First Day of Music Lesson Ideas: 2021 edition

It's hard to believe but here we are again, facing the start of a school year with so much uncertainty. Although the pandemic continues to impact schools, I am hoping for some degree of a return to pre-pandemic teaching this fall! Here's what I'm currently planning for the beginning of this school year.

First I should note that as of now, my district is hoping to return to full-time in-person learning with no distance learners, everyone masked and at least 3 feet distanced. We're also hoping to have singing and wind instrument playing with masks and bell covers, and the ability to share supplies, and I'm expecting to be back teaching in my music room. So while we will certainly not be back to completely normal protocols, we will hopefully be a lot closer than we were a year ago! 

With that said, the basic idea of what I plan to do will be the same as my pre-pandemic lessons, which you can read about in detail in this post:

I explain each of these in more detail in the post above, but the basic idea is to introduce students to what music class will be like- what kinds of things we'll be doing, and how we will run the class- by actually trying it out rather than me lecturing them about it. The basic outline is 1) go over names and assigned seats, 2) tour the classroom, and 3) practice procedures and expectations by doing several short activities that include the most important areas of activities and procedures we'll be using in class. 

This year the main changes I'll be making will be to 1) incorporate practice of covid protocols and 2) slow down the pace. The addition of covid protocols obviously will involve going over procedures for masks and social distancing, and any additional considerations for singing and instruments, which I will build into my usual beginning of the year activities like singing and echoing rhythms on instruments. The second point, though, is an important one: I want to be conscious about easing back into the school year gracefully and being mindful of energy levels with masks on.

With everything we've been through over the course of the pandemic, I know my students get tired (both emotionally and physically) more quickly than they did pre-pandemic. And after a summer of being able to play outside with friends, often without masks, for the first time in over a year, coming back into the school building and being fully masked all day is surely not going to be everyone's favorite thing. So while kids are still kids and I do still want to keep things active and lively, I'm also planning to take more time to let students talk, slow down a little to make sure everyone knows what they're doing before jumping into the next thing, and set my expectations ahead of time to take at least 2 class periods to do what I used to do in one. I also have to remember that many students have not set foot in my classroom in over a year, and even the ones who were in person last spring will have new procedures to learn, so things will take much longer to learn (especially for the older students)!

Those are my plans for kicking off the school year this year- for anyone who may be starting their year on a cart, or teaching online synchronously or asynchronously, my first day lessons from last year include ideas for all of those scenarios: