Music Teacher Planner December 2025

Each new year brings fresh motivation to get organized! I love looking through my planner from the first part of the school year over winter break before refilling it with fresh blank pages for the spring! Today you're coming with me to look through my planner from the first few months of the school year before we start fresh in January.

I actually showed the first few weeks of the school year in a separate video this fall. Here are my monthly and weekly planner pages from the end of August through the end of September:

And then here are the rest of the weekly and monthly pages through the end of December 2025, including a custom page I made to use over break! This is one of the things I love about using a printable planner like this- I can throw in different pages whenever I want to without feeling like I'm wasting anything and make it tailored to my needs.

If you're looking to get more organize in 2026 I've got you covered! This is the planner format I use, and you can see all of the Organized Chaos Planners designed specifically for music teachers here as well. If you have any questions about how I use my planner etc, please leave a comment and I'll be happy to help!

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"Jingle Bells" in Music Class and Winter Concerts

If you're still using Jingle Bells in your music class, you're missing out. 

In case you haven't heard, the song "Jingle Bells" was written for a minstrel show. And as prevalent as the song has somehow become all over the world since it was likely first performed in 1857, it's long past time we moved on. I know how hard it can be to change old habits, so in this post I've compiled some easy ways to replace the song regardless of what you're using it for in your music lessons.

1. Fun Children's Songs About Jingle Bells 

I think for most people, Jingle Bells is just a fun, easy song that feels "festive" without being directly connected to a holiday (although let's be honest, whether it was written for it or not, everyone associates the song with Christmas), and it's a fun song to break out the jingle bells with the little ones and sing with gusto! If that's what you're looking for, I'd venture to say these 2 songs are far superior: Jingle Jangle Everybody Sing by Charissa Duncanson, and Jingle All the Way by Stephanie Leavell. They're both written by music teachers for young children and they have both been huge hits with my students!

The great thing is both of these songs work great for common concepts we are often practicing in general music lessons:

• Steady beat
• Same and different sections/ A and B sections/ form
• Opportunities for composition/ improvisation
• Fast/ slow, loud/ quiet

2. Easy Beginning Instrumental Songs

"Jingle Bells" is a common song for beginning band and orchestra winter concerts or even for classroom instruments like recorder and orff ensemble, but there are so many better options out there this one should not be hard to replace. "We Will Rock You" is similar in the sense that the rhythm can be easily simplified, it has a limited range, and it's instantly recognizable so it feels legit (and you can find lots of arrangements for beginning band, beginning orchestra, recorder play-alongs, etc). "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Twinkle Twinkle" are other simple melodies that can swap in as another well-known tune.

For specifically wintery songs, it's easy to search by level on most sheet music sites and even TeachersPayTeachers to find some great pieces that fit the bill and will honestly be more appealing to upper elementary students who tend to find songs like "Jingle Bells" to be a little childish. 

If you haven't checked out the sheet music available on TPT, I think you'll be surprised at how much you can get for the price, and there is a lot of great quality literature available that is developmentally appropriate for every stage of learning because there are so many written by beginning instrumental teachers! Here are just a few examples:

Winter Music Bundle for Beginning Band by Classroom Composers

Beginning Orchestra Winter Concert Bundle by Motivational Music Classroom

"Winter's Here" Recorder Orff Song by Hutzel House of Music

3. Sing-Along Songs

I've written extensively about how I am working to continue teaching students about holidays, which are an important part of cultures around the world, while avoiding students feeling excluded in the process as much as I can. Jingle Bells is commonly used in sing-alongs as a non-religious holiday song, but obviously based on its racist origins doesn't fit the bill for non-exclusionary. For a full list of songs I have been using for many years now in my sing-along including songs for Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Lunar New Year, and Eid, with all the fun movement and other activities I include with the songs, head to this post. Another great idea that uses a simple prop (cups) with a wintery, festive, non-religious song that would be great for a sing-along is this simplified cup routine for Sleigh Ride:

I hope this helps provide some concrete suggestions for ways we can remove a problematic song from our music classrooms and programs while injecting more fun music that is engaging, perfect for the winter season, and accessible for beginners and young learners! If you want to see all of the music lessons that I teach in the month of December for every grade K-6 general music lessons, here is my full curriculum (also available in individual months and grade levels). What else is stopping you from removing the song from your music lessons and programs? If you have other ways you use this song that I can help find a replacement for, please send me an email or leave a comment and I'd be happy to help!

