What To Do with an Idea

There are so many fantastic music teachers out there that share wonderful lesson ideas through publications, presentations, social media, blogs, and more, but what do you do with those great ideas when you learn about them? I remember going to music teacher conferences as a new teacher and coming back so inspired by the sessions I attended, my hands full of session notes and materials, and then setting that stack of papers on my desk to go through later and never touching them again. Or if I did actually try an idea, somehow it often didn't work nearly as well in my classroom as I envisioned it when I saw someone else do it. Here's how I think through whether a lesson idea is actually worth saving, and then what I do with the idea to make sure I actually end up using it in a way that is most likely to be effective when I apply it to my own setting.

1. Identify the purpose

There must be thousands, maybe even millions, of great lesson ideas out there that were engaging and effective for the person who shared the idea, but that doesn't mean it's going to be effective for me and my students in my setting. The first thought I automatically have when I see an idea is, "what concept or skill could this teach?". 

If I can't identify what skill or concept the lesson activity would teach, I think about whether it serves any other purposes: maybe it's a good attention-getter or time-filler I should add to my list of "keep it in my back pocket for when I need it on the fly" activities. Maybe it's a really fun way for a certain age group to explore music that I should plan to use for a reward day, at the very end or beginning of the school year, or on a weird schedule day when I need to do something different with one class in a grade level. Otherwise, I set it aside. There are plenty of other great lesson ideas out there that can serve a specific purpose that my students need!

2. Identify the conditions for success

If I can identify the skill or concept the lesson activity would teach, I also think about what the teacher or author did to make the lesson activity successful. What materials, instruments, classroom setup, lesson length, and other conditions were in place for this teacher, and if mine are different, will that impact the success of the lesson activity? What kinds of backgrounds are represented by the students and the teacher in the lesson, and who is in my classroom? Sometimes a lesson that was magic for one teacher won't work for me. Other times I may see a lesson modeled by someone with very different circumstances from my own and think, "that will never work for me", but when I stop and think through what made the lesson successful, I realize those differences probably won't affect the outcome, or I'm able to find ways I can adapt it to make it work for me.

3. Find its place

If I think through all of that and decide the lesson idea is worth keeping and using in my teaching, the next step is to find where in the school year, and with which grade level, I teach those skills and concepts. For me that part is easy because I already have the whole year outlined by skills and concepts for each month for every grade (if you want to see how I wrote all of that myself read this post, or get all of my K-6 yearly outlines in this set). If you don't have that all written out anywhere, start now! Make (or copy from someone else) a quick list of the major skills and concepts you're going to teach in each grade, and think through when in the school year you might teach the specific ones the new lesson idea would address. 

This is where I think having a place to "brain dump" ideas to cover a specific skill or concept in a specific month with a specific grade level is so useful. I keep a google doc for each month by grade and just jot down (or link if it's online) the lesson ideas as I come across them in the corresponding document. That way when I'm lesson planning for that month, I remember all the ideas I have for teaching what I want to teach! I suppose you could do it offline as well by setting up folders for each month/ grade and accomplish the same thing. The point is you need a method for organizing lesson ideas by month/ grade based on your yearly outline of the skills and concepts you're going to teach that month with that grade. You can see a free sample of what my monthly documents look like in this September set for 5th grade.

Just like concrete objects that you want to keep organized, you have to make sure you have a place for everything, and put everything in its place! If you find a new lesson idea you want to use and use effectively, take the time to find the best place for it in your curriculum and save it there so you'll remember it when you need it.

4. Choose Wisely

Once I save my lesson ideas in the right place in my curriculum, I have it exactly where I need it to use it in the most effective way possible when the time comes. But I always keep in mind, as I start collecting more and more great lesson ideas, that I have very limited class time to teach what I want to teach. As I'm planning my lessons each week, I weigh all of the options for how I can teach the skill or concept I'm working on and choose the one that I think will work best for the specific students I have that year with the specific circumstances I am working with that year (time constraints, changes in available materials, scheduling, etc). Every decision to add a new lesson activity is a decision to take something else out, so I'm always making sure, whenever I make changes, that I'm not losing something else important in the big picture of student learning by adding a new lesson in. Sometimes I have too many ideas and that's ok, that's when I need to step back and look at the big picture of what students need to know and be able to do by the end of the year, and make sure students have enough time with each of those things to accomplish that.

I know it can be overwhelming sometimes seeing so many great ideas being shared and not knowing how to use them in a way that actually makes sense- I hope this helps give you a framework for how to sift through everything and actually use the ones that will add value to your curriculum! If you don't have an organized, sequenced curriculum that will allow you to adjust and add ideas as you go like this, I highly recommend checking out the Organized Chaos K-6 Music Curriculum that includes everything I use in my own teaching.

