September in review…

My first month as a “real” teacher is almost over! I’ve been looking back at what we’ve accomplished in the past few weeks:

Grade One

The grade one classes have mainly been singing and playing games in music class – experiencing music as a source of enjoyment, moving within one’s own space, experiencing singing voice vs. speaking voice. We’ve also been learning the music room rules and routines, as well as getting to know one another with name games. Here are the things we have done:

• “Hello, There” from “Share the Music” is our daily call-response echo song
• Many action songs – i.e. “Teddy Bear,” “Let’s Make a Circle,” “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” etc. to get them singing. Often I’ll get them clapping their hands or patsching in time to the music to experience steady beat (we have not yet labelled the term, though).
• We’ve experienced high and low pitches using glockenspiels, and an extremely easy Orfesstration of “Itsy Bitsy Spider”
• We’ve talked about the classroom instruments, and have been introduced to several individual instruments. We used the song, “The Orchestra is Playing” to help identify different instruments and how they sound.
• We’ve learned how to stay in our own space, and move within our own space using a “Simon Says” – like game called, “Tony the Turtle.”

Grade Two

I’ve also spend significant time on singing and action games with my grade two students, we’ve reviewed classroom rules and routines, and played lots of name games.

• “Hello, There” is also our welcome song, just like the grade one classes.
• We began the year with a sound story I recieved from a colleage called, “The Princess, the Frog, and the Little Bird.” This story get the students doing sound effects with the story – first using their bodies and voices, and then with instruments. We talk a lot about how to make the sound effects more “real” by finding instruments that “fit” the desired effect. It’s basically an introduction to timbre, as well as introducing them to the proper holding position and playing technique of classroom instruments.
• We started reviewing soh-mi pitches as well. We used our bodies to show high and low pitches, we discovered melodies of familliar soh-mi songs using our bodies, and the boomwhackers. Soon I’ll be getting them to discover “lah”
• We’ve reviewed tah, ti-ti, and sah – reading the rhythms only at this point. I’ll get them writing them as well to review. Tah-ah and Sah-ah will also be introduced next month.

Grade Three

Again with the grade three students, we’ve been working on classroom rules and routines, name games, etc.

• “Hello, Everybody” is our daily welcome/warm-up song. It’s from “An Orff Mosaic from Canada” by Lois Birkenshaw-Fleming. This book is full of fun songs and poems as well as Ofesstrations that are easy to teach, and the students really enjoy them. We sang this song for the first few weeks of class, and also worked on a 3-part Orfesstration to accompany it.
• I read them the story, “Morimer” by Robert Munsch . They LOVE this story. We learned Mortimer’s song, discovered soh and mi in it. We also worked on high/low pitches using the recurring “thumps” up and down the stairs in the story. We discovered which classroom instruments could change pitches and which could not. We used the Boomwhackers to discover lowest to highest and vice versa. They loved being “detectives” to get the mixed-up Boomwhackers back in the proper order!
• We did lots of review on tah, ti-ti, sah, and tah-ah. We’ll be reviewing the rest of the grade two rhythms in the weeks to come before I start introducing any new grade three rhythms.

Grade Four

In my upper grade music classes (grades four, five, and six), I started the first day of school the same way for each class. I put together a mixed CD of various styles and genres of music that I like to listen to. No two pieces of music on that CD were anything alike! Before I played the CD for the students, I handed them a sheet of paper. Then, I proceeded to play the first 30 seconds of each piece of music on the CD. The students’ jobs were to write down their immediate reactions to each track – did they love it, hate it, think it was boring, etc. They LOVED this activity. It opened up a discussion about all the different music they would be exposed to over the year, and that it was ok not to like something.  I’m trying to get them into critical thinking stages. If they tell me they don’t like something – I’m going to ask why!

In grade four so far, we have worked on:

• “Mama Paquita” from “An Orff Mosaic from Canada” – a lively Jamaican-style melody with a 3-part Orfesstration. This was a little hard for them. I think I will take it out again later in the year, because they so enjoyed it, but the rhythms are a little complex and hard to get the ostinatoes together.
• Good singing – breathing, posture, tone production, etc
• Proper use of classroom instruments (especially the xylophones, metallophones etc – how to sit, how to play, change bars, mallet position, etc)
• Rhythm focus – we’re reviewing all grades 1-3 rhythms so we can be ready for the introduction of my “Rhythm Drills” incentive program that will begin next month. More on that later!

