MelodySoup blog

It's SO EASY! Easi-Speak Digital Recorders!

2012-03-06T20:48:00.000-08:00

This fall I had a project funded through donorschoose.org for a pack of small handheld digital recorders. Since I have never had anything like this before in my classroom, I was filled with all sorts of dreams about ways that we could use them in class to create digital portfolios of student work.

Well, I'm here to say that the reality is even better than I had hoped.

When I received my Easi-Speak pack I was right in the middle of 5th grade show and then it was the holidays and well....... I'm just now getting around to playing with these little guys with any sort of intentionality. So far I'm just giddy with possibilities!

Here is what I've tried so far!

Scratch Group Recordings:

The 100th Day of school sort of snuck up on me, and since I had my guitar with me that day, we made up a song. It was pretty cute as far as ridiculously on the fly song go, so I thought I’d record the children singing it with me. I thought that the digital recorder did a good job of capturing the entire class singing. It’s by no means a quality for public sharing and it is no replacement of "real" recording equipment, but it is a good representation of the “daily” work done in class and certainly a good addition to a digital portfolio.

Individual Recordings:

I REALLY like this, probably because this is how the microphones were designed to be used. So far, I’ve only had one recorder out at a time, but I think that soon I’ll have all of them out at once. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to create an accurate record of student singing that is a concrete support of your qualitative rubric? The nice thing is that since these recorders are designed to be used by one student at a time, even with background noise, you still get a REALLY nice sound.

Emergency Practice Tracks:

There you are with only about 1 class left in your voice and that afternoon you have your less than independent choir students coming in for rehearsal. I wore the recorder around my neck and recorded a rehearsal track for my students who sing part 2. Now granted, I was at a piano with a volume control, but it was so much easier than any other option available to me at the time.

Discipline documentation:

So I have to admit that I discovered this by accident. It’s that time of year where the chatty cats and cathys in my class have gotten rather bold and the effectiveness of those natural consequences that worked just last week is slipping. Creativity is in order to keep my students from "spring breaking" too soon.

I’d been playing around with my little recorder when my class with my favorite chatty cat who uses ALL of my creativity came into class ready to see if I had any new ideas. Lucky for me I still had my little recorder in my hand. I smiled hugely at him, pointed out the red “record” light and said, “This microphone will record all of your good work today, why don’t you wear this around your neck and sit close by me today.”…. He was literally stunned into silence. And THEN he asked good questions and did his work. It was a PERFECT day! Not to mention the fact that a few of his “chatty cat crew” wanted a microphone too…. I told them truthfully that my microphone would catch all of their good work too. They were good as gold. Eventually one caught on and said, “What if we aren’t good?” I said, “Oh, it will catch that too….” PRICELESS!

Ideas that I haven't yet tried!

· Record instructions for an independent activity or EVEN record your sub plans, burn it to a CD and you are all set!

· Auditions – now that my students are learning how to use it, the next step will be to formalize the procedure. I either have to figure out a way to create blind auditions, OR I have to train my students to always say their name and teachers name before they start singing or speaking because the whole idea would be to have them do their preliminary audition just outside where I can see them but they can’t be disturbed during their audition. I’ve still got some figuring out on how to make that work realistically.

· I also want to use this for small group interactions. I want to give each group a task and have them record their conversation. It would be a great way to keep record of who was really involved and who was more passive.

The possibilities are endless..... What if you recorded your private lessons and gave your student a CD of the lesson? What if students interviewed their teachers about their musical experiences? What if students used these little recorders as a tool for music composition? I need one for each student!

What happens once you are ready to hear what you recorded?

· You could choose immediate playback which is useful for immediate feedback for students.

· You use the USB port on your computer and when you do all the MP3 files come up. They are in a folder and are numbered. I had to rename them because I'm not organized to remember what I did when......

· If you record for a long time, it will record in small seamless chunks

· You could choose just to rename them and keep them as a record as they are.

· OR you can import them into Audacity. Audacity is loaded on each microphone and if you want to edit the files, you can open Audacity immediately from the folder. EASY!

Children's books about JAZZ!

2012-03-04T01:50:00.000-08:00

I LOVE children's books!

I LOVE children's books that share great information in a meaningful way even better. I find that children's books are especially useful in helping my students experience Jazz.

Today I'm going to share my very favorite Jazz books as well as a few that are on my "I can barely wait" wish list!

You can use these books as part of a larger in depth study of jazz OR you can sprinkle them all over your lessons so that Jazz just becomes part of what you do in your classroom. I've used them both ways and there are distinct advantages to both.

Jazz Books that I use all the time - if you are wanting a nice survey of Jazz music or simply want to provide your students with a "toe in" to the deep sea of Jazz music, I would suggest the following titles.

"The Jazz Fly" is just a great book for all grade levels. The CD also makes it a great choice for poor voice days or substitute teachers.

"The Jazz Man" is a reinterpretation of the song "This Old Man" so it can be used to compare and contrast with the old folk song.

"Jazz on a Saturday Night" is a great choice for older students. The CD is very informative and quite good.

"Jazzy Alphabet" is fun to read and a perfect for Kindergarten and First grade.

Jazz Books that I love: - I pull these great books out when I want to focus on something specific, either a specific Jazz Artist, OR a specific jazz style.

"The Hip Cat" is an awesome book to read aloud and does a great job of getting into the cool lingo of jazz and telling the tail of a struggling jazz musician who eventually makes it big.

"A-Tisket A-Tasket" goes wonderfully with the song by Ella Fitzgerald. I use it with first grade.

"Ella Fitgerald" - It's always great to have as many biographies on hand. This is a great one.

"Jazz Fly 2" - This book is similar in format the the original, but this book embraces and explores Latin Jazz.

Books on my "I can hardly wait" Jazz Wish List:

I am hoping to put together a list of books for a project on donorschoose.org. If you have one of these books, please feel free to add a review of the book in the comment section.

Music Listening Club - part 2

2012-03-01T18:18:00.001-08:00

In response to some questions I've gotten about my Music Listening Club post I thought I'd write an update about how things are going now that we have been meeting almost every Thursday for 8 weeks.

My after school listening club has grown from 15 to 22 students. My class has grown because it is a class where you get to chill. The listening club is equal parts 3rd, 4th and 5th graders. Of the 22 on the roll, over half are girls..... Soccer is scheduled at the same time and so most of the boys want to play soccer. These 3rd-5th grade students typically arrive at school for breakfast at 7:00 and then leave the after school program by 5:30 Monday-Thursday. The Music Listening Club meets from 4:15-5:15 on Thursdays so to say that these children are ready for a Friday and then a weekend is a gross understatement.

Student Submitted Music Suggestions:

I asked the students to give me requests of music that they would enjoy listening to as a group. I got about 12 suggestions the first week. Because they took the time to write them down, I took the time to look up the lyrics. I'm sad to say that out of the 12 songs submitted the first week, ALL of them contained inappropriate content for school complete with inappropriate language, explicit sexual suggestion and innuendo. So, before we enjoyed more Gershwin, we reviewed the expectations for song suggestions. Over the next several weeks, they gave me a new list. Each week, I reviewed their suggestions and it was a really big day when we got to hear one of "their" songs.

The first song that they picked that had my approval on the lyrics was "Fireflies" by Owl City. That might not have been their first choice, but by the time we arrived at the compromise, they were so thrilled it was a great moment.

This is a club not a class!

In order to keep the right kind of atmosphere I've had to pay close attention to the "listening mood" of my students. While my students enjoyed Gershwin, his music was a REAL stretch for them to dive into right away. In light of the fact that I wasn't able to immediately play their musical choices, I wanted to shift my focus from teaching them about specific musical works to a focus on general music appreciation. I have a variety of resources that I use when students listen to music. Youtube is ONE of them. Since it is also a resource that should be handled with care, I've developed some guidelines for myself.

Rules for Youtube clips in the music classroom! -

Follow the policies set by your administration and school board as well as copyright fair use laws.
Preview everything fully..... ALL the way to the end..... because it's Youtube, even something that looks okay could have something hidden later in the video.
Watch advertisements too...... You don't want to use a great video that has inappropriate advertisements.
Surf for your clip of choice when students are not present....just in case
Use a "clean-up" site to get rid of all of the unintended junk. http://viewpure.com/ is AWESOME!

Here is a taste of some of what we've found and used off of Youtube most recently.

Broadway -

Jazz -

Bluegrass

More info and resources coming soon!

