Self-Contained Music Lesson Outlines

It's no secret that routine, predictability, and structure are critical for self-contained music classes for students with special needs. One of the most helpful things I learned from observing other teachers and reading books on the topic of teaching adaptive music was finding some general lesson outlines that work well in these situations that I could adapt to use with my own classes. Once I found some outlines that worked, it made it so much easier to find lesson activities to use in each slot in the outline from week to week to help my students be successful! 

First of all I want to point out that having a general lesson routine in place- especially for the beginning and end of each class- is good for ALL learners. In fact, most of the practices that I have learned to help my students with special needs are helpful for all of my students! So if you don't already have some specific routines in place for all of your general music lessons, I encourage you to put something in place for the beginning and end of your classes. Here is how I start my early childhood/ Kindergarten lessons, here is how I start my 1st-6th grade lessons, and here is how I end all of my lessons.

For my self-contained classes, I develop a basic lesson flow for each class based on their energy levels at the beginning and end of the class (which can depend a lot on the time of day when I see them), what happens in the transitions to and from class, where I am teaching them (sometimes they are in my regular music classroom, and sometimes I need to teach them in their homerooms), and how the students respond to different types of activities and transitions between activities. It usually takes me some trial and error at the beginning of the year to find what works best for each class, but once I find the one that works I pretty much use the same template for every lesson the rest of the year! 

For example I had 2 different self-contained classes last year, and I had slightly different lesson outlines for each: 

Class A

drumming with a track

drumming exploration

movement activities

singing activities

instruments/ notation decoding

closing song

Class B

opening/ welcome song

singing activities

movement activities

instruments/ notation decoding

closing movement activity

You can see I have a lot of the same categories between the two classes, but the specific order, and the beginning and end of class, are different. The main reasons for that were class A was taught in the music room while class B was in their homeroom, class A tended to have students trickling into class while class B everyone was there at the beginning of the lesson, class A had more experience with instruments and equipment than class B, and class B was more verbal than class A.

Within each of those categories in the lesson outlines, I am targeting different musical skills and concepts, and making sure I am changing up the specific activities to help students learn and grow while also keeping some activities the same each time so they always have things that are familiar and comfortable. Generally I would maybe have 2-3 new songs/ activities each week while the rest of the lesson stayed the same, and I would usually repeat the same lesson for both of their 2 lessons per week before changing anything else. Obviously some categories in the outline like movement and singing activities often had more than one song/ activity within that category, so I might keep one familiar song and add in one new one, for example.

I hope this gives you some concrete ideas for structuring your self-contained music lessons, especially if you are new to this area like I was a few years ago! If you want to read more of my tips and resources for teaching students with special needs, click here to see all of my posts on the topic. I have learned so much from some music therapists and educators who have much more experience, training, and expertise in this area than I do, including several colleagues as well as some authors and content creators I highly recommend: the book Creative Miracles by Kelly Surette, and all of the online content from Music for Kiddos by Stephanie Leavell are my top 2 recommendations that have had the most significant impact on my own teaching practice. If you have any other resources to recommend, or questions about specific parts of my lesson outlines or other self-contained adaptive music lesson topics, please leave them in the comments below!

Read more "Self-Contained Music Lesson Outlines"

What To Do With Those Scarves

If you are starting a new job in a new classroom and suddenly find yourself with a bunch of scarves you don't know what to do with, or you have had them for a while and feel like you're not getting as much use out of them as you should, this post is for you! In this post you'll find tips for managing their use with students, plus plenty of ways to use them in specific lessons as well!

1. Storage

I used to like the idea of wall-mounted storage for scarves, either by hanging them from a velcro strip or storing them in those containers with holes on the sides that are made for keeping plastic bags (like this). I still like those ideas but I have found for my purposes, I like being able to carry the set of scarves around rather than having them tied to one place and having to have students go get them from a specific place in the room. I have, over the years, accumulated quite a few scarves though, and I've realized it's important for whatever storage system I use to have enough space for students to be able to throw them in and fit without too much extra stuffing, so I have ended up splitting my scarves into cool colors and warm colors and keeping them in 2 separate bins:

The side benefit of this system, I've realized, is that it's easy to pick out specific color schemes, which is handy for some of my favorite scarf activities where I want cool colors to evoke water, rain, the ocean, ice, or snow, or warm colors to look like fall leaves, etc, and if we're using all the colors it's a little faster to have students put them away by calling their scarf color two at a time (one cool and one warm) to put away in two bins simultaneously. 