Grade Five

I began the grade five classes with the listening exercise as described above. I’m doing a portfolio project with the grade five and six classes this year. In the portfolios will be a myriad of things from the entire year in music class – theory notes and assignments, a world map with locations of songs we study maked in on it, composer/music history lessons, listening logs, etc. Their first assignment for the portfolio was an extension of the first day activity. They had to write me a short paragraph about what music they liked and why they liked it. I stressed the “why you like it” part over and over, and still a fair number of them did not include any justification as to why they liked the music they liked. Some students went above and beyond the writing – I had several students create CD’s of their favourite music for me, some were extremely artistic and created collages and posters, one student did a dramatic recitation, and one student even made a video!

In grade five, we have worked on:

• Proper use of Orff instruments (sitting position, mallet position, bar removal, etc)
• We began a game that I learned from one of my former student teaching supervisors called, “Maestro’s Obstacle Course.” It’s a game that really enforces timbre – and it’s fun, too! I have a music word wall in my classroom, and “timbre” was the first word up there for the grade five classes.
• We’ve also done some serious theory/rhythm review

Grade Six

Grade six classes are also doing a portfolio project as described above. They also completed the first-day listening exercise and the extension activity. I find grade six the hardest to teach out of all the elementary grades. The jr. high mentality sets in early, and I get this, “too cool for school” attitude coming off of most of them. I’m trying to keep music class engaging and developmentally appropriate!

In grade six, we are working on:

• critical thinking skills
• Listening logs
• Proper use of classroom instruments
• Proper singing
• Rhythm review
• We also worked on a 4-part Orfesstration to, “Green Sally Up” from Denise Gagne’s “The Orff Source” which they had a lot of fun with.

This month has gone by so quickly – I can hardly believe that we’ve covered all of this material in only these few weeks!

Success!

My grade one music class is EXTREMELY chatty – they always have a story to tell! With only a 30 minute class, it makes it hard for the students to talk to me. It’s been all business. They come in, we do our thing, and then I have to shoo them out quickly because I have another class coming in right after them. If I let them, they would definitely use all thirty minutes (and then some!) to tell me their stories.

I’ve been overwhelmed with all of the stories – I’d be in the middle of a lesson and 3 hands would go up with comments having nothing to do with the lesson.

Today I tried a new strategy. I got the students in the room, we sang our welcome song, and then we got into a circle formation (using the song, “Let’s Make a Circle”). Then, I told the students that we had 3 minutes for story time. They could raise their hand and tell Miss Gallant whatever they needed to say. And then, the rest of the music class would be for music things only. I can’t believe it, but it made complete sense to them, and they loved it! I also loved the social/bonding time with them – because of time constraints, I rarely have the chance to just talk with them and hear about their lives outside of music class.

Funny story for today – I had a student submit an assignment that I’d given out (what kind of music do you like and why) – and this particular student said that he liked rock music, more specifically, AC/DC, becasuse his best friends older brother is in the band

free theory worksheets

A colleage showed this website to me – it’s a great online resource for theory worksheets, manuscript paper, composer activity sheets, and online theory games. Enjoy!

What do you do?

…when a child sits in the corner, curled up in a ball, and won’t participate or respond to you?

the “whiteboard” experiment

I tried to be economical and savvy and inventive…but I’m pretty sure it backfired. I had this brainwave that having individual whiteboards for my music classes (grades 4-6, mostly) would be an awesome way to help to rhythm drills and theory lessons, etc – and it would! It would be fantastic! But the thing is, those individual whiteboards cost a lot of money. So I thought I would make my own.

I laminated sheets of cardstock with 2 lage music staves printed on them. They were flimsy, but the whiteboard markers I had worked with them, and they erased rather well. I was excited.

I took them out in one of my grade 6 classes yesterday morning. The kids were really excited because it was new. We did some rhythm dictation and some note-reading exercises and all was great in the first class. But then, as I was working with one student individually, the kids started to play with their new “whiteboards” – they were writing notes to each other, they were seeing if they could colour the whole thing in with their marker, they broke markers and made the ink leak everywhere…Yeah. It was awful.