Baby Steps To Teaching Music Composition

2012-02-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

As a song writer, I compose new music almost every day. Ironically, despite the fact that I LOVE writing music, it is very difficult for me to teach music composition to my students. In this area of instruction I consider myself a novice because I think I can do better.... MUCH better! It's like an itch I can't scratch or a puzzle I can't solve.... I know how I do it, but it is difficult to find the right way to get others started.

Well today, I sort of had an epiphany. Here it is....... Are you ready? You've got to prime the pump!

All of the awesome teachers reading this blog with go...."Yep..... we know.... that is not news! Everyone knows that." Well, I'm telling you that I knew it, and I've lived it in so many areas of my teaching, but I just didn't really get it where music composition was concerned.

Today was the first day of teaching in a new rotation, so I was THRILLED to be starting off a new lesson on a Monday, so I planned and prepared and prepared and planned. Then when my 5th graders walked in my brain had one of those teaching "SHAZZAAAM!" moments and I realized that I could do teach a much more interesting lesson that would still hit all of my objectives if I just went with my moment of inspiration.

Here is what I did as I flew by the seat of my pants into a lesson I can't wait to teach again tomorrow!

1. I first had my students fold a regular piece of copy paper into 16 squares. I have them fold their paper in half 4 times.

In Houston because of the humidity, sometimes open reams of copy paper go bad and I find myself with 30 sheets of random colored paper. It's perfectly fine, so I choose to up-cycle instead of recycle.
It's amazing how much buy-in you can create for a project when there is colored paper and folding involved.

2. Then I had my students students create this chart as a review for rhythm duration and relationships. Each square is equal to one beat. Since this was 5th grade and I knew I wanted to compose with them, I really pushed them to work quickly. I explained that this chart was only going to be for their reference, so they should be accurate, but that they didn't have to copy verbatim. I had other notes that this student didn't need.

THIS was my epiphany about priming the pump....
I took the time to remind them of what they already know

In the old days, I might have stopped there and moved onto something else.... OR I might have turned it into a reading lesson...... Instead....

3. I asked the students to turn their papers over and we created a small blank staff. Then as a class we reminded ourselves of the notes we already knew very well how to play on recorder.... We've introduced some of the other notes, but these notes were the notes that the kids in this class felt like they knew....

This class feels comfortable playing GABCD and E.....
I realized that when I compose music, I use words that I KNOW!

4. I had them quickly fold a 2nd piece of paper just like the first.

5. Before they were allowed to write anything on their paper, we filled out a "blank song" as a class. They were told to use the rhythms that they knew into the squares in any pattern they wished. Their only limitations were to make sure that they had room for the notes they chose.... (i.e. no half notes beginning on beat 4).

It was fun to see them figure out that eighth notes were the same
regardless of whether or not they had a bar or a flag.

6. Once we got to this next step they go really excited. While they were working, I had quickly passed out their recorders so that they would have them on hand. They assigned each rhythm a pitch......Almost all of them got to the point where they were trying to play what they had written.

7. Next time they come to class they will have a chance to edit their work using their recorder. Because we were beginning to run short on time by the time they were assigning pitch there wasn't time for very much exploration. So next time they come to music, they can edit their work, share it with other students ad write it on the staff. MAYBE we'll have time to add words.

I'm looking forward to seeing how well this works with my class tomorrow. I have high hopes! As I said, I still feel like a novice at teaching music composition, but I felt much more successful having taken the time to remind my students of what they already know. Creating something original wasn't nearly such a leap when we remembered all that we knew before. They were SUPER proud of themselves!
What fun!

The 16 square rhythm chart is a way to review rhythm that I borrowed from my colleague Pablo Ocañas.

Author/Composer Study meets Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T20:18:00.000-08:00

It's Valentine's Day, so I thought I'd tell you about something I LOVE!

It was during my second year of teaching that I discovered what was going to become my very favorite set of books to use in my music classroom. I love these books so much that I've given these books to other music teachers as gifts AND I've bought replacement copies for myself because my original copies have literally disintegrated in my hands.

The books I am speaking of are a set of 3 books that are illustrated by Vladimir Radunsky and composed by none other than Woody Guthrie! I LOVE using Woody Guthrie music in my classroom because it's just really fun stuff.

Howdi Do is PERFECT for the beginning of the year -
Some copies of Howdi Do have CDs which contain recordings for ALL 3 books

The chorus of this book invites the use of ostinato on un-pitched or body percussion .
ta ta ta ta ti-ti ti-ti ti-ti ti-ti
It's also a great springboard for writing.

This is a great prompt for early writing.

I take my time introducing these books in kindergarten. My students always notice the similarities in the books and they request these books often. Over the course of several weeks we play with these books/songs. We sing them, we draw pictures, we create comparison charts and Venn diagrams just like you would if you were using these books for a Language Arts lesson. Some of the recordings are in keys too low for children to sing in, so I typically sing them myself. A lead sheet with melody and chords is included in the book jacket. I've made notes in mine so that I can play the books in a singable key once I've got someone who is able to hold the book up for the students to see.

When I figured out that I was going to NOT be at TMEA this year, I realized that I'd get to teach on Valentine's Day. Immediately "Mail Myself To You" came to mind. I was excited because guess what? There is ANOTHER book!

THIS book is intended for students to read themselves, so it is not very long and it is not nearly as imaginative, but today after I reminded kinder and first about the songs by Woody Guthrie that they ALREADY knew, they weren't bothered by the small size or short length. This book is just enough prompt to jump into singing the song. If I had one of those document cameras then I'd be able to project this book and the size of the pictures wouldn't matter at all......

Also, if you need it, because it is intended to be used as a leveled text, THIS book has a Spanish translation..... it's a little hard to imagine if it is a good translation, but then...... I'm not the expert on the quality of any given translation..... I just know that this exists. One of the folks that I follow on Pinterest directed me toward a YouTube Video that is a cartoon for Mail Myself to You.... After we learned the song we watched the video as a quick 4 minute Valentine's Day treat.

Looking ahead
When I was gathering all that I needed to write this blog I came across a Youtube video for the book Bling Blang......I don't know if I'll use it or not, but it's nice to have.

Also, In a few weeks I am going to introduce Patriotic music to several grade levels..... The actual plan is still forming in my head, but I intend to include "This Land is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie...The book contains all of the verses/pages, may be a little "too real" for some of my younger students, but since Woody Guthrie is a song writer they are all familiar with, I think it would make an excellent starting point.

Finally, on a note about Valentine's Day that is totally unrelated to Woody Guthrie - I shared "I Love You" with several grade levels today, just because it's fun..... This book can start a lively discussion about units of measurement. YAY for Music and every day integration into other subjects!

I looked it up! They started talking about cubic inches and I got confused....I'm dreadful at math so I'm not sure what a cubic inch is....these are approximate measures for dry produce....my best guess anyway.....
4 quarts = 1 gallon
8 quarts (2 gallons) = 1 peck
4 pecks = 1 bushel
heap = a whole bunch
barrel = even more

Deep in the Heart of Texas - Hoe Down and Texas Sing Along

2012-02-13T16:17:00.000-08:00

Each February in Houston as we prepare for the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, we have "Go Texas Day!" Everyone in Houston wears their boots to work. Literal wagon trains converge on the city and meet up in time for the Rodeo parade that opens up the festivities. My school is lucky enough to be able to claim front row status to a very large wagon train route. The wagon train camps over night literally one block from our campus. A couple of years ago, one train actually stopped for lunch in our parking lot.

To celebrate Texas, my school hosts a Hoe-Down and Texas sing along and Rodeo Art Show. I love it because I get to work together with my great teammates from PE and Art, whom I adore and who are the best teammates any music teacher could have. Because we do our little hoe-down / sing along during each grade levels regularly scheduled block time, we don't have much time and I must be super efficient. First on the agenda is for each grade level to show off their fabulous square dancing skills for all the parents who attend and THEN for the last 5-15 minutes we sing cowboy/Texas songs.

Preparation:

If you are like me, I've got quite a bit to be teaching to do in January and February and only one element is Texas music. Plus, most of the time, I go to TMEA which adds to the days when the students chance to prepare is not ideal. Also, it's at this time of year when students get pulled for tutoring in preparation for all of the looming tests.....This is my reality...... So, I keep things simple.

I introduce some favorites with books when I can get my hands on ones that are applicable. Here are two of my favorites!

Kinder and 1st have a set of songs and then 2nd-5th grade have a set of songs. This is my 3rd year at this school and I haven't changed any songs from that first year because they are great songs that the students love. Plus the better they remember them from year to year, the more I can shift these songs over to the "review" collection rather than the "need to know" collection of songs. Because of the way that I have the songs divided, now days the only grade levels that really have to work to prepare for Sing Along are Kindergarten and 2nd grade. Everyone else reviews and polishes the songs while doing other equally important work in music rather than focusing solely on learning the "Texas" songs.

