Making the Most of What You Have

With public school budgets, and music program budgets in particular, continuing to get tighter and tighter, it is so important to be able to make the most of the instruments, equipment, and supplies that we have in our elementary music classrooms. Whether you've got an instrument or item that you inherited from a previous teacher that you don't know how to use in your lessons, or you're looking for fresh ways to use what you have, here are all my lesson ideas to stretch your instruments and supplies to use with a broader range of grade levels, organization and management tips to help make it easier to use those things you were too afraid to give your students, and creative ways to use what you have in ways you may not have thought of before.

I've written quite a few posts over the last year or so with all of my best management and organization tips and tons of lesson ideas and teaching strategies for using various items that are commonly found in many elementary music classrooms, and if and when I write new posts for this series I will add them here, so bookmark this page and let me know in the comments which instruments or supplies you need more ideas for how to use better in your teaching!

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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!

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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:

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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!

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