But I tried again with the next class. The erasers that came with the markers started to get really full of dry-erase marker dust, and wouldn’t erase very well at all. Now the desks were full of colour and so were the kids hands.

The sheets do clean up nicely with a little bit of that expo dry-erase spray – they were good as new again. I’d love to have the real thing, but I know that won’t happen this year.

So. I tried it. It didn’t work as well as I thought. The end.

One is the loneliest number…

Today was just one of those days. I teach 9 classes/day, and today was also a choir day, so I had 2 choir rehearsals as well, and then a meeting after school. I can tell you truthfully that I did not feel like doing ANYTHING after that! But alas, lesson plans need to be made. I sat down and went through everything we accomplished today, looked over my monthly goal, and wrote out new lessons for my next teaching day.

* Something I’m struggling with is the fact that I don’t know how the kids were taught before I got there. I know they had quality instruction, but it’s still hard to step in and take over, especially with the older grades who have learned music one way since grade 1. I have different terms, different methods, and different expectations.

For example – sometimes I totally confuse them due to our music-language differences: I call a quarter rest a “sah” and they call it a “shh.” Do I continue calling it a “shh” for their sake? Or do I change them over to my way? I don’t know!

Grade 1 is a whole other story, because I am the first taste of music class they get, I’m starting fresh with them, and that’s great. But it’s a challenge in itself, because all of my student teaching took place in the spring AFTER grade 1 had already had 8  months of music class. I’ve never had to start a whole class from square one!

I do feel like things are going well, and these struggles are not things I didn’t expect, but I am struggling with finding ways to deal with them. I think I’ll meet up with a couple of other music teachers from others schools and pick their brains. It’s hard being a one-of-a-kind teacher in a school!

Classroom Management PD

I’m a brand new music teacher in a grade 1-6 elementary school. I LOVE what I do. The thing that gets in my way is my discipline skills: I tend to be much too permissive, and I need to be more firm. We’re still in a “honeymoon” phase right now, as it is still extremely early in the school year, but I know that problems will soon arise! I truly want to improve my classroom management skills so I’ve been doing some research. I know that it will take time to develop and master my classroom management strategies, but I want to start early.

My job is only part time for the moment, I work 3 full days out of a 6-day cycle. I’m using my off days to search for teacher blogs and articles about classroom management (among other topics), and I’ve also started reading and re-reading a few books on classroom management.

Here are a few of the strategies and techniques (in no particular order) I’ve learned in the last couple of weeks (I haven’t yet decided which ones I’m going to use – not sure what I think of them yet).

#1. “Class-Yes!” – www.powerteachers.org – attention getter

Teacher says, “class” and students must respond with “yes.” The kick in this one is that the teacher will change the way s/he says, “class” (i.e. repeating it twice, silly voice, etc), and the students must respond with their, “yes” the exact same way the teacher said, “class.” This one is supposed to help get the class’s attention.

#2. Three Strikes – discipline for misbehaving

Student misbehaves, teacher writes misbehaving student’s name on the board. Student misbehaves again, teacher underlines name on board. Student misbehaves again, student gets a checkmark next to name and a detention.

#3. Clap Back – attention getter

Teacher claps a short rhythm (always the same) and students respond by clapping a short rhythm (it’s up to the teacher -it could be a repetition of what the teacher clapped, or a pre-determined response rhythm that compliments the teacher’s rhythm).

#4. “If you can hear my voice…” – attention getter

Students are talking, and aren’t responding to teacher’s requests for silence. Teacher says, softly, “if you can hear my voice, please clap once.” The students who can hear the teacher will usually respond with a clap. This will get the attention of the students sitting around them. Teacher continues, softly, “If you can hear my voice, please clap twice.” Students will respond with two claps. Teacher doesn’t usually need to go beyond that.

So. Those are the things I’ve read/been told in the last few weeks. I need more ways to deal with students who misbehave in the classroom – I really am not a fan of the name on the board thing – it teaches kids they are allowed to misbehave twice before anything happens.

More to come!

overheard at the park…

Today was a whole-school field trip day to the beach. We practiced bus evacuations, did a beach cleanup, and the Terry Fox Run all in one shot. We were going onto the beach and the students were asked to leave their shoes and socks lined up beside the stairs to the boardwalk.

One student says, annoyed,
“Aw man, even in NATURE we have to be neat!”

made me smile