TIPS

Go Texas Day 2011

I always teach more songs than I will need because I NEVER know how much time I am going to have. Last year during one grade level I had a full 20 minutes in one grad level and 5 minutes in the next. With that in mind I need my students to be ready to sing and sing well without much prompting or support.
When I practice with my students in the weeks leading up to the sing along, I have them practice several different ways to help them be flexible.

with and without a CD accompaniment
with and without guitar
with and without a powerpoint slideshow

I also have students practice advancing the slides on the powerpoint because I've only got two hands and managing the guitar, the CD remote and the slide show clicker is too much.

I am going to share with you the powerpoint that I use with 2nd through 5th grade. All of my pictures were borrowed from msn clipart OR stock xchange website. When I uploaded this document into google docs so that I could share it, ALL of the text and pictures shifted slightly, so this slideshow is not as good as the one I use, but I'm hoping that you will get the idea. If you choose to use or to refer to my powerpoint, please note that it is intended for educational purposes only. Lyrics for most songs are from Macmillan McGraw Hill, Spotlight on Music OR Share the Music.

Kinder/1st song list

Jingle Jangle Jingle - 2nd grade Spotlight on Music
Deep in the Heart of Texas - on guitar
Goodbye Old Paint - 4th grade Share the Music
I'm a Tex - I have no idea (I inherited this one)
T.E.X.A.S. - to the tune of BINGO
I'm gonna brand my doggie with an X - PE provided this song - I'ts HARD!
Old Chisholm Trail - from book on guitar
Home on the Range - from book on guitar
Texas Our Texas - chorus only Spotlight on Music

2nd-5th grade song list

Jingle Jangle Jingle - 2nd grade Spotlight on Music
Yellow Rose of Texas - Texas Medley Spotlight on Music
Deep in the Heart of Texas
Don't Fence Me In 4th grade Spotlight on Music
T.E.X.A.S. - because they like it
Goodbye Old Paint 4th grade Share the Music
My Home's in Montana - (ok it's not a Texas song, but is a cowboy song) 4th grade Share the Music
Old Chisholm Trail - from book on guitar
Home on the Range - from book on guitar
Texas Our Texas - (2nd & 3rd 1st verse only) (4th & 5th entire song) Spotlight on Music

See what I mean? We learn WAY too much music! With the older grades I typically shorten Jingle Jangle AND Don't Fence Me In to one time through..... THEN we have time for about two verses of Old Chisholm trail and MAYBE two verses of Home on the Range.

ENJOY!

Careers in Music.... Meet the VOKI!

2012-02-06T20:03:00.000-08:00

Our 5th grade students are supposed to have the opportunity to explore careers in music as part of their "Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills" or TEKS..... This has always been a challenge for me to teach for two reasons.....

1. There aren't very many resources, printed or online ......that are both comprehensive in scope as well as simple.

2. I don't have loads of time with any group of children, so sometimes it's easier to just talk about composers and music teachers one day out of the school year and call it happy...... except.....

There are MANY different types of jobs that one could potentially pursue if music was your primary interest. It was time to get creative!

Although I use technology all the time in my classroom, I've never been good at creating student products with technology, but I was recently inspired when I came across Mrs. King's Music Class Blog and found that she had successfully used VOKI to help her 6th graders report what they had learned about world music. Their products were enough to tempt me to try.

I planned to use this project at the end of the end of the day when my students came to "extra specials". During this time I see larger groups of children because my co-teacher has traveled on to her other school.

However, as it has worked out, because of Stanford testing, we've been flipping the 5th grade to the afternoon, so between the "extra-specials" time and the double music classes, this project has moved much more fairly swiftly than I had planned.....I thought it would take us all spring.....

Day 1 -

I have 6 music Macbooks and I borrowed 10 additional Macbooks from our school library because I knew I was going to have bigger classes

Students divided themselves into groups of 2-3.....

Each group had a piece of paper divided in half, a lap board, a pencil and a laptop.

Even though I use a PC and my students were using Macbooks, with my computer projected so that everyone could see, my students were able to follow my lead as I lead them through our district website, to our library resource page, to our search engine page, to google safe search, and then onto the page we were searching for which was Music Professions

This site is not flowery or flashy, but it is clear and concise. My favorite part of the site is that the jobs are categorized and none of the descriptions are more than a paragraph long.

I asked students to answer two questions about 2 jobs. For a total of 4 questions.

1. What does a person with this job do?

2. What kind of education is required for this job?

They didn't have to copy the questions, they just had to take notes on what they were reading.

In my district only students with parental permission to get online actually have log-in credentials, so by allowing them to work in groups with assigned jobs I created opportunities for some of my "non-credentialed" students to fully participate. I also had plenty of paper articles that I had copied both for additional information AND as a back-up for students who might be too rowdy for computers.

By the end of Day 1 everyone had a few notes or a couple of paragraphs about two music jobs.

Day 2

With my computer projected so that everyone could follow me, I went back through all of our steps to get to the Music Professions site.... I encouraged the students to leave that site open in order to complete their research or to go back and refer to it as they completed their project. I showed them how to log in with the account I had created for our class.

I am currently using a free account, and it has worked fine so far. I created a VOKI while they followed along, and they repeated the process but added their own text. Voki are created randomly and the creator is allowed to edit by choosing another character, voice, background or even accessorize their VOKI. My students were so excited to try it, but I made one demand on their time for DAY 2.... No one was allowed to "play" with their VOKI until their group had typed in their report telling about what they had learned about a music job of their choice.

The best part of VOKI is that it reads the text, so students can hear what they have written.... this helps GREATLY with their ability to spot errors. This is particularly helpful because the majority of my students are second language learners and part of learning a language is learning to distinguish when something "sounds" wrong. Here are a few examples of student work.

Name that Note Scavenger Hunt!

2012-01-31T22:30:00.000-08:00

Some people are just blessings! My first few years as a music teacher I was blessed to work with Meredith Leblanc who because of our time of working together has become a dear friend. When I was a clueless newbie music teacher, she was kind and patient. When I was frustrated and at a loss for how to proceed, she was full of ideas and advice. Then when I would come up with some idea that I was SURE would work with children but was really destined to flop, she'd smile, close the door between our rooms and teach her class beautifully while chaos ensued in my class as I learned how to teach rather than exasperate my students. Meredith was the first music teacher that I really got to study to see how she practiced her artful interactions with children. Meredith was the one who asked (told) me that I needed to go ahead and cough up the money, and write a letter to my new PTA so that I could go to Education Through Music which turned out to be the best advice she ever gave me. To this day, if I want to know how to teach something in a fun, practical and easy way, she is my go to gal.

The seeds of this blog post were grown out of a game that Meredith came up with that I bet she will play with her students sometime this year for 3 reasons.... it's fun, it's easy, AND they learn the material!

Note Name Scavenger Hunt

1. Download and print the Treble Clef Flash Cards from Making Music Fun

2. Cut up the cards and then "hide" the ones that you would like your students to review all over your room. (I trimmed mine down some to make them easier to hide)

DON'T FORGET - put numbers on the cards BEFORE you hide them..... if you don't you get to find them all again and put numbers on them......that's why my 12 looks so wompy...... I was working at an odd angle. ALSO - go ahead and make a key so that you can give the correct answers easily.

3. Copy a numbered sheet for each student so they can write down the name of the note next to the correct number. This is the one that I created.......... (I'm not proficient yet on sharing my files, so please let me know if you are successful in downloading this one.)

4. Make sure that everyone has a pencil, lapboard/clipboard and a paper before you begin.

This one is under my board

TIPS:

1. My favorite part about this activity is that it adds movement and elements of play into a plain old review. I also like the fact that the students can work together. As I wander around the room with the class, I get a real sense of where the holes are in their thinking. I also buddy up with students who are struggling and the playful atmosphere allows me to do some serious reteaching.

2. I NEVER give prizes!

3. If there are areas in your room that you want your students to stay away from (like your teacher desk?), make that clear before you begin. By nature, a scavenger hunt is going to lead your students into poking around your piles in their attempt to find that last item on their list.......I find that this activity is best when my room is mostly picked up, but not neat as a pin.... if things are too neat then the items that the students need to find are too obvious.

