Classroom Tour 2024-2025

I'm starting my 12th year teaching in my current elementary music classroom this week. Hard to believe I've been working in this space for this long! I love my classroom and have been slowly tweaking things every year that I've been in the room. This year is no different- here's my classroom for the 2024-2025 school year!

Let's start off with a quick spin around the room to get our bearings. Those of you who have seen my classroom in previous years, let's play a little game: can you spot the changes? 

What's new: I made 2 main changes to my classroom this year: my front wall (where my board is) and a couple of shelves in my wall of open shelving.

I have quite a few posters hanging around my front board, where I do the majority of my teaching from for 1st-6th grade: hand signals for common requests (bathroom, tissue, and this year I added water), my "respect" expectations, learning intention boards, and music concept anchor charts. All of them are visuals for things that I consider central to success in my classroom, and they are all things my students reference often. Besides adding a poster for the water signal I didn't add or remove anything, really, but over the years I have been adding to various parts of that wall and it was looking a little chaotic. I resized the posters (*cough* there's another good reason to get printable posters like mine here so you can make them whatever size you need) and lined them all up so they fit more neatly in the space and hopefully, are easier for students to look at when they need to without being too distracting. I think it made a big difference!

I also finally addressed a shelf that has been an issue for a long time on my wall of open shelving: the top right shelf gets absolutely COVERED in dust because of the air intake vent that's inside it. I don't know why I thought putting fabric puppets there was a good idea, because they were impossible to clean when they got all dusty! So I got some clear bins with lids for my scarves, stretchy band, and other movement props and put those on the dusty shelf, and moved my puppets to where the movement props were before on the top far left shelf instead. Not a big change in aesthetics, I know, but it is a big improvement in functionality! 

I also added some mini keyboards and adjusted my storage on the open shelving for those mid-year last year, which made a big difference! I started storing them vertically so they weren't sitting on top of each other and smashing the keys under them (true story). They're the green and white things in the middle shelves.

What's the same: Other than that, most of my classroom setup is basically the same! If you're wondering about anything specific in my room please leave a comment or email me and I'll be happy to share more details about anything you see. Here are a few photos from around the room to give you a closer look!

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Elementary Choir Concert Program Ideas

Choosing literature for an elementary choir concert can be very hard- I know because I go through that struggle twice a year! I don't generally feel compelled to choose songs around any sort of theme, but sometimes having a theme helps narrow the search for the perfect songs that will fit the group well but also flow well together. Here are some of my favorite elementary chorus concerts that I've programmed over the years.

I teach in a K-6 elementary school and we currently offer chorus for grades 5 and 6, but in the past I've had choirs for 3rd and 4th grade as well, so the songs I've picked are for those age groups. My chorus classes meet during the school day but it is a pull-out program that students can choose to sign up for. For each of the programs below you'll find a complete post detailing the songs I picked, which grades I used each song with, and any extra songs that I considered as well.

1. Stars

I chose a stars theme one year for our winter concert because our schoolwide PBIS program is based on the STAR acronym, but it is a lovely theme for any school and it works well for a winter concert or any time of year! 

2. Finding Myself

Coming out of the pandemic it has been more important than ever for me to choose songs that are empowering, hopeful, and positive for my choral groups, and this program was a great example of that. Besides the overt messages of being true to yourself, this program also included songs representing different cultural identities, to add to the idea of celebrating all of our identities.

3. Rhythm

This was a really fun one, and if we had been more on top of it this would have been a perfect theme to tie in with the band and orchestra as well, even just having the percussion section do something! 

Whether you use them together to create a themed program like I did, or just take one or two of the songs to add to your concert, I highly recommend all of these songs for elementary choir! If you want to read more of my teaching tips, rehearsal strategies, concert preparation, and more ideas for teaching elementary chorus, this page has a compilation of all of those posts:

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Getting In Shape for Back to School

Maybe it's because I'm getting older but... I've been thinking a lot more about taking care of myself physically this back to school season. In previous years I thought a lot about getting myself mentally/ emotionally prepared with lesson plans, organization systems at home, etc, but this year I'm trying to be more intentional about getting my body ready for going back to teaching- here's what I'm doing to get in school shape now that I'm a few weeks away from the first day of school.

1. Sing More

This is actually one thing I've done consciously for several years now but it's worth mentioning: I am intentional about singing more throughout the day as the school year approaches. I've found it helps so much with vocal stamina when I do this, and I lose my voice a lot less than I used to! Plus of course the side benefit is my improved mood from singing more :) I just turn on my favorite songs and sing along whenever I can!

2. Eat at Regular Times

One of my favorite things about summer vacation is snacking. Eating whenever I feel like it, and not having to shove food down my throat, is such a luxury! But I'm trying to get my stomach and my body used to only eating at meal times, and specifically at the meal times I have during the school year.

3. Sleep More

I tend to keep a pretty consistent sleep schedule even in the summer time so I don't have to start getting used to waking up earlier (but if you are one of those people who likes to sleep in late in the summer, I would switch my wakeup times a few weeks before to adjust), but sometimes in the summer I do stay up a little later watching a show, reading a book, or talking to a friend because I know I can sleep in- I'm trying to hold myself accountable to getting to bed like I have a full week of teaching ahead. Honestly it gives me more energy and puts me in a better mood so I can better enjoy these last few weeks of vacation anyway!

4. Exercise

This has been the most dramatic addition to my back to school preparation this year. I have never been good at motivating myself to exercise on purpose, especially during the school year, so the second half of this summer I've really tried to commit to doing at least 10-20 minutes of some type of exercise each day. What I'm realizing is that I'm going into the school year so much more in shape than I have in the past, and I really think (hope) that will help me with the exhaustion I normally feel at the beginning of the school year, even just from classroom setup!

I don't think anything on this list is revolutionary, but I hope it serves as a reminder for all of us to take care of ourselves this year! Let me know in the comments what you're doing to get yourself ready physically for the start of the school year.

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Instruments of the Orchestra

In this post, I'm compiling all of my lesson ideas, teaching strategies, and resources for teaching students about the instruments of the orchestra. If you need ideas for how to teach the instruments across all the elementary grade levels, or just looking for some new resources to add to your toolbox, you're in the right place!

Just like any other concept, I sequence my teaching of instruments- both of the western orchestra and other instruments in general- across grade levels. I start introducing a few instruments in Kindergarten, and then gradually build on that knowledge all the way through 6th grade. Check out this post for all the details on when I teach what:

A lot of the lesson activities I use for introducing students to various instruments are pretty straight-forward, but one of the concepts I find can be challenging but also important is the categories or families of instruments. Here are my top 3 lesson activities I have found most successful for teaching instrument families:

The most important resource for teaching students about instruments is high-quality performance examples where they can see and hear how the instrument works! Here are 3 posts with some of my favorites to share with my students- I try to share different ones in each grade level so they get to see a wide range:

I hope this gives you some new ideas to try in your classroom! If you have any questions or other ideas to share, please leave them in the comments. If you want to see my favorite lesson ideas and resources for other general music concepts, go to the general music concept index!

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