Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Thriving Between Spring Break and Summer
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Lesson Plans that Work Between Spring Break and Summer
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
Keeping Positive: post-spring break teaching
I'm not quite there yet but I know in many places, teachers are coming back from spring break and saying to themselves, "oh boy, hang on tight because here we go". Teaching between spring break and the end of the school year can be wild ride, and it can make you dread going to work. Here are some things I do to take control of my mood and keep myself in a positive mindset.
1. Monitor your mood
The first step I have started taking more and more consciously during stressful times of year is keeping a close eye on my own mood/ stress levels. I can't do anything well if I'm overtired, stressed, or anxious, least of all handle end of year teaching. I have a regular year-round habit of sitting with a cup of coffee in silence each morning, and this is always my time to process and gauge where my mood is as well. It's important to find ways to stay in touch with your own mental and emotional wellness regularly- if you aren't a morning person like me with the luxury of slow mornings, printing out a poster that asks, "how are you?" and putting it somewhere you'll see it every morning (in the bathroom/ on a bedside table/ in your closet), designating something you wear every day to be a mental cue to check in with yourself (I have an elastic bracelet I wear for this purpose when I know I'm stressed), or asking a trusted friend to check in with you can be good ways to keep reminding yourself to check in.
2. Identify the source
If I realize I'm feeling stressed or anxious or dreading the day in general, I try to go through the list of things I'm thinking about/ preparing to do that day to identify more specifically what it is that's causing my stress/ dread. Sometimes it's one specific class that has been difficult to manage, a lesson I've planned that I'm not sure will go over well, a particularly hectic work schedule, or something totally unrelated to teaching entirely. Identifying the source of the stress more specifically makes it more concrete, gives me more clarity on how I can address and manage it, and often makes it less overwhelming when I realize it's not my entire life I'm dreading!
3. Make a plan
It wouldn't be an "organized chaos" strategy without putting a plan in place! Once I've identified what it is that's got me in a funk, I try to think concretely about how to address it. If it's a difficult class, I come up with a strategy to help the class go better. If it's a hectic schedule, I look through my day and come up with ways to make my life easier, whether that's ordering takeout for dinner or making some of my lesson plans less complicated.
Writing it all out like this makes it seem like this is a long and involved process- it usually isn't. Because I make sure I'm monitoring myself regularly, I usually catch things before it gets too overwhelming, and it's not that hard to identify what's bothering me and come up with a solution. Oftentimes the whole thought process takes all of 2 minutes. Sometimes when things get really stressful I do have to take more time to work through the whole thought process- I might be processing what's going on and thinking through solutions the whole time I'm getting ready for work, getting the kids to school, and driving to my school. But it really does make a big difference in my effectiveness, especially this time of year!
If you're feeling like you're in the thick of it, I hope this helps you break out of the depressing "just survive until summer" mindset and find ways to get yourself in the right frame of mind to actually enjoy this time of year! I'd love to hear other things you do to make the end of the school year more enjoyable- leave a comment down below.
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
Designing a Unit on a Culture's Music
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Teaching Major and Minor
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Using Viral Songs in Elementary Music
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Accountability Without Escalation
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
3 Advocacy Resources for Music Education
It's sad that this is still something we have to fight for, especially after everyone proclaimed newfound appreciation for the arts during the pandemic, but in the United States and in many other countries around the world, music teachers are continuing to face lack of respect for music as a school subject. In honor of Music In Our Schools Month® just starting, today I want to share 3 resources to use as reference in advocating for the importance of music education.
First let me be clear: I am intentionally not calling these my 3 "favorite" or the 3 "best" resources because there are so many great ones out there. There are piles and piles of published research studies showing the positive impact of a strong music education on students and student learning that I have used over the years. Don't miss those if you have access to educational research journals etc to look for specific articles and studies! But these are some more general resources, most that have many different specific resources that can be used as effective advocacy tools and references, and are available online to anyone without an account, so they are good ones to keep bookmarked and are my current first stops when I'm looking for material.
1. NAfME
Obviously one of the primary purposes of the National Association for Music Education is to advocate for the importance of music education in the United States, so they are a good starting point for advocacy references, especially in the US. Some of my most commonly referenced resources in recent years have been the Opportunity to Learn Standards, and their publications on Title-IV-A funding, but there are lots of other excellent resources that can help you navigate and leverage current legislation at the federal and state level on their advocacy page.
2. Bigger Better Brains
This is an Australian-based organization but they have done an amazing job compiling, and keeping up with, current research on music education specifically. Their whole site is worth exploring, but their page on research updates, which you can scroll through to see the latest updates and search by specific topics, and their social media (I follow their facebook page), where they post shareable, high-impact advocacy graphics (if you're a music teacher on social media you probably saw some of their graphics getting passed around in the last couple of years, like the "this is not a (fill in instrument name)" series) are my top 2 go-to sources for reference material.