4. Be prepared to set up procedures for moving around the classroom...... I don't mind a little excited scurrying across the room, or an excited exclamation followed by a mad dash when a student finds a new note...... but that may not be you....AND that type of self regulation doesn't suite every class...... so determine what noise and movement level you can tolerate and let them hunt to their hearts content!

5. Depending on how much time your students have spent on a particular subject of review, you may want to strategically place areas for students to check their work.

This student has found a note right next to my easel
where I had quickly drawn a giant "cheat sheet" so that students could
make SURE they labeled their notes correctly.

Other ideas:

During a different, younger class, I had my students use the exact same notes, but instead of naming the notes, they found the lines and spaces. Instead of writing a letter, these students would write and S or an L.

I think I'm going to try this activity to review recorder fingerings..... I will re-hide only the notes that I need and use this sheet to accompany..... I plan on having my students name the note AND color in the fingering chart.

Original Game as played by Meredith Leblanc -

1. Cut out instruments from your favorite instrument worksheet

2. Number them and tape them around the room.

3. Prepare two answer sheets. The answer sheet for older students is a list of numbers next to a blank where there is room to write down the name of the instrument. The answer sheet for younger students might be multiple choice for the names. The answer sheet that Meredith used to use with kindergarten had numbers on one side and instrument pictures on the other..... the students would draw a line between the instrument and the correct number.

Noteflight

2012-01-29T14:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday on another blog that I write I told a story about a song my daddy used to sing to me when I was little. A music teacher friend of mine asked me about the tune of the song because I had decided to only type the lyrics..

I wanted to answer her well, so I thought about using finale. I typed the song in and then searched out the procedure for saving my file as a pdf or a jpeg file. After reading the instructions and giving it a try I realized that my version of finale is either not new enough, or not substantial enough to have that feature...... so, I decided to look online for some help.

I came across noteflight.

Noteflight is a cloud based music notation service. There is a free membership that allows 25 songs to be stored on the site, or you can pay a monthly membership fee and have access to more storage space.

There are memberships available for classrooms, schools and districts. I'm hoping that perhaps somewhere down the road my district will provide a subscription for us to use in our classrooms because I think it would be quite handy.

I found the interface to be somewhat intuitive, but not as responsive as I would have liked. For example, I was asked right away if I was going to use an anacrusis. I checked "yes" and then expected the notation to begin on the pick-up note. Instead, there is almost an entire measure of rests before the song begins. There may be a way to change that, but not one that I could find in the time I had.

THEN - here is the big flaw! When I changed the meter, it gave me the 6/8 measures that I requested, but it did so without changing the 4/4 graphic at the beginning of the piece. When you click on the 4/4 it lights up as if you can edit it. Then the box appears and it says 6/8. So I have a functional 6/8 song with an erroneous 4/4 label...... weird! Again, there may be a way to change that, but I couldn't find it in the time that I had.

In any case, noteflight offers a reasonable option for the sharing of simple musical notation, which is quite handy!

Here is the song that I notated. Even though there are flaws, it didn't take very long. If you know this song, or who wrote it originally, please let me know.... I would love to give credit for good work.

Here is the link to the page containing information about noteflight classroom I hope that you find it helpful!

www.classicsforkids.com

2012-01-26T21:15:00.000-08:00

Classics for kids is a GREAT website that includes podcasts that are only about 6.5 minutes long. My favorite part about the podcasts is that they do several episodes about each composer, so by the time your students have listened to each of them, they have received a huge amount of biographical and musical information in bite sized portions. Did I mention that the podcasts are FREE?!!!

The only catch is that they don't keep ALL of the podcasts up on the website, so my advice would be to subscribe to the podcast through itunes and then collect the episodes so that you don't miss any. My collection of episodes on itunes is MUCH more substantial than the episodes online.

.PDF information/worksheets are available for each composer featured in the podcast. Each sheet is slightly different, but all of them contain biographical information and have some sort of listening map and activity that can be worked on while students are listening. You can download all of those PDF files without ever listening to a podcast, so they serve as good reference material whether you choose to use any other resource or not.

My students were kept pretty busy this afternoon with four fairly intuitive online games. There is a music composition game, a note naming game, a rhythm game and a "time travel" composer game.

There are even audio clips about various musical careers. They are great because you can choose to listen to the entire thing, or just listen to segments based on interest. I've found that resources for musical careers is rather difficult to come by, and this is a good source of information.

There is an interactive composer timeline and map that link you back to episodes of the podcast and biographical information. I think sometimes it's hard for students to get a sense of time and place, so I especially like the way that visually overlapped the lives of the composers. You can tell at a glance who which composers were alive at the same time and when you compare the geography you might get a sense of who was influencing whom in terms of musical style. Very cool!

The music dictionary is nice as well as the information about instruments of the orchestra.

Most of the audio clips require Real Player to be installed, so you might want to make sure that is taken care of before trying this website with students.

I've found this to be a rather dynamic website with a vast array of resources ready for you and your students to explore. There are many layers to this site that I didn't cover in this blog post, so please go and explore....I bet you'll find things that I don't even know about yet. :)

Enjoy!

Music listening club

2012-01-26T18:20:00.000-08:00

I wish that I had time to teach my students more songs AND I wish that I had time to help my students listen to more music. With that in mind, I decided that as part of my schools after school program I would have a "music listening" club. I thought a music listening club would be a perfect Thursday afternoon activity because by Thursday afternoon, I am totally dragging and I want to do something that my students will enjoy AND that is somewhat relaxing.

We agreed that we would have popcorn and pillows at each club meeting to make the listening more enjoyable..... and now a few weeks in, I've finally quit burning the popcorn. I'm still working on the pillows. I'm collecting them at garage sales, then throwing them in the washing machine and sewing a cover for them....when they get done, I'll post a picture.

After our first class meeting, we barely had time to introduce our first song, so for the first two weeks, we had a good look at Dance Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns. I enjoy this song, but I find it a little slow and long, so I knew better than to just throw it out there and expect them to listen to it just because. I let them eat their popcorn while we watched this YouTube video.

They loved it! We created a little book where we wrote the title, composer and took note of some elements of the music like instrumentation, tempo, and mood.

The last couple of weeks, we have been studying Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin

I read a book about how George Gershwin was inspired to write Rhapsody in Blue.

Then while we listened to the piece, we drew city-scapes on blue paper. Their pictures are beginning to shape up nicely.

This afternoon, I got out my 3 macbooks and checked out several other macbooks from the library so that I could have partners use the computers instead of groups. Then we went to classicsforkids.com where we listened to a quick podcast about Gershwin. There are also several nice games on classicsforkids.com so after we were done listening, they got to play them for a while.

As much as my crew loves their popcorn, we don't mix popcorn and sterling white computers, SOOOO we waited until we were all gamed and podcasted out before we got the popcorn out. Then while we munched on our popcorn we watched wonderful pictures of NYC float by to a great recording of Rhapsody in Blue.

Next week in exchange for the fabulous behavior I've had over the first few weeks, I am allowing the students to request music to listen to together.

Today before they left, each student submitted music requests on post-it notes. I told them not to bother requesting music that they thought I might find inappropriate. I also told them that I would look up each song and make SURE that it was alright for school. So starting next week, after I've done a little homework and bought a few tracks on itunes, we'll have a new listening experience where my students choose the music. Because this is an afterschool "club" I feel that it is only fair that I be willing to incorporate music that they choose into what I would like them to learn. Wish me luck!

Donorschoose.org - How did I ever teach music without it?

2012-01-24T19:32:00.000-08:00

I'm currently right in the middle of my 13th year as a music teacher 10 years at my first school and 2.5 years into teaching at my current school. And Ya'll I wish that I had found out about donorschoose.org a long time ago!

I FINALLY discovered donorschoose.org 2.5 years ago when I moved to my current school. Everybody knows that any time you move, there are things that you loose from where you've been and things that you gain where you are going. Well, at my previous school, I was seriously attached to my easel.......My easel was the focus of just about all of my teaching and since it had wheels, I would just drag it along behind me as I moved around the room....... it was GREAT! When I moved, I wanted to take it with me so badly, but since I'm not a thief, my easel and I said our goodbyes and I went on my way.

Boy! Did I miss that easel!!!!!
I'd find myself in a teachable moment and I'd look around my room for an easel that was only in my imagination..... it was just dreadful..... I felt like I was experiencing easel withdrawals.......I was also new enough to the school that I didn't want to be pesty with my requests for materials. I wanted to save my requests for the real important stuff and since it was "just" an easel, I held my peace.

Until finally over Spring Break of that year, I did some research on my district website and found out that donorschoose.org was approved by our grants department. YIPPEE!!! (now what?)