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How to Attend a School Concert

We're entering school concert season and administrators, colleagues, families, and random strangers on the internet always seem to have a lot of opinions about school concerts. If you're attending a school performance in the near future, or are getting ready to comment or post online about school musical performances, here are some things to know from your friendly local music teacher.

1. The primary purpose of school concerts is for the student performers

Remember this is a school. Schools are for learning. The primary purpose of everything we do is ultimately for student learning- even when we do something fun, the reason we do fun things is to build community so students can learn better. Concerts and musical performances are no different. Students are learning how to perform. They are also learning musical skills and sharing those publicly. That means they may perform music you as an adult find boring or unappealing. There may be times that, especially at the elementary level, a student who may not have the same level of musical skill in a particular area compared to your own child will get a turn to perform. There may be parts of the performance that aren't performed perfectly, and there may be times when the teacher/ conductor/ director has to intervene to help the performers do something correctly. The performance may be at a time that's not very convenient for your work schedule, but is convenient for the performers (see the entire post I wrote explaining the educational benefits of daytime performances here). Before you criticize a teacher's choice, ask yourself what the students might be learning because of what happened. 

2. Your job as an audience member is to support and encourage

When students are learning how to perform, they shouldn't have to overcome distractions or discouragement from the audience in order to do so. We want them to have positive experiences with performing to encourage them to continue their musical learning and foster confidence in public performances of any kind. No matter what you may actually think about the performance overall or your student/child's performance specifically, the only thing that should be coming out of your mouth to everyone involved is praise. Here are some examples of things you can say regardless of the performance:

• I loved watching you perform!
• You must have worked so hard! I loved it!
• I can't wait for the next one!
• I especially loved the part where you____.
• That was awesome! I'm so glad I got to see it!

There is literally never a time when it is helpful to criticize a school performance to the people involved in performing (students and teachers) unless you think there may be a discipline issue that you can help the director address. If you think your child/ student may have been misbehaving on stage, ask the teacher if it was unintentional distraction due to nerves or deliberate misbehavior and ask them how you can reinforce appropriate stage behavior going forward.

Other than that one rare exception, always praise.

3. Waving at or communicating with a student from the audience is distracting

I've had so many well-meaning parents and homeroom teachers try to get a student's attention to tell them to sing louder, remind them to smile, or just wave to let them know they are there. I appreciate the sentiment behind all of those efforts, but they hurt more than they help when it's during the performance. The priority is for the performers to be watching and taking their cues from the director, so let them handle those kinds of things during or after the show. If there is a time before or after their performance when they are waiting on stage, that's a great time to try to get their attention and let them know you're there by waving/ giving them a thumbs up/ remind them to smile/ etc. But never during the performance (even if they are not actively performing in that moment- they should be paying attention to the show, not you, so they don't miss their turn!).

4. Directors get way less praise than you think, so take a second to thank them

Colleagues, administrators, and family members very rarely actually tell the director they enjoyed the performance or thank them for all their hard work (it is always a lot of work to put yourself and your students out there publicly, no matter how simple or short the performance may seem), and it is incredibly demoralizing. Often, especially if a teacher has been at a school for a long time, you just don't think you need to say "good job" again when you already told them at the last concert. Or you just get busy and forget. Take a minute to give them a thumbs up from across the room on your way out, stop and tell them how much you appreciate their hard work, or send them a quick message (feel free to use the examples above). 

Don't forget, right after the concert is not a time for any sort of critique, even in the form of questions, even if you are the director's evaluator or administrator. If you aren't the evaluating administrator, there is literally never a time when you should offer any negative feedback, constructive or otherwise. If you are, any negative feedback should be saved to discuss constructively at least several days, if not more, after the last performance is over and they have had a chance to recover from the stress and adrenaline of performing. Trying to offer constructive criticism, or offer suggestions for improvement, while the director is still coming down from the heightened emotions of performance, will never be productive.