2. Management

Scarves don't present too many management headaches, but when I'm handing them out students often want to a) drape them over their heads, or b) ball them up and toss them (both of which are not particularly problematic, just distracting), and when they're waiting to put them away they want to spread them out perfectly on the floor and fold them into neat squares (which is very thoughtful of them but time-consuming when you're trying to transition quickly to the next activity). To help manage those behaviors I do 2 things: 1) give them something specific to do with the scarves when they are getting them out and putting them away, and 2) give them time to explore and choose what to do with the scarves at some point. 

With any instrument, prop, supply, etc, giving students time to explore the new item before demanding that they use it only in the way you instruct them is a really effective strategy. So the first time we're using scarves each school year, or if it has been a long time, I often will turn on some music and tell students they have until the end of the song to play with the scarf without leaving their spot (after spreading them out around the room). This gives them time to try throwing it, balling it up, putting it on their head, etc and not only "gets it out of their system", but gives students time to figure out how to manipulate it before they try to do anything specific with it.

Exploration time is obviously too time-consuming to do every time, though, so once they've had that chance the first time, in subsequent lessons I will tell students a specific way to hold the scarf/ stand/ sit as soon as they get the scarf. Often it is to get into whatever position we start the activity in, but sometimes it's totally unrelated- the main point is just to give them specific direction for what to do without having to tell them to sit there and stare at the new colorful toy I just put in front of them without touching it! 

For putting them away, I do the same thing. Sometimes I tell them to put it on their heads until I call their color, or drape it over their laps, etc. Other times, if we have the time for it, I will go around the room one student (or a small group of students) at a time and have them do a short song/ rhyme that ends with them putting the scarf away (like this flower song).

3. Lesson Activity Ideas

Scarf songs

My favorite way to use scarves is as a movement prop with a song. It can be a great way to help students demonstrate specific musical elements of the song, or connect with the lyrics with movements that go with the words, or a way to get students to sing with something that makes them a little less self-conscious and sparks their imagination. You'll find my top favorite songs for early childhood/ self-contained music classes in this post:

I also have to mention my other favorite singing game with scarves that I use with my middle grades: Draw a Bucket of Water. You can do it without scarves too, but it works best if you have scarves for students to pull back and forth while they sing. Here's a video showing the movement game if you aren't familiar- it's a great song to use to learn about same and contrasting sections.

Movement with instrumental pieces

Just like with scarf songs, scarves can be such a great tool for getting students to demonstrate specific musical elements of an instrumental piece of music. It can actually be a really useful assessment tool for that reason! I use it especially to have students demonstrate pitch, by having them move the scarf up for high notes and down for low notes, and to demonstrate form, by having them either use different predetermined moves for each section, or use a scarf for one section and put it down to do other movements for the other.

-The Bird from Peter and the Wolf is a great one to have students show pitch by making their scarf go up and down with the notes like the bird flying in the air.

-Aquarium from Carnival of the Animals is another one I have students show the notes going up and down with their scarves, pretending to be the fish swimming around in the water.

-Sylvia Pizzicato by Leo Debiles is my favorite song to use with scarves to have students show form. I have them tip toe for the A section and then pick up their scarves and twirl around with the melody for the B section.

Substitutes for other movement props

-If you've ever come across an awesome parachute activity (here are my favorites) and wished you could do it but didn't have the parachute and/or the space for a parachute, a lot of the moves can be done with scarves. Just have students hold the edge of their scarf with 2 hands and move their scarves the same way they would move the parachute! 

-I love teaching my students about poi in my unit in Maori music and I've now made my own out of rope for students to use (there's tutorial in that same post), but for many years I just used scarves to have students practice poi moves, and it works just fine! 

-Of course scarves can also be a great substitute for ribbon wands as well if you come across a great lesson activity that calls for those.

Other creative uses

-If you've ever had classes, especially in upper elementary/ middle school, that get icky about holding hands for movement or circle games etc, have them hold scarves in between each person and you can accomplish the same thing without dealing with the awkwardness of hand holding!

-I use some of my white or blue scarves to represent the "river" when I do my lesson on "Going On a Bear Hunt" with Kindergarten every year to practice steady beat! You can read about that entire lesson (highly recommend) in this post.

I hope this helps you find some new ways to use those scarves that have been sitting in your closet! If you're looking for more ideas for other movement props from parachutes to cups and so much more, check out this post:

Read more "What To Do With Those Scarves"

DIY Magnetic Classroom Management Board

I've been using a magnet board I made myself to be my visual for my classroom management tracker for over a decade now, and I like it so much better than the sticker charts I used to use, or the clip charts with clothespins I see other teachers using for similar purposes! I put mine together with scraps of materials and have used it every class period, every day, modifying it slightly over the years as my systems have shifted. If you're interested in trying something similar, here's how I set mine up- it's very flexible so you could absolutely adapt it to your classroom and make it your own!

