school of 170 students, that’s pretty great!). We ended up showing about 33 acts that featured over 75 students in our talent show – singing, dancing, stand-up comedy, gymnastics, piano, karate…and so much more! It was such an amazing show of the diverse talent and skill we have in our school!

Now we are down to 6 school days…Can’t believe it! My first year has just melted away. Now I’ve got to think about packing and cleaning….and planning for next year!

update!

It seems as though this first year of teaching is draining away quicker than I drink a cup of coffee in the morning. I can hardly believe that there are only 33 school days left! This past week I had a big moment – my primary and elementary choirs performed in our local music festival. Now, I’ve been a driector before, and have had groups perform before (teen worship teams at church, woodwind ensembles, etc), but this is the first time I’ve ever been Miss Gallant, the choir director.  I was so proud of my choirs! They were extraordinairly well-behaved and respectful, and they sang SO well! We had lost quite a number of rehearsals this winter due to snow storms, but they pulled through! The adjudicator had many compliments, and some excellent constructive advice as well. Overall, a very positive experience!

Now that choir is over, I’m giving my kids a  chance to taste some new musical groups that will be offered through the entire school year next year – recorder, ukulele, and mallett instrument ensembles. I’m going to teach them once a week for the remaining weeks of school, and we’ll perform something simple at the end-of-year school talent show. They are so excited! I am teaching at a very small school (approx. 170 students), and I have over 1/4 of the school population signed up for these extracurricular groups. I am overwhelmed at the positive response!

i’ve been a bad blogger

I’ve been a very selfish blogger over the last few months. I’ve been religiously reading all of the blogs that I follow, but I have not been keeping up with my own blogging! I miss it!

With the school year slowly winding down (can you believe it’s already April!?), there’s still so much left to do! I can’t believe that there are only 3 months left in my first year as a teacher! I’ve still got many things to do, and events to look forward to! I’m preparing my primary and elementary choirs for their music festival next month. We’ll be celebrating “Music Monday” on May 4, 2009 – really excited about that! 

One thing about living in eastern Canada, though, is that we get a LOT of snow. Just last week we got dumped on with over 25 centimeters of snow! We thought that winter was over, but I guess winter just wanted one last blow! We’ve missed 11 school days due to snow and stormy weather this winter and spring, and more often than not, those storm days ended up being on my choir days! Due to my schedule (working alternating days between two schools), and the very active extra-curriculars in both schools, I cannot reschedule a missed choir practice. It’s so frustrating! The kids are so far behind on their music festival material. I think we will make it, and the kids are determined, but it will be interesting, that’s for sure!

The comforting fact is that every other school in my province has had the same thing happen to them. They may have a little more flexibility in terms of rescheduling rehearsals, but the time has still been missed. I may have to call a few after school rehearsals soon, but with sports already taking up most of that time, it’s hard to say if it would be a beneficial thing to do.

snow day reflections

We have yet another snow day – this makes 7 or 8 in the last 6 weeks – so I am doing a little bit of reading and planning. I’ve been reflecting on the past couple of months. It seems as though we haven’t progressed very much, what with winter field trips, winter carnival days, special guests, snow days, etc. I always assumed January and February were the months where you could really catch your drive and get lots done becuase there aren’t any major holidays, but this has not been the case for us! However, here are some of the things that my classes have been working on:

Grade 1: We’ve been learning (after much preparation!) to label tah, ti-ti, and just last week – sah. Where I live, kindergarten is not part of the public school system, so students only recieve their first experience with music in grade 1. In September 2011 kindergarten WILL be in our school system. I’m looking forward to that!

Other things we’ve done:

• Poem & Song (with non-pitched percussion instruments & sign language) for Martin Luther King Jr. Day
• Read, “Orchestranimals” by Vlasta Van Kampen & listened to audiobook
• The “Elevator Song” – melody direction (high pitches, low pitches, experiencing major scale aurally & visually w/ boomwhackers, playing pitched instruments)
• Sound story – “The Little Boy Named Espimandos”

Grade 2 – We’ve really been focusing on rhythm reading, writing, and performing – and then we added in solfa on top of that. The kids love it! They take such pride in their compositions!  We’ve also been doing a lot of singing & movement games

Grade 3 – We have been working on a sound story – “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat” by Eugene Field. Then, we learned a song based on the story and now we have begun working on an Orff orchestration to accompany the song. We’ve also been learning about the pentatonic scale, and how to set up our xylophones and metallophones into F pentatonic.

Grade 4 – We have been working on an Orff orchestration to “Little Green Bug” from “An Orff Mosaic from Canada” by Lois Birkenshaw-Fleming.  On top of singing this silly song and learning all of the instrument parts that go along with it, we’ve been writing our own silly lyrics based on the original song.

Grade 5 – We began 2009 with a short unit about Franz Liszt. We researched a little about his life, and then we listened to his music. We watched the video, “Liszt’s Rhapsody” – and then we had a lot of fun with Bugs Bunny & Tom and Jerry’s animated versions of the Hungarian Rhapsody.

Then, we reviewed our treble clef note-reading, learned about major scale patterns, and the tonic & dominant notes in C major and F major. We sang, “Chumbara” and “Everybody Loves Saturday Night” and played the I and V chords on Xylophones and keyboards. Now we are moving into playing entire chords with small groups of students.

Grade 6 – We have been working on a “decades of music” unit. We’ve been visiting stations in the music classroom that have been all about music in the 50’s all the way to the music of today. We’ve been to listening stations, watched videos, read articles, played instruments, and visited websites to help us experience each decade.

As I look back, I can see that we have been accomplishing much in the music room – just at a bit of a slower pace than I’d expected. March Break is in 2 weeks – after which our snow days should begin to taper off, and more work can be done! 

tales from the playground…

Last week I was on outdoor duty. I witnessed a little girl in grade 1 chasing a little boy in grade 3. It was funny enough watching him try to evade her, but what made it all that much better was her shouting, “Don’t worry, R.C., I don’t need to catch you. You’re my boyfriend now whether you like it or not!”