Well, I found the website and started reading...... I fully explored the site so that I could get an idea of how things worked and then I submitted my first project. I bet you can guess what I requested!!!!!

You are right! AN EASEL!!!

My request for an easel was fully funded within 48 hours of posting!

Since that first project I have requested multiple projects. Compared with other grant opportunities, the "extra" work is minimal. All I have to do when I am blessed enough to have a project funded is to provide thank-you notes to the donors created by my students and provide photographs of my students benefiting from the materials.

Donorschoose.org is especially attractive if you are a music teacher like me who seriously dislikes the added responsibility of fund raisers. My favorite part is that through donorschoose.org I never ever never ever have to deal with the money or purchasing. Donorschoose.org handles everything.

Donorschoose.org requires that potential projects use vendors that they have partnerships with. However, if materials that you are requesting are not available through one of their vendors, you can still request the items by creating a "special" project.

My best advice for people considering submitting a project to donorschoose.org is to plan ahead. There are tons of items that would benefit your classroom at any time. If you are at an older school, chances are that you are still relying on equipment that is super old...... some of my instruments were rusted and virtually ruined by decades of lovingly hard use in the music classroom.

Here are some pictures of some of the projects that have been funded for my classroom.... all in less than 2 years!

1 grade level set of recorders

Music teachers need school supplies too! Folders, pencils, crayons

unpitched percussion instruments

recorder stands

recorder method books

gathering drums

hand drums

music staff lap boards, dry erase markers and erasers

1 years subscription to Music Express Magazine

2nd set of recorders....
now I can teach recorder to two grade levels at once

book bins for our growing class library

classroom guitar for the teacher

guitar song book for the teacher

composer biographies

mallets galore!

several sizes of cymbals

lots and lots of headphones and headphone splitters

For more information about donorschoose.org or to check out my classroom's project page, please feel free to visit......http://www.donorschoose.org/bmcspadden

Googly Eye Guys meet the TEXTBOOK!

2012-01-22T18:05:00.000-08:00

What do popsicle sticks and googly eyes have to do with textbooks? Well, here is where you are going to find out!

In music class we sing, we play games, we dance, we play instruments, we compose, we tell stories, and put on costumes..... BUT......

Sometimes we have to use the textbook.

In music class we use math manipulatives, we study maps, we construct models, read books, use comprehension strategies and Venn diagrams and we conduct science experiments........ BUT

Sometimes we have to use the textbook.

In music class we have ever increasing access to a multitude of technological support. In addition to video streaming through Discovery, Youtube, and Teachertube, We now have digital formats of just about every printable resource.(Both my set of textbooks and current issues of Music Express Magazine have digital formats) Many of us have computers, projectors, iPods, iPads document cameras, activeboards and other devices that would allow for our students to "interact" with technology more easily than ever before... and every day there is new software developed just for us........ BUT

Sometimes we have to use the textbook.

The textbook dilemma

The problem with textbooks

Textbooks are difficult to pass out because they are heavy. They require that procedures be set in place to handle them because they are expensive and easy to damage. Textbooks also demand a certain level of book navigation skill otherwise they take forever to use..... If you're like me, time in music is VERY limited and I am always weighing the time-cost of the materials I choose and the procedures I set in place to manage them in order to increase the amount of time on task....Just like any other tool, sometimes textbooks don't fit the job.

The blessings of textbooks
On the plus side, textbooks offer access to hundreds and hundreds of songs that have been chosen with care to details like pitch and rhythm, vocal range and all sorts of elements that should be considered when choosing music. If you use them as part of your instructional arsenal, you'll know that the students get excited to use them because they are becoming as novel and as outmoded as that huge set of hard cover encyclopedia on your grandparents book shelf. Some of my students have limited opportunity to really dig into a book of any kind, so a textbook is a great gateway book.....

The tactile experience of holding a book and of touching a musical score is something that we miss out on when we limit our music score reading to projections or skill isolating manipulatives, (i.e. ones that always isolate rhythm or pitch away from words). Despite all of our technological advances, I don't believe that choirs and orchestras in our communities will have the funds to go fully digital for a few decades yet, so teaching children how to interact with a real score is still a viable skill. The way that we become good at reading music is first by creating music and second by actually reading music. Putting "real" music in the hands of our students is just another manipulative for the tactile learner. Aren't we ALL tactile learners?

So I ask myself.....
Do I want my students to spend 20 minutes finding page 325 or do I want my students to spend their time singing? The answer is YES to both! My students who struggle with basic book skills in my music class certainly struggle with those same skills in their homeroom. Finding a page number in any book is good practice on several different math skills. Having the class wait on you to find the page may be the first time in life that a student's lack of basic "number sense" is really hindering them. So I say.... the more practice, the better.....
In 3rd-5th grade I refuse to tell my students the page number. Instead I give them the song title and I show them where they can find the index. Textbooks may be going the way of the dinosaurs, but even online information is indexed, so practice finding what you need is always good whether it happens online or in a textbook. After a reasonable amount of wait time, I let students help each other get to the page.

The Real World

During the last two weeks I literally had all of my Kinder-5th grade students in textbooks! I felt like I was drowning in them..... I got really tired of having the students put them back on the shelf, so I ended up with grade level stacks in various parts of the room. I don't have kinder text books, but I want to teach proper handling of all books early, so we used our books to research Martin Luther King Jr. before learning our song.

The MacMillan McGraw-Hill series has a WONDERFUL collection of songs about Martin Luther King Jr. as well as a fairly extensive collection of spirituals both written out for children AND authentic recordings. In my opinion it is one of the best aspects of the series.

However, because this beautiful and meaningful music was chosen more for it's cultural and historical relevance rather than for it's melodic or rhythmic elements, in many cases the actual music I was asking my students to read was just beyond their reach. Their ability to sing and make the music beautiful outpaced their ability to actually read the musical score.

In 2nd grade things were tricky because the score layout stretched the song over two pages. The refrain was a the beginning which forced the two stanzas to straddle the page break. Going back and forth was tough for my second graders.

In 5th grade, we were working on the Follow the Drinking Gourd and The Ballad of the Underground Railroad which both have multiple verses. These students navigated the scores themselves fairly well even with multiple page turns back and forth between 3 pages, but with 5 stanzas there were layers of opportunity to be in the wrong place

The other element that made these songs in particular challenging for the students to track successfully was the tempo of the music. Each of these songs clipped along at quite a rate and students all over the room were catching up just to fall back behind again. I needed a solution!

Here is how it happened......

Googly Eye Guys

It was the first day of our block rotation and there I was......... surrounded by a group of 2nd graders who all had their very large textbooks finally open to page 345..... I wanted them to follow along in their books while we listened to the song we would learn...... Upon asking them to follow along, I got a wide variety of reactions. I had 2 students who immediately placed their pointer finger on the correct spot in the book and looked expectantly at me, begging me with their eyes to get on with it..... I had 10 students started flipping through their textbook looking at other pages, and I had 5 students lay down 2 of whom actually closed their eyes, and one girl opened up a free hair salon for all of her little friends. Nooooo! This will NOT do! As I desperately searched my mind for an instantaneous fix I remembered something my dear friend Pam Kang once showed me. Pam is a wonderful pre-K teacher and so she makes all sorts of cool pre-k stuff. She had made some little folder games for letter identification. Each folder came with it's own Popsicle stick that had a googly eye glued to it. In my moment of REAL and fervent need, I remembered that over the summer I had made some of those Popsicle eye thingies, with the thought that they might be handy..... Well - today was the day!

Goggly Eye Guys to the Rescue!

Students who were having trouble following ONLY
the first verse were told to cover up the blue words.
(sorry for the blur)

As the song progressed, students were asked to "uncover" the
portion of the score we were singing.

There is absolutely nothing remarkable about the Googly Eye guys. They are large popsicle sticks with eyes glued onto them. Everything I use them for could be done without taking the time to glue on googly eyes, but the googly eyes are what make them special. I would say that the large popsicle sticks work better for textbook sized music because the size of the stick is almost the exact same size as a system of music in our books.

I sometimes asked my students to find specific score elements.
In this case I asked my students to put their "eye"
on "so la la so mi" or "ta - titi - ta

Sometimes these googly eye guys were named by the students who used them. One whose eye fell off was taken to the "googly eye" hospital for repair. A few of them even moonlighted as microphones, drum sticks and conductor batons for my more dramatic students. The best part was that they were universally useful with kinder through 5th grade students.