The board currently serves two main functions: tracking "points" earned towards different incentives that each class is working towards in my whole class management system by moving up the black keys, then the white keys, then all the keys chromatically on the piano (read all about the system, how they earn points, what incentives I use, and my philosophy behind it in this post), and displaying the rotating class jobs to which each color team is assigned (read all about how I use classroom jobs in this post, and about my color team seating arrangement in this post).

The board itself is an oil drip pan that I bought at Walmart years ago. Mine is 25x47 inches, and apparently they don't make the ones that are that size anymore, unfortunately, because they seem to be out of stock everywhere! But this is it, in case it comes back in stock. This one is the closest I can find at 25x36 inches- it's a bit shorter but I think would do the same job.

The rest of the board is mostly contact paper and tape! I had some leftover white contact paper from another project that I used to cut out two large rectangles to be the 2 piano keyboards (I decided to make 2 separate pianos, one for K-3 and one for 4-6, so the piano keys wouldn't be so crowded if I tried to put all the classes on one piano). Then I used a ruler and permanent marker to draw lines to separate all the white keys, keeping them the same width as the black painter's tape I had on hand (I use it to "frame" all of my posters on my classroom walls). Then I used strips of the black tape to make the black keys. 

The colored boxes are just strips of the colored duct tape I use to tape the lines on the floor to mark where each color row sits, then I outlined each square with the same black painter's tape I used for the piano keys. Then for the open space next to those squares, I just stuck on a bunch of music note stickers I had from my scrapbooking days and some leftover bulletin board letters to spell out "Music Rocks!". I've had different ideas over the years for using that space but never have changed it, but it could be a good place to display the main "class rules", keep track of rewards earned, or even display photos of classes that have done something great as another incentive.

I made the magnets by either printing or handwriting onto regular printer paper and sticking the paper to these adhesive magnet sheets: I designed the minion images to show the job each color team is assigned that marking period, and cut out small strips of plain white to handwrite the class names to move up the piano keys.

I pieced all of this together by hand from scraps I already had, but if you aren't feeling super crafty I've made printable versions of the piano keyboards and classroom jobs (minus the minions so they'll fit any classroom theme) that you can get in this set here. 

I hope this helps give you some inspiration to create your own magnet board for your classroom! Like I said there are so many ways this can be customized for whatever system you're using- using the oil drip pan is just a really cost-effective way to get a good sized magnet board on the cheap, and it's so much sturdier (and, I think, looks cooler) than sticker or clip charts! Let me know in the comments if you have any questions, or if you have other ideas for how you've used a similar visual in your classroom!

Read more "DIY Magnetic Classroom Management Board"

What To Do With Those Instruments

If you are starting a new job and found a bunch of random percussion instruments in your new classroom you don't know what to do with, or if you have had these percussion instruments for a while and you don't feel like you're getting enough use out of them (or maybe don't even know how to play them correctly), this post is for you! In this post you'll find my favorite ways to use 6 of the most common auxiliary percussion instruments in elementary general music lessons, along with how I teach students to play each one and how I store them in my classroom.

1. Names and playing techniques

First it's important to know what each of these instruments are called and how they are played so you can teach your students properly! This video explains what I call each one and how I teach students to play them:

2. Storage

I think it's important for students to be able to see and access instruments independently, and although for instruments that I have class sets (or at least half class sets) of I like to store them in labeled bins to make them easy to find, I like keeping the ones I only have 1 or 2 of out separately so they don't get lost in some "miscellaneous" bin where we all forget they exist, and students are aware of what's available when they are in a situation where they are choosing an instrument/ timbre for a lesson activity. If you look closely at the right side shelves in the picture below you can see the bins on the shelves, as well as the instruments that are sitting out on the shelf where they are easily accessible.

3. Lesson Ideas

First here are a few specific ways I use each of the specific instruments I'm using as examples in this post, but I also have lots of ways I use all of these, and other miscellaneous percussion instruments in my K-6 lessons which I'll share below, so if you don't have these specific instruments keep reading!