I hope this helps anyone heading into a school concert to better support your child/ student in their musical and performance development! If you are a music teacher, feel free to pass this along to your colleagues/ families. If you are not, feel free to comment with any questions about "why did my music teacher do this", "what should I do in this situation", or any other questions about how to support your local school concerts and I'll do my best to help! 

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Six - Seven Trendy Music Lessons

In the year 2025, nothing has taken over our students' brains quite as much as the phrase "six seven". The world of social media trends is just wild! I am a huge fan of bringing references to things my students are thinking and talking about into my lessons, and I have loved the different ideas I've seen other teachers sharing for how they are including the phrase in their classrooms! Today I'm sharing my collection of six (to seven) ideas for incorporating 6 7 into music lessons of all types, with my suggestions for the best age ranges for general music and the best ones to use with choir, orchestra, and band classes as well.

1. Solfege games (5th-12th grade, choirs)

Have students sing a major scale on numbers 1-8, but

a) skip (audiate) 6 and 7 (la and ti)

b) say 6 and 7 in the traditional exaggerated speaking voice while singing the rest of the scale

Either way it really forces students to hear the notes in their heads. You can also apply the same concept to one of my favorite warmups where students add a note to the scale each time they go up and down (1, 121, 12321, 1234321, etc) if you want to up the challenge level.

2. Rhythm practice (1st-12th grade, choral or instrumental ensembles)

Use 6 7 along with other slang to practice rhythm reading. Conveniently "forty one" has also been added to the trend lately, so for older students practicing sixteenth/ eighth note combinations you can use both numbers to practice both combinations. For younger students just use quarter notes and eighth notes instead and do the same thing! Here are a few ideas but obviously there are plenty more you can use with 6 7 to work on the specific rhythms you want to practice with a specific grade:

 

To up the challenge level and really test their understanding of different rhythms, give students a rhythm and ask them to come up with a slang term/ phrase that matches that rhythm!

3. Steady beat movement (K-2nd grade)

My youngest students think it's hilarious to do the 6 7 hand motion (where alternating hands go up and down) when I ask them to come up with a movement to do with the steady beat of the music. It's an easy reference to throw in with any age.

4. Half and whole rests (3rd-5th grade)

This is another simple idea using the hand motion but it has instantly increased engagement with my 3rd graders who are learning whole and half rests and practicing reading and clapping rhythms with those rests in them a lot. Normally I have my students show rests by pulsing their hands with their palms up to show the number of beats, so it's a very simple swap to change it to the 6 7 motion by having them move alternating hands higher and lower to show the beats for longer rests.

5. Beat counting (3rd-12th grade, instrumental ensembles)

Give students a notated 8-beat rhythm (or pick out a phrase from your band or orchestra literature/ method book), and have them mark where beats 6 and 7 are in the phrase. This is a really great way to test whether students know their note values! You can also have them write in the measure line(s) in a given time signature in the same activity to get in a little more practice with the same concept.

For a different spin on the same idea, which works well for younger students practicing maintaining a steady pulse or when students are first learning a new rhythm element, have students listen to a piece of music/ rhythm and do the 6 7 hand motion on the 6th and 7th bears with the music.

6. Vocal Timbre (Kindergarten)

Test students' knowledge of the 4 or 5 voices (speaking/ singing/ calling/ whisper/ thinking) by naming a voice and asking them to perform "6 7" in that voice. This actually works well for incorporating the 5th "thinking voice" because there is a gesture attached to the phrase. 

Bonus (7): Use a combination of these ideas throughout your lessons/ rehearsals specifically on the 67th day of school without telling them why, and see how long it takes them to catch on! 

I have already used some of these ideas in my classroom, and I can't wait to incorporate the others later this year! Throwing references to slang and youth culture into your lessons can be such an easy way to foster a sense of belonging, build connections, and boost engagement for students. If you have other ideas for incorporating 6 7 in the music classroom please leave a comment!

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