Also, for many of my special education students this was a great way to help them keep up with the other students. Not only did the googly eye guys help them track the music better, but it was also MUCH easier for them to glance at a neighbor and actually be able to see where they were. A model music reader didn't have to go to waste just because their classmates couldn't see their thinking. The Googly Eye Guy helped them highlight their good work.

Every musician gets behind or ahead occasionally. How do we teach pacing? How do we teach kids to catch up or to slow down? What aural cues do we listen for? It was amazing how much the addition of these Googly Eye Guys opened up that conversation among my students WAY more than I had anticipated. It was great to hear 5th graders discussing their "anticipation strategies" .

Here are some pictures from second grade with examples of how I used them. I don't plan to ever use textbooks again without my Googly Eye Guys. Having the students "see" new things about the music with their googly eye guy fostered lots of great questions and we had a wonderful time seeing if we could find everything on our musical maps.

The students would go back and forth between using the googly eye guys
as a pointer or as a slider depending on the task

Students were actively engaged in following the score....
The googly eye guys made it MUCH easier for me to track their progress
and easily see who needed help from me.
Goggly eye guys cut down on attempts at "fake" reading.

Even reluctant students couldn't resist reading with a goggly eye guy!

I hope you've enjoyed this long post. Now go find some of those popsicle sticks.... If you've got some googly eyes and Elmer's then get to gluing..... You'll be glad you did. :)

Brains that POP!

2012-01-19T21:18:00.000-08:00

This blog is taking me forever to write. Not because it's so difficult but because it's Thursday night and I'm "Thursday Tired". The only level of tiredness that can trump "Thursday Tired" is "Friday Tired" which is why I try to save my social life for Saturday :)

When you work as hard as we do to get as tired as we get there are many many things that can be forgotten. When you've got so much to do, researching details is just not important..... so in an effort cut down on your research time, I'm going to give you a list.

Now I have to tell you that originally I received this list at one of those gloriously useful music professional development days that my district provides. All the music teachers gather and create a perfectly wonderful, enthusiastic, encouraging, relevant and useful MUSIC professional development. Afterwards I eagerly grabbed up all of the handouts, talked to all of the other music teachers, went out to lunch and enjoyed each others company and then POOF! Just like that, it was over. SCHOOL started! All of those beautiful handouts got filed and put away and not thought of again....

....Until last night when I sat down to write this post....... I remembered that I already had a list like this..... Where did I put it? Who compiled it? I can't remember.... I bet I'll remember after I publish this post.... when I do remember, I'll add an addendum.

Soooooo anyway, I'm going to tell you about BRAINPOP!

For those of you who DO use it, you'll know that BRAINPOP! is not the "end all be all" of musical resources, but it is a tool.... one tool.... that we can add to our arsenal of gear that we use to teach children through music. If you don't know about it, or didn't know that it had music stuff on it.... NOW you know!

Many schools and school districts have purchased subscriptions to this site. Right now, our subscription is hosted on our district library resource page. I can access it from my teacher computer, from all student computers and at home for planning purposes. BRAINPOP is a collection of online mini-movies, games and resources. Each little movie has a quiz and if you have an activeboard you can hook it up so that your activevotes work with it.

Now I'm not gonna lie, in comparison to other subject areas and what they COULD have, the arts in general are still somewhat lacking. But just between last year and this year, the number of music movies has increased, so I hope that they will have even more new ones in the future. I wish they had more Brainpop Jr. movies but like I said, as time passes their collection grows. I like them because they are short, concise my students like them AND we can use them as a tool without being dominated by technology overload.... after all in my class we are supposed to be MAKING music, not merely learning ABOUT music, so a tool like this is useful. I've used them as an introduction to a larger unit, and I've used them as part of an assessment.

Below are the episodes currently available that are about music.

BRAINPOP!

Learning Music:

Clefs and Time Signatures
Musical Scales
Melody and Harmony
Reading Music

Musical Genres

60s Folk
Country music
hip hop & rap
latin music
blues
jazz
harlem renaissance

Famous Artists and Musicians

Elvis Presley
Louis Armstrong
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ludwig Van Beethoven
The Beatles
Yo-Yo Ma

Making Music

Analog and Digital Recording
Brass Instruments
Percussion Instruments
String Instruments
Woodwind Instruments
Vocals

BRAINPOP Jr.

W.A Mozart
Musical Alphabet
Musical Instruments
Percussion Instruments
Pitch / Tone / Beat
time signatures and note value
woodwind instruments

As always, make it a great learning day!

Guitars and all that!

2012-01-16T08:32:00.000-08:00

Confession: I am a music teacher who loves playing guitar, who plays rather poorly, but energetically. My guitar knowledge is limited at best, but since my students know less than I do, it works out alright.

Having said that, I had a WONDERFUL guitar teacher Joanne Darby back in McCamey Texas for about 3 months before I moved to Houston. They had an AWESOME store that served all of West Texas for years and years.

McCamey Music Mart
100 Thomas Drive, McCamey, TX 79752

(432) 652-3703 ‎
I tell you this because I chose my guitar method books for my after school guitar class because I THINK that this is the book that I used when I took lessons at the Music Mart.

http://www.melbay.com/product.asp?ProductID=93833bcd

I choose to use this particular method book because:1. The cost is not prohibitive2. chords are introduced progressively, they have easy versions that allow for strength to build in the child's hand3. individual notes are introduced on page 25.....4. the CD is helpful on days when I'm lacking in voice.... :) 5, You can purchase the book with or without the CD.
I don't teach chords or individual notes exclusive of the other, so in each lesson we spend some time doing chord work and then we skip over to page 25 and practice reading the notes and playing individual notes.... THIS pedagogy I can attribute to Ms. Joanne Darby at the McCamey Music Mart who didn't want any of her guitar students to be one dimensional. Good guitar players need proficiency in both. So, even though I don't have opportunity to bring my students very far along their guitar playing journey, I want what they do learn to be well rounded. .
Today I am going to face a real fear of mine. I am going to restring 2 of my student guitars!
This is problematic for me because 1. I typically just pay the guitar store to string my own personal guitar for me.
so
2. I don't have very much practice stringing guitars

and
3. My class guitar professor Dr. Zoe Kelly, who I love to pieces wore goggles every time she even tuned a guitar AND draped the strings with a bath towel.
So my lack of experience coupled with the teachings of a very safety conscience professor mean that I've put it off all week in dread. :)
But it's time to put on my big girl britches and get the job done.
Where do I go for info? Youtube of course!
I looked at several different videos and this is my favorite because the commentary is printed AND the camera work is up close so you can see what "wrap around" means.

I love being able to rewind and rewind and rewind.
I use these strings for my classical guitar strings at school.

D'Addario EJ45C Pro Arte Composite Classical Guitar strings Set. They seem to work well!

I hope that this information is helpful to you.

Love the BLOGS!

2012-01-16T07:16:00.000-08:00

So I've been having some luck finding music teacher blogs to follow. I've learned so much already and I'm only following 4 music blogs so far.

These four music teachers live in various parts of the country, have different philosophies and vastly different experiences in their classrooms. However, we all teach music and man o man have these guys got some great ideas. The ideas are so good and well thought out that I'm absolutely going to incorporate their ideas into my classroom. Eventually, I hope that folks will begin following my blog and that I will have the chance to return the favor and share some of the things that I know.

So often when I look sift through these wonderful resources, I will recognize songs, units of study and even issues.... but without fail, on each blog I have found resources, applications and solutions that I would have never come up with on my own. It's like having the benefit of a colleague, without even knowing them. VERY exciting stuff!

Along the right hand side of my blog I've listed the four music teacher blogs that I am currently following. I intend to keep that up to date so that you can also access all of that good thinking too.

Pinterest: Is it an addiction or a potential path to better teaching?

2012-01-14T15:34:00.000-08:00

I've discovered Pinterest! It is a guilty pleasure at the end of a long day to scroll through image after image of beautiful things and nice ideas. It's like an ever evolving magazine on steroids that I can "rip" pages out of to keep AND contribute to if I am so inclined. Yet - what do I find myself constantly on the look out while I'm on pinterest? More teacher stuff!

Between my pinning and repinning crochet patterns and recipes, I am drawn to all of the wonderful teacher blogs and teacher pins. To the untrained eye it would appear that I'm vegged out and relaxing, but don't be fooled, I'm actually consuming really great teacher thinking. I love that by allowing me to save links to cool ideas, I am creating a visual reference file for future use. I love even more the freedom with which teachers are opening up their doors and sharing their knowledge with each other. In the end, our students will do better when we can share our best thinking.