3. John Hattie
I am assuming this will be the least-known resource for music education advocacy material within music teacher circles, and he has far fewer resources specific to music education advocacy than the first 2 I've mentioned (especially available free online), but I am incredibly excited to have come across his materials this school year and really want more music teachers to know about him and take advantage of his content! If you haven't heard his name before, John Hattie is the person who wrote "Visible Learning" (and its sequels/ companions), a synthesis of thousands of meta-studies, that has become one of the primary resources school leaders reference for best practices and school improvement. I guarantee most administrators today know who he is or are at least familiar with the findings from his publications. What many people don't know, though, is that he started as a music teacher! Because he is so widely known and respected in the broader field of education and educational leadership, I think it is so powerful to be able to reference him and his research to advocate for music education specifically. He has several research articles on music education- most you need an account for- but the one thing I love sharing most as a "sound bite" is this video where he is responding to the question a school principal asked about the effect of music, art, and physical activity on student learning:
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Co-creating Success Criteria with Students
There has been research published in recent years that shows that students learn better when they know what they're supposed to be learning, and have a clear understanding of what successful demonstration of learning looks like: knowing the learning target and the success criteria. School leaders, including in my district, have started requiring all teachers to post written learning targets and success criteria, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who didn't get clear guidance on how to do it effectively, especially in the elementary music classroom. I shared some general things I've learned about how to share learning targets effectively in this previous post, and today I want to focus more closely on one of those points: co-creating success criteria with students.
First a little background knowledge: learning intentions (or "learning targets" as many have come to refer to them) are the "this is what we're learning about today"s. The success criteria are the "this is how we'll know / show we've learned what we were supposed to learn"s. Whether you are being asked to explicitly state and/or write them for every lesson, if you have a solid understanding of your curriculum then you probably could pretty easily identify what the learning intention and success criteria are for any given lesson. For example, today my second graders are learning about the 4 orchestral instrument families, and when they can accurately name the 4 families when they see pictures of each group of instruments, and describe the characteristics of each family, they will have learned what they were supposed to learn in that lesson.
One of the key points that I learned from my deep dive into educational research on the topic of learning intentions (particularly from this book) is the importance of developing success criteria together with your students. When I was first reading about this idea my reaction was, "they want me to do WHAT?" (insert eye roll here). It sounded cumbersome, time-consuming, and not realistic for actual classroom teaching, particularly elementary school and especially music. But the more I read and started to wrap my head around what they were saying, the more I realized I was actually already doing this a lot- sometimes verbally and sometimes written- and had been for years.
All we're saying is that, instead of pre-writing success criteria up on the board and telling students what they should do by the end of the lesson, we review prior learning and guide students to be able to describe a concept or how to do a task correctly together through discussion as a way to check for understanding and serve as another way for students to grasp the concept further. So I put dry erase frames to write my learning intentions with success criteria the district-mandated way at the front of the room but down low, where it was out of the way but still visible:
Then I added a whiteboard I already had on-hand to the wall in a more prominent spot right by where I teach, more at eye-level for the students, to write the *actual* success criteria/ lesson intention as we go throughout the lesson (I figure if I decide to stick with this formula, which I think I will, then I'll order something bigger to keep in the front of the room for this purpose- this is a little small obviously but it does the job for now):
The lightbulb moment for me was when I was doing a 5th grade composition lesson. At the beginning of class I explained the composition task: writing a 2-measure minor melody in 4/4 time on the treble clef staff. Then I asked students to point out what they needed to remember in order to write a good melody. They recalled using la as the starting and ending note, pointed out the pitch bank they had on the sheet that showed which pitches they should use in their melody, and said they needed 4 beats in each measure. As we discussed, I wrote each item on the whiteboard. Ta-da! We co-created our success criteria, and now they were ready to do their composition and understood what to do! At the end of the assignment I referred back to our list and they checked their work to make sure they had done everything successfully before turning it in.
Once I saw how this process could work seamlessly with the way I already teach (while taking it a step further in being more conscious about pointing out the success criteria and writing it for students to see), it became much easier to see how this could work with other elementary music lessons. Another example would be a lesson where I'm introducing 2nd graders to half notes for the first time. At the beginning of the lesson I told them they were going to learn a new rhythm today, and by the end of the lesson they should be able to tell me what it is and show me how to clap and say it. I just wrote "new note" on the board and left the rest blank. Once they learned the song that had half notes in it, instead of me having to tell them to listen for a new rhythm they didn't know yet, they immediately told me they knew what the mystery note was: it was those long notes! I showed them what a half note looked like, they figured out it was 2 beats by clapping the rhythm of the song while walking on the beat, and then I asked them what I should write on the board for the new note and they were able to tell me easily. Telling them at the beginning that they were learning a new note, and writing that on the board, had their brains looking for an unfamiliar rhythm from the beginning and they grasped the concept faster.
If you are in a school or district that is asking teachers to share success criteria with students, I hope this helps give you some more concrete direction on how to do so effectively in an elementary music setting. And if you aren't being asked to share success criteria, I hope you'll consider implementing this strategy in some lessons when it makes sense and see how it goes- I think you will notice a difference! Another key, related point worth mentioning is that not every lesson should have success criteria. If you have the freedom to do so, only use this when it makes sense- don't feel compelled to do it every time.
