Top 10 Posts from 2024

I am so grateful for the opportunity to connect with other music teachers around the globe through my little corner of the internet, and it is such a good feeling when readers connect with something I've written. Each time a new calendar year rolls around, it's so fun to look back and see which of the posts I wrote the past year have been read the most! So we're looking back on 2024 today to see which posts made the top 10 list- have you seen them all?

10. Rhythm Theme Elementary Choral Program

9. Co-creating Success Criteria with Students

8. Elementary Music Classroom Student Jobs

7. آ شتا تاتا تاتا (Achtatata) :Moroccan Rain Song

6. Dance Playlist 2024

5. Learning Targets in the Music Room

4. Japanese Rain Song: あめふり (Amefuri, Ame Ame)

3. Instrument Examples to Counter Stereotypes

2. Teaching Major and Minor

1. Music In Our Schools Month® 2024: "I See Me in Music Education" Song Bracket

Thank you all for reading, interacting with, and supporting this page. Having the opportunity to interact with other music teachers, and the platform to share my thoughts and ideas, has been such an amazing creative outlet and source of encouragement for me! I can't wait to see what 2025 brings us. Happy New Year!

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Effective Lesson Plans for Difficult Days

Whether it's a specific class that is always challenging, or it's a time of year that is particularly difficult, finding lesson plans that will work for those challenging days can be a struggle. The specifics will vary depending on the exact situation and group of students, but here's what I look for when I'm planning for a lesson that I know is going to be difficult for one reason or another.

1. Less talking, more doing

The less time you're spending trying to get students to listen to you the better! Two decades in and I can still use the reminder every now and then that we DO NOT have to verbally explain nearly as much as we usually do- just jump into a song and they will follow. I look for lesson activities that don't require much explanation, whether that's something they can learn by following my movements, echoing my singing/ playing, or putting up notation on the board, pointing to the notes, and saying 1, 2, ready, go! 

2. Get out of the way

This is similar to my first point, but I try to look for activities that involve as little "follow the teacher's directions" as possible. Maybe they are following directions from a video, having a student(s) lead the activity, or working in small groups or independently. 

3. Lean into the right brain

This is especially for those times of year when everyone is a little more drained, like right before a break: I want to engage students, but not expect a lot of critical thinking. I've found that engaging their creative ideas, not their analytical thoughts, works best in those moments. It gets them cognitively engaged with a part of their brain we don't ask them to use as much at school, which feels exciting and fun.

4. One thing, a hundred ways

The most successful lesson plans in particularly challenging situations are the ones where I can read the room and instantly shift gears. If I have a group or a situation where I'm not exactly sure how they'll respond to an activity, or how quickly they will grasp a new concept, I plan several different activities to address the same concept or skill and have all of them ready. If the first one I try starts to feel like I'm pulling teeth, I can move on to something different knowing they'll still learn the same thing. It also focuses students' mental energy on one thing, so even if I do end up doing all the activities I planned it feels more manageable for students and they're more likely to be successful.

5. Play to their strengths

If I know a particular group is most successful at, or most interested in, a specific type of activity, I incorporate it as much as I can. Sometimes I have a group of students that loves to just sing. Often it's playing instruments, or especially with younger grades, it's dancing and movement. Sometimes if the group dynamics are challenging, they do best with small group and independent work. I certainly don't abandon other forms of music-making but especially if I know a new concept is going to be difficult, or I know a specific day is going to be challenging, I'll try to incorporate the ones that they're most successful with and use them to teach whatever it is I want them to learn.

I hope this helps give you some ideas of what to look for when you're dreading a particularly difficult day or specific group of students. It can make such a huge difference for both the students and for ourselves as teachers when more students are excited about the lesson and walk away feeling successful! 

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Favorite Songs for Teaching Syncopa

I love teaching the syncopated rhythm pattern eighth - quarter - eighth. It's such a fun rhythm to perform and the songs I use to introduce and practice the rhythms are some of the most fun my upper elementary students have all year! There are a lot of great songs to teach the "syncopa" rhythm pattern but today I'm sharing my top two favorite songs my 5th graders are obsessed with year after year.