• cabasa: more specifically, this instrument with the metal beads is called the Afuche Cabasa, but especially with my younger students I just call it a cabasa, which is a more general term. I use the cabasa with my younger students as one of the timbres I have students add to a lot of storybooks like froggy gets dressed and bear snores on (click the links to see my full lesson plans) when it calls for a crunchy or rattling sound, or a medium volume sound. It's also popular for similar purposes with my older students when they need a sound effect for their videogame or movie music composition projects because it gives them a timbre similar to a shaker but is louder and a little more precise.
• flexatone: The flexatone may not be the most urgent instrument to buy when I'm building my classroom inventory but it is one of the most fun! I specifically use it when I do the song "pass the pumpkin" with Kindergarten- students play it when we sing "oooo". I also use it for the underwear when we do froggy gets dressed in 1st grade because it is a "silly sound", and it is a great one to have available for my older students to use in composition when they want something spooky sounding or a "swoosh" like you would get with a slide whistle.
• vibraslap: My students love playing the vibraslap because you can see it vibrate. It's also often an accessible instrument for students with limb differences or who lack grip strength because you can play it with one hand and there are lots of ways to hold it! I specifically use the vibraslap every year when I do mortimer in 1st grade by having a student play it every time Mortimer nods his head, which the students think is hilarious!
• ratchet: This is another instrument that's pretty accessible and provides a timbre that's different from most other instruments I have in the classroom. It's also another instrument I use specifically with my mortimer lesson in 1st grade for playing every time someone opens the door. It's also helpful to have as an instrument that can play "sustained notes" because you can just keep turning the handle round and round, so it's a good way to have students practice reading and playing half notes and whole notes when I introduce them in the middle grades.
• stir drum: The stir drum is handy to have when I'm teaching pitched vs non-pitched percussion in 2nd grade because it helps students think more carefully about what a pitched instrument sounds like, since it is technically pitched but you don't normally play each pitch separately. 
• ocean drum: I got a few ocean drums a few years ago so it's one of the most recent additions to my classroom, but my students are in love with them (and so am I). I use it as another instrument to practice playing half notes and whole notes in my middle grades, and specifically to add whole note (or dotted half notes in triple meter) ostinato accompaniment when students are adding instrumental accompaniment with a calmer, peaceful song like Sakura in 4th grade and Duerme Mi Tesoro in 2nd grade.

Even more than the specific instruments I'm sharing here, I think it's helpful to have a general variety of timbres and playing techniques in your instrument collection so that students can learn a broader range of proper percussion playing technique and get the chance to experience using a wider variety of timbres in performance and composition. I don't think it matters as much whether you have these specific instruments in your classroom, but if you can, it's great to build up a little bit of variety over the years with whatever instruments you are able to bring into your classroom. Here are some of my favorite lesson activities that use whatever variety of instruments I have:

• Instrument Merry-Go-Round
  This is an activity I use in the younger grades especially to help students practice the names, playing techniques, and categorizations of a wide variety of instruments in a short amount of time, but I also do it with older students to review, or just as a fun way to keep students engaged on a challenging day, and they love it too! Have students sit in a circle and put an instrument in front of each student. They can all be different or you can hand out a repeating pattern of a handful of instruments (like hand drum- triangle- rhythm sticks- jingle bells, hand drum- triangle- you get the idea) depending on what you're doing. Tell students to follow your hands. Motion for them to pick up the instrument in front of them, then when you open your fist, they play, and when you close your fist, they stop. Motion for them to put the instrument down, stand up, and move around the circle to the next instrument, and continue. You can change it up by calling out the name of an instrument that should play, or calling out a category (pitched/ non-pitched, woods/ skins, etc). You can also have students follow your conducting to practice playing with different dynamics, or echo your rhythm patterns... the options are pretty much endless.
• Sound Effects
  I love exploring timbre with my younger grades by having students add sound effects to storybooks! We read the story, then I have students suggest instruments that would best match different words, pictures, or phrases in the story. I've done this with many different books- you can see some of my favorites, with all the specific lesson plans I use with them, in this post. 
• Soundscapes
  This is a great way to practice communicating a feeling or image through music in a concrete way. I split students up into small groups and either have them choose or assign them a place, emotion, etc and tell them to use instruments, voices, found sound, and body percussion to communicate that place/ emotion. At the end the class tries to guess what their music is supposed to sound like. I use this activity mostly with my middle grades to introduce the idea of using timbre and other expressive elements to communicate images and ideas.
• Foley
  I do composition units on movie music in 6th grade and video game music in 5th grade, and in both projects I ask students to add sound effects. Having lots of different interesting instrumental timbres available to them definitely helps inspire their creativity in these tasks!

I hope this post gives you some concrete ideas for how to use all the miscellaneous percussion instruments you may have in your classroom, or if you don't already, maybe inspire you to look into ways to get a few to add to your collection- most of these are fairly inexpensive and I've gotten most of mine through Amazon wishlists and donorschoose projects, so they're an easy way to add some more variety to your inventory! Of course there are so many other percussion instruments I didn't cover here that you may have in your classroom- if there are other instruments you'd like more ideas for using, please let me know in the comments!

Read more "What To Do With Those Instruments"