What questions do you have about success criteria in elementary music? What strategies have you been using in your classroom? I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions in the comments.
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Learning Targets in the Music Room
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
Accountability Without Power Struggles
Tuesday, February 6, 2024
Teaching Older Beginners
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Managing Centers in Elementary Music
I love using centers in my elementary music classroom but it took me a while to figure out how to run them efficiently and effectively in my short, 30-minute class periods. Now they run like clockwork! Here's how I manage the logistics of centers to keep them running smoothly.
1. Group size
I've found groups of around 4 students to be the ideal size for making it realistic for everyone to feel like they had a turn but also having the critical mass to make it feel like a fun group activity. I determine the number of centers I'm going to have based on how many total students I have in the class so they will be split up into groups of around that number.
2. Setup
I keep materials for all of my favorite center activities easily accessible and put together so I can quickly pull out the ones I want. Before class I try to think through the best locations to put each station around the room so that the ones where students will want to be able to hear themselves the most are next to quieter ones. I don't set out the center materials in their planned locations beforehand though- I've found it works best to have everything ready at the front of the room, and at the beginning of class, quickly explain/ review each center activity with students from the front of the room, and then place the materials out in their assigned locations around the room as I go, so students can see everything and hear the explanations more easily.
Once I explain and show what they are doing at each center, I number off the students (based on the number of centers I have) and then tell each number group where to go for their first center. I tell them they should start right away when they get to their station, warning them that each rotation will be quick, and tell them that when the lights turn off they need to stop and clean up immediately without going to another station.
3. Running the centers time
I rarely, especially in the younger grades, create a station that requires my ongoing presence. I try to make them all self-managed so I can circulate, monitor, and keep my focus on managing any group dynamic issues rather than running the activities themselves. For any centers that require students to take turns, I try to keep an eye on who has had a turn and, if I reasonably can, make sure everyone gets a turn before I tell them to stop.
When I decide it's almost time to switch, I give students a 1 minute warning so they know they need to wrap up what they're doing, then I turn off the lights when it's time to finish. I always make sure every station is put back the way it was before I tell them, with the lights still off, where they will be going next, reminding them not to move until the lights turn on. Then I make sure they know they have to walk (or else they will have to go back and try again), and turn the lights on so they can all move at once to their next center. I always try to leave a few extra minutes at the end of class to have students bring the materials back to the front of the room and line up the same way we normally do.
4. Logging
Since each class only does centers a few times each school year, it has been really helpful for me to keep track of which center activities they do each time. Each time they do centers I keep most of the activities the same to cut down on the explanation time but I always make sure to include one or two new ones to keep it interesting.
5. Center activities
I have tried a lot of different center activities and I do like to change them up, but I do have some standard centers that I do in almost every grade, pretty much every time (each class usually does centers around 3 times a year, so not very often):
Grades 1-6
-Instrument dice (roll 2 dice, one with instrument names and one with 4 beat rhythm patterns, then play the rhythm they roll on the instrument they roll)
-Chromebooks (chrome music lab, note letter name games, groove pizza, mario paint, incredibox, etc)
-Instrument exploration (I pick one instrument they don't get to have "free play" time with often- keyboards, ukuleles, glockenspiels, collection of unusual small percussion)
-Kaboom rhythms (draw a popsicle stick out of a jar and clap the rhythm on it correctly for a point, but if you get a "kaboom" stick you lose all your points)
Grades 1-3
-Reading (I have a bookshelf with music-related books and old music express magazines)
-Rapping (one person picks out different mini erasers and lines them up, the rest of the group "raps" the sequence by saying the name of each mini eraser shape on the beat)
Grades 4-6
-Truth or dare (choose to take one card from either the truth deck or the dare deck- truths are music facts/ questions, dares are music tasks- here are the printable cards I use)
Those are the ones I use most regularly but there are tons of others I use that my students and I love- you can find lots more center activity ideas (and more detailed explanations for the ones mentioned here) in these previous blog posts:
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Music In Our Schools Month® 2024: "I See Me in Music Education" Song Bracket
3/4 I Am Me by Willow Smith vs I Don’t Know My Name by Grace VanderWaal
3/5 That’s OK by D.O vs Be Yourself by GoodLuck and Boris Smith
3/6 Man In the Mirror by Michael Jackson vs My Way by Frank Sinatra
3/7 By Myself by Alvin Garrett vs Who I Am by Alan Walker, Putri Ariani, & Peter Elias
3/8 Tomorrow (A Better You, Better Me) by Quincy Jones vs Greatest Love of All by Whitney Houston
3/11 Brave by Sara Bareilles vs Broken & Beautiful by Kelly Clarkson
3/12 Будь Собой by Ната Волкова vs Se Tu Misma by Da Ink
3/13 Who I Am by Wyn Starks vs Bet On Me by Walk Off the Earth
3/14 Within You Without You by the Beatles vs True Colors by Cyndi Lauper
3/15 Video by India Arie vs Whatever by Oasis
3/18 Just the Way You Are by Bruno Mars vs The Way I Am by Charlie Puth