Warning:
If you haven't had a look yet, you should check it out. However, you should be forewarned, back before I joined Pinterest and only look at Pinterest there was quite a bit of what I would call trash that had to be weeded through to get through the good stuff. This is because initially Pinterest is set to show "Everything" and they really mean EVERYTHING. They do monitor their pins and so don't allow the truly foul. But since I find that often I am far more offended by most PG13 movies than the occasional R rated film I got tired of the trashy pins in a hurry. The good news is that once you join, you primarily see the pins of the folks you follow or pins from searches you conduct yourself. The more I've used Pinterest, the cleaner it's gotten.

Love the Pictures!
The one thing that Pinterest has taught me is that a picture is worth a thousand words. More pictures please. I want the blogs I read to be filled with pictures that show me exactly what the words are saying.

Just yesterday I was hopping from one pin to another and stumbled across a blog entry from a music teacher who teaches recorder COMPLETELY differently than I do. The difference in method (I think) would make a huge difference in how successful my students feel.. Here is the link for that blog.

http://www.learnmemusic.com/2012/01/beginning-recorder-method-book.html

You see, in most method books for recorder you start with your left hand on top and learn the left hand notes first B,A,G...... This is fine with me as I am left handed, but I know well, just how much I loathe trying to do anything with my virtually useless right hand. I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for my more right dominant students who just cannot get over the "left hand hurdle". Imagine my delight when I was reading her blog and checking out her self published resources. I discovered that she does teach a 1 left hand note first G, but them immediately teaches a left/right hand note E.......I literally tried it the very next day and it was a very good thing.

Right now I'm on the hunt for music teacher blogs that have posted about classroom set up. While on Pinterest I've already found several things I think I might use.

Here is a link to a wonderful 2nd grade blog http://sunnydaysinsecondgrade.blogspot.com/2011/08/crate-seats-new-friend.html where I found

I still haven't decided if I'll make these or not, but I love the idea of creating storage for my classroom that students can sit on.

Every day is a new day!

2011-09-19T17:45:00.000-07:00

Each morning after breakfast duty, I run up to the office to help my 5th grade helpers as they do the announcements. Then I run back to my classroom just in time to greet my first class of the day which is always kindergarten. I think that kindergarten is great in the morning because they are still half asleep. When they are still barely awake kindergarten is my favorite. In the morning thanks to our wonderful 1/2 time music teacher, I have approximately 25 students.

On every 7th day of school I get to see those bright shiny kindergarten faces again at the end of the day. This is always a more interesting experience because they are wide awake, ready to go home and they've multiplied! In the afternoon, when my side-kick is off teaching music at her other campus, I get 35 students all to myself! Kindergartners in those numbers should not be allowed, but that's a soap box for another time.

So this afternoon my herd of kindergarten kids showed up at my door complete with their backpacks, full bladders, dry throats, hurt fingers, runny noses, untied shoes, and tag games still unfinished from recess, and there I was,,,,,,,, the adult in charge, by myself for 45 minutes! I wanted to run and hide.

Did I mention that I'm supposed to be on vocal rest for 9 more days? So despite my trepidation I was a little glad that it was kindergarten because the nice thing about being 5 years old is that you can still be impressed! While they settled in their usual place on the floor, I started playing the piano. As they immediately stopped what they were doing, and stared open mouthed at me I thought, "this is brilliant! they didn't even know I even had a piano in the room and now I've wowed them with my virtuosic skill!" (the skills that last about 24 measures before I crash and burn)

As soon as I made my crash landing they burst into enthusiastic applause and then all of a sudden my piano starts acting strange.....

One of my little ones had crawled underneath and had started playing with the pedal with one hand while he had the other one draped over the top reaching blindly for anything he could touch which of course caused the perfect distraction. At the moment of distraction, and before I could so much as breath about 5 things happened at once, my personal "teacher recorder" had 5 year old mouth all over it, my activeboard had been unplugged, the sound to the activeboard had been unplugged, the piano pedal disconnected and my microphone turned off. It was literally as if they had telepathically sent a signal to do all of these "no-nos" at once!

So my attempts at relative silence went out the window at this point. I was able to refrain from yelling, barely, but I did give them sermon # 374 about the dangers of electrical plugs and why you shouldn't just push this or pull that to see what happens.

While I was in the process of pulling together the shreds of my lesson that had been based on technology that regrettably relied on electricity and sound, one of the students said, "Are you mad?"

I must have been frowning.

With a sigh of long suffering I said, "No, I'm not mad, I'm just a little aggravated, but it will be alright."...... The word aggravated was as freakishly novel as my attempts at playing the piano. The entire class suddenly focused and started rolling their new found word around on their tongue. They came up with a variety of 5 year old derivatives and shouted out things like "agi-ca-tated?" and "agri-jated!" and "ali-vated". When one finally asked. "What does "agi-jated" mean?" I responded by saying it means "slightly annoyed". We were off again, tasting the wonders of a new and bizarre sounding word.

And that was when the story of Peter and the Wolf came to my rescue! To say that my original lesson was well and fully cooked is an understatement, but as my very curious 5 year old class had suddenly developed a fleeting interest in vocabulary, I thought I should go with it. The grandfather in Peter in the Wolf is wonderfully aggrieved. I am so happy that I had a CD that would tell the story, so that I could be quiet. I had the students raise their hand when they got to the character who sounds aggravated which they loved and before we could get any further in the story, it was time to go. They left talking about the characters in Peter and the Wolf as if that was what I had intended all along...

We should always remember that we teach children and not subjects. They always have a funny way of letting us know what they need to learn about whether that is what we had in mind or not.

After school is where it starts

2011-09-12T19:27:00.000-07:00

This is shaping up to become a truly great year. In addition to my regular school day I've been given the chance to provide music classes to students who want to take them after school. This year my half time co-teacher is coming back to campus each Monday afternoon to teach piano in the piano lab. Because of her help I am free to teach guitar twice a week and a little class called "Melody Soup".

Guitar is a fun class to teach because the students who take it are VERY excited and they REALLY want to learn how to play guitar. The only problem with guitar is that is a sincerely challenging class that involves mild pain until you get calluses formed on your fingers.... so the early days of guitar lessons are less than inspiring. The students who have the will to stick it out are primed and ready to do great things.

My favorite class is turning out to be "Melody Soup". Melody Soup meets from 4:30 to 5:30 each Monday and Wednesday and it meets with the same set of kids each class, so that means that this group of kids who attend Melody Soup each week are getting twice as much music each week in the afternoons as I am able to give them during regular school day. How nice it is to see a group of kids twice in one week! We are already getting so much done. I can't wait until Wednesday because they will actually be able to remember what we did the class before. I'm using the song experiences from Education Through Music as the basis, but I'm letting the students have a great deal of input. After we played several games on Monday, we talked about what kind of final product we would like to produce. They want to have a performance that involves costumes, technology instruments, games and singing. SOOOOOO

We are going to put together an opera based on the songs that us folks familiar with ETM know go together well to form the libretto for an opera. The students learn the songs, then put them together in their own order, figure out their own costuming add instruments (which will be new to me) and perform.

Today we learned "Are You Sleeping?". We played the song using hand signs and trading partners. Then we sang the song in a round. Then we talked about the story in the song and then the children acted out their story. Both stories were different and we had a great deal of fun.

Wednesday we are going to learn the second song "Where is John?".....

The wild card elements of this "Melody Soup" experience will really be the added instruments, the costumes, and the attempts we will make to video our work.

I am so excited to be able to use ETM in a small group with the same group of students each week in sessions that are close enough together for students to remember what we did AND with students who although tired from a days work are highly motivated. What a pleasant way to end the day. One of my Melody Soup kids told me " I had lots of fun making soup today..... I guess we are lucky because the other kids after school don't get to make music soup." I like that! Maybe word will spread and I will be able to add "Melody Stew" "Melody Bisque" and "Melody Casserole" to the roster in the spring.

Lots 2 Give!

2011-06-06T06:04:00.001-07:00

Support Spring Shadows Elementary by voting for our video in the Lots 2 Give contest sponsored by Big Lots! Voting starts today and goes through July 4th. Please vote for our school every day! You can also donate funds that will be shared with the entered schools at http://www.biglots.com/lots2give/

Big Lots Lots2Give Program - Helping Schools in Need

www.biglots.com

Find a Big Lots store quickly and easily with our Big Lots store locator. Just put in your zip code or city and find the Big Lots that's nearest to you!

melodysoup remodeled

2011-05-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

This blog is actually one part of a larger website that I've been working on for about a year. I was determined to learn how to create a website all by myself, and while I have learned a ton, I have come to realize that I really don't want to create a website, I want to HAVE a website...... there is a HUGE difference between the two.