Bump Up Tomato

If you aren't doing this singing game with your 5th graders yet, you are truly missing out. My students ask to play this game on almost every free choice day they earn once they've learned it in class. It never gets old! Here's a video showing the song and accompanying game:

To introduce the game, I always teach them the moves and the singing first without standing in a circle- students do the motions mirroring me- to get them used to which hand is moving on the beat and which hand stays still. Once they can do the song with the motions, we get in a circle and I explain how to do the fist bumps at the beginning with the people next to them (always adding the warning to be gentle *ahem*). Then I show them the game with me in the middle of the circle first. 

Here are the ground rules I've developed over the years to keep it fun for everyone:

• When you are in the middle, you cannot touch anyone, and anything you say and do must (obviously) be school-appropriate and respectful
• In the beginning, whoever laughs is the next person in the middle. But I keep track of who has already gone, and if the same person laughs again, I have them choose someone who hasn't gone yet to be "it" next (I do encourage everyone to do it even if they're shy, but if they are really resistant I let them pass)
• When you are frozen, if you move or make sound other than genuine laughing (fake laughing, at my discretion, counts as an "other sound" and not laughing) then you are out for the next round
• The person who is it has to see and point at someone laughing. If someone on the other side of the circle laughs while they are facing away but they stop themselves before the person in the middle turns around to see them, the round continues

After we've played the game several times we go over the syncopa rhythm and I ask them to aurally identify all the spots with that rhythm pattern.

Black Snake

This is another super fun singing game my students request over and over again, and a simpler one to start with if you're just introducing the rhythm. Here's a recording of the song, and here is a description of the game that's similar to the one I use:

The main thing I do slightly differently than this video description is I tell the running students they have to high five rather than greet each other. It may seem like a strange thing to add to the rules of the game but whether they have to greet each other or high five, having them meet in some way as they go around forces them to look for the other person and prevents people from running into each other, which would definitely happen if they didn't have to look for them.

I was a little worried to use this game in my classroom the first time I did it because there isn't a ton of space around the outside of the circle I have marked off on my floor for students to run around the outside, but it has worked just fine and nobody has gotten hurt or run into anything. It's like a big kids version of duck duck goose- they absolutely love it!

My 6th graders commented recently that 5th grade has the best singing games and I agree, largely because of these two games! The best part is by the time they've sung the songs over and over again to play the game so much, they definitely get the feeling of what the rhythm pattern sounds like, and my students consistently have no problem reading and performing the rhythm after that.

Want all the lessons like this I use to keep my 5th graders engaged while also learning at a high level, with all the visuals and materials to teach them? You'll find that in my 5th grade curriculum set!

Did you know that I have a whole resource page with general rhythm teaching strategies for different ages and specific ideas for specific rhythms like this one? If you're looking for more engaging and effective ideas for teaching other rhythms, be sure to bookmark this page:

What are your favorite songs for teaching syncopa? There are so many great ones I love to use but these are definitely my top two favorites- I'd love to hear about yours in the comments!

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Native American Heritage Month in the Music Room

In the United States, November is recognized as Native American Heritage Month. We still have a very long way to go in recognizing and responding to the treatment of Indigenous people in this country, and making sure we all find ways to give our students opportunities to learn about and celebrate the many Indigenous peoples and their cultures is one very small but critical step for us to take. Navigating how to do so respectfully and appropriately can be difficult, and I am very much still learning how to do that myself. My hope is that this post will point other elementary music teachers in the right direction to continue to do better.

1. Resources from culture bearers

One of the most difficult parts of this learning journey for me has been finding accurate and authentic resources from culture-bearers with materials that are appropriate for me, as a non-native person, to share in my classroom. Here is a collection of my favorite resources that I have found so far:

2. Current musicians

One key to making sure students understand that indigenous peoples and their cultures are very much alive, active, and modern is to introduce them to current musicians from a broad range of genres. Here is a list of some of my favorite contemporary Native American musicians, along with a song from each that is age-appropriate and engaging for elementary school:

3. Songs and lessons

If you're struggling to figure out what is appropriate for you to use in your classroom, here are a few songs that I've been told are appropriate for me to teach my students to serve as examples. I encourage you as always to seek out local culture bearers to get specific and direct insight from them on what might be best for you to use in your classroom!

I hope this gives you some helpful resources and ideas for recognizing Native American Heritage Month in your classroom! For general advice on how and why to incorporate heritage months in the elementary music classroom, you can head to this post. For ideas and resources to recognize other heritage months, including Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and more, check out this post. 

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