Elementary Music Classroom Tour 2021-22

Welcome to my socially-distanced elementary music classroom tour for the 2021-2022 school year! As frustrating as it is sometimes to still have to keep pandemic protocols in mind, I'm grateful my district does have guidelines in place to keep everyone as safe as possible, and I'm so happy to have an actual room to set up this year! Last year I was on a cart while my room was being used for cohorts, so we have taken a huge step in the right direction compared to 12 months ago.

You'll find a video tour at the bottom of this post, but first a few highlights of things that are new for this year:

1. Seating Arrangements

I have velcro strips to mark where the front of each chair should go, and dots to mark where students sit or stand on the floor, all with 3-4 foot spacing. Normally I would have chairs in rows and spots in a circle, but with the distancing protocols I had to spread out my chairs and put my floor spots in rows. I still have my 6 colors to use for student groupings though, so we're keeping the color teams (read about those here)!

2. Instruments

After having all my instruments tucked away in storage last year I'm so happy to have my instruments back out and available this year! We'll still be sanitizing between uses but with the concern for spread from surfaces lessening our district is allowing more shared supplies this year.

3. Teacher Workspace

Believe it or not I think I spent more time trying to figure out my teacher desk situation than any other part of my classroom setup this year! I'm trying to balance the need to have reduced space at the front of the room because the students are spread out, with the need for more workspace than pre-pandemic because I'll still need a second monitor for hosting zoom staff meetings. In the end I put a small desk to have some workspace while I'm actively teaching at the front of the room, and a slightly larger desk (where you see the rolling office chair and monitor) at the back of the room for meetings, planning, etc. I have a feeling I will be tweaking this again before the end of the year... we'll see how long this one lasts!

With that, here is the video tour of the entire classroom- if you have any questions about anything please leave a comment and I'll answer as best as I can!