So today, I spent some time looking at other websites and then looking at my sad little website and making some decisions about how to proceed.

I'm hoping that within the next month, with the help of my website savy dad, I'll be able to remodel my website so that the structures are in place for future growth, while highlighting the real information.

I've got lots of things that I would LIKE to put on my website, but I am realizing that trying to do it all at once is more than I can do, so I'll be eliminating some empty sections. Instead I'll concentrate on making the sections of the website that I feel most comfortable expanding really robust and useful tools.

For now I'm going to concentrate on book reviews and online resources...... later down the road, I'll add information about costumes and fine arts integration..... one thing at a time? most certainly. I've even decided on the name of an award for my favorite musical children's books..... it will be the melodysoup.com YUMMY award.... for the book that make you go YUM! :)

'Tis the Season

2011-04-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

There is something about spring that makes me think about fall. Like clockwork, when I start preparing my spring choir concert and 5th grade graduation prep, my mind immediately starts playing the "next year" game.

Next year - I'll start recorders sooner
Next year - I'll try a patiotic program in 5th grade
Next year - I'll solve that pesky scheduling delima that has a simple solution
Next year - I'll set up my room differently to ease the flow of traffic
Next year - I'll write these donorshoose.org projects

It's like a happy disease.... just as the spring starts to really feel like the runaway train that I am desperate to get off of, my mind jumps ahead to an imaginary utopian school year with none of the harsh realities that embody the current year and with all of the irratants iradicated.

In my dream school year there are no messy classrooms, unfiled papers, or mice. There are only well-behaved students, and there are only perfectly executed and well recieved lessons where everyone is fully engaged and delighted to be a part of what is happening in my classroom every day. I'm always on time, I'm always prepared, my technology never fails and I'm never sick or tired, or angry. I'm like Glenda the good witch meets Mary Poppins in the music classroom...... Can you Imagine?

Nevertheless I think that I am drawn to next year because I am totally immersed in the experience of this year and usually while I am knee deep in this or that my mind is coming up in the "I should have....." and the "I wish I had".....that ae an inevitable part of any teaching experience.

My friend Carol has a good way of doing this. After each major campus event, she takes notes during lunch as the event is inevitably discussed around her. With the program or experience so fresh in everyone's mind, she manages to refine her process at the moment in time when creativity is high. No one is wondering what we did because everyone just did it. She writes it all down and puts it in the folder for that event. When it' time to dust off the REAL work of implementing the plan the following year she has a fresh set of suggestions and feedback to help get her started.

For me - the best way to be ready for next year is to end well. If I don't finish well then I have a really hard time getting my classroom set up and things planned for the new school year come August. Sometimes if my life outside of school will allow, I have been able to complete my own personal finishing process by the "let's go home" date. Sometimes, I make abbreviated trips to school for a couple of weeks after school is out. I've learned that investing this time, allows me to not be entirely overwhelmed when school starts.

There are many things that I address, but the first and more important has many facets, so I'll start with it.

1. Put things away cleanly and neatly - obvious but often neglected.

Costumes must be laundered before you store them. My local dry cleaners has occassionally donated their services on things I could not wash, and my current school has a washing machine and dryer. I've even sent home wash with students before.
Wash all of your classroom recorders..... you'll need them to be clean especially if you order recorders each year and the order is late
Clean and repair pitched or unpiched instruments. You can't use them if they are broken and sometimes I miss things. If you don't currently have the hardware to repair the intruments you have, order it now and hopefully it will come in before the end of May and then the repairs are simple.
Store things (especially paper and fabric in plastic rather than cardboard! Plastic isn't pefect, but it doesn't attract roaches and silverfish. If you live in a humid place, storing fabric and paper is always a problem. If you want to spend the money, invest in those vacuum seal bags. The 'do it yourself way" would be to make or purchase small muslin bags and put in charcoal brickets. These are usually found in the laundry aisle. If you aren't too worried about the brickets you could always just wrap them in paper towels and then store your things in the same bin.
Clean out your filing cabinet...... This is huge..... you should decide if you want to be a "set of copies" filer or a "one original" filer....If you don't have much room or if you are moving, you should go with the "one original" policy.
Clean out the files on your computer.... This is also huge..... especially if you want to be able to find something you did well for next year.... if you put things in the right place you won't spend all of your time hunting.
Call in all borrowed materialls. Folks borrow stuff from me all of the time. Make sure that all of your music resources have made it back to you before the end of the year.
Inspect your stage and storgage areas. You may be the only one who cares enough about these areas of the school to see to their well-being, so make sure you inspect them and turn in the appropriate work orderes.

There are many other important aspects of ending well to start well and I may revisit this topic on another post, but as I'm listing all of these things, I feel the need to get to work.

Happy Singing!

2nd grade

2011-03-17T19:55:00.000-07:00

I am so very excited about the singing going on in 2nd grade this year. They just sing beautifully!

I'm excited about how sweetly they sing because if their sound is sweet now, then hopefully we can continue to build a nice sound the rest of the time they are in elementary school. The best part is that these students have reached that place in their singing that is so beautiful that they notice and are therefore motivated to create more beauty.

Kuddos for 2nd grade!
I think that 2nd graders are awesome! because for the most part if you are in 2nd grade you are pleased to learn. It has been my observation over the years that 2nd grade is the happiest year in all of elementary school because if you've made it to 2nd grade there are many things that you've figured out. Simply put, you know how to be at school. Also - 2nd graders are a little nicer than children of other ages. It's in 2nd grade where I see students becoming totally enthralled in whatever game we are playing. It's in 2nd grade where I see students being most comfortable with and most accepting of their peers. And, it's in 2nd grade where their confidence that they can manage a task doesn't lag too far behind their actual ability. It's a wonderful time. I wish it would last longer :)

In any case, I'm happy that my 2nd graders will be singing for their parents at the end of the month. It will be a pleasure to share with these parents the good work their students are doing, and the good work that the parents are doing as well!

When you teach, things don't always turn out nicely. Sometimes we or our students fail to meet either our expectations or the expectations of others. However, when we have the chance to experience learning that is beautiful, like my "Second Grade Songbirds" we should enjoy it fully. After all, it's those musical experiences that are truly beautiful that inspired us to teach music in the first place.

Vocal Rest!

2011-03-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

The best and hardest thing to do when you are a music teacher is to maintain a rested voice. I am happy to say that now that I'm on Spring Break, I can rest my voice for a few days. This is good because my voice was in desperate need of silence!

The best money that I've ever spent was my "aerobics instructor" microphone and amplifier. If you are a music teacher who is trying to teach without amplification go ahead and spend the money to get the microphone, no amount of unamplified teaching is worth loosing your voice over.

There are multiple reasons to take care of your voice with plenty of water, rest, limited talking, and all the other healthy things we are supposed to do for ourselves anyway.....Here are the few that come to the top of my head

1. I like to sing - a tired voice keeps me from doing what I love..... I hate that!

2. This is my job - if I can't do my job then maybe I need to do something else

3. My students benefit from a healthy vocal model not a tired one

4. Having a voice that is not my best voice puts me in a VERY bad mood and is frustrating

5. Singing makes me happy

6. Some vocal damage is permanent, why risk it!

7. Surgery is risky at best, devestating at worst

8. A $300.00 microphone and a $50.00 amp is cheaper than lost work and surgery

Spring 2011

2010-12-31T14:32:00.000-08:00

The one thing that is never new about school is that the Spring makes the Fall seem like a leisure stroll. I sometimes blame this business on all what we refer to as the "spring testing season". So now in school we have football season, basketball season and testing season..... gross!

However, I find that I have a tendency to plan my year as a musician so that in the fall I spend August September and October preparing for November and December. Then I come back to school in January and have some how managed to plan something major in every available month.. So here is the run down of things that I already know will happen

January 25th - 4th grade recorder concert - pretty light on the concert as they won't begin learning recorder until Jan 4, but I bet by the end of 2.5 weeks we can play a couple of notes. We shall see what develops

February 20 something - Go Texas! Day - Grade level sing along and square dance

March something - 2nd grade show - I'll start in it the 1st week of January because interruptions are on the way between now and then.

April - constant testing

May - Choir concert - choir begins in January and goes until May

May - Choir Festival - still haven't chosen the music for this yet

May - Kindergarten graduation - much bigger deal than I would like it to be.... must figure out a way to tone it down

May - 5th grade graduation - I need to write a song for this to work toward a school song selection process within the next couple of years.

So Spring - HERE WE COME!