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"Tutuca" Upper Elementary Hand Clapping Game

I recently came across a Spanish language hand clapping game that I can't wait to add to my lessons on improvisation with my middle and upper elementary grade students! It can often be much more difficult to get older students to improvise because they are so much more self-conscious, and games like this make it so much easier to get students improvising, and with this age group challenging games of concentration are always a hit! This could be a great activity to get everyone focused, or as a sort of team-building activity to get everyone listening attentively for a choir rehearsal etc as well!

The game is from an Argentinian group called Pim Pau, and it's called "Tutuca". Here's their demonstration video:

Essentially there are 4 words that each have an assigned motion to go with them. Players take turns saying a series of one or more of those 4 words, and then everyone has to repeat the phrase back with the correct motions while staying on the beat. If you mess up you're out!

The 4 words are all Argentinian foods, which I think my older students will enjoy learning about: tutuca is a puffed corn snack (learn more about it in this video), chipá is a cheesy bread (here's a quick recipe video), pororó is popcorn, and mate is a traditional tea made from mate leaves ("con" means "with").

For my purposes, I would make one small adjustment to say when students are making up their patterns, they should always do 4 beats, even if one of those beats is a rest, so the group is always counting 4 beats to know when to echo.

I will be using this game as a lead-in to my lessons on improvisation as part of the unit I teach on jazz in 6th grade. I plan to start by introducing students to the 4 different snacks by showing them pictures/ videos, then having them learn the motions associated with each word by saying the word and having them do the motion as quickly as they can. Once they can do that, I'll have them pat the beat on their legs and practice copying the patterns I make with motions. Once they can do that, I'll have students take turns making up the patterns for the class to echo, while still patting the beat on their legs. If there's time the final step would be to get in a circle and add the hand clapping on the beat, but honestly that may be a layer of complication that's not worth adding for the purpose of focusing on improvising patterns using the words.

Depending on how much time you can devote to these lessons, this could be transferred to instruments in a couple of ways: if students are working towards pitched improvisation like my 6th graders, each word could be assigned to chord tone on the xylophone for the group to echo back patterns students improvise, or if not, each word could be assigned to a percussion instrument, you can split up the class into 4 groups and give each student one of those instruments, and then students echo the patterns on those instruments.

I'm always looking for ways to get my older students focused and working together, and playfully improvising without feeling self-conscious, so I'm excited to add this to my repertoire! Have you ever heard of this game before? What other hand clapping games do you use with your older students? I have seen my students playing a game called "Tarzan the Monkey Man" that makes me cringe a little every time I hear it, so I'm also secretly hoping this one will catch on enough to replace that!

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Lesson Activities for Teaching Basslines

As part of learning bass clef letter names, I teach my 6th graders about basslines. They explore the role and importance of bass lines in music, perform and create basslines, and explore instruments that play basslines in different musical genres. This is a great way to not only give some context for learning bass clef but also explore basic harmony. Here are some of my favorite resources and lesson activities for teaching basslines.

It can be difficult to get students to understand the concept of a bassline when they are so used to listening to and performing melodies. One of the first things I do after introducing and practicing bass clef letter names is have them watch this video that visualizes the bassline in "Ain't No Mountain". It is SUCH a great way to help students to identify where the bassline is aurally when they aren't used to listening for it!

Next, to get them to experience and think more about the role the bassline plays in the overall piece, I have them listen to a song where the bassline comes in partway through the song and ask them to raise their hand when they hear the bassline come in (depending on the song it's often important to clarify that we're not listening for the chords/ harmony played by the guitar/ keyboard/ etc, but specifically the bassline- usually the electric bass). I've used different examples for this over the years, but the one I used last year and this year is The Scientist by Coldplay. 

Once they've practiced identifying the bassline and hearing the difference it makes when the bass comes in, we listen to September by Earth Wind and Fire with the bass part removed and then the original with bass, and we have a discussion about the role of the bassline in music in general. I sometimes show excerpts from this video to help concisely explain the importance of the bassline in music.

Then it's time to try playing a bassline! First we start with an easy chord progression where they can just play the root of the chord- you can actually use any ukulele/ guitar chord play-along for this, and just tell students to read the letter name at the beginning of the chord and ignore the little m's, 7's etc, but this year I used a guitar tab play-along video for Beat It by Michael Jackson. I usually do this with boomwhackers and use octavator caps to get the lower octave, but if your students are familiar enough with the keys, keyboards/ pianos would be a good way to have everyone play the whole bassline.

Once they try an easy one we talk a little about how most of the cool and interesting basslines don't just play one note for each measure- they do interesting things that make it an actual bass LINE! Then we try playing a basic walking bass line on boomwhackers with this play-along video, which is much more challenging but still attainable.

I also have students explore the many different instruments that perform the basslines in different genres by showing them some short video clips of live performances in different styles and asking them to identify who was performing the bass. I start this lesson by showing them my favorite electric bass solo of all time- Amazing Grace by Victor Wooten- and discuss basic and extended playing techniques they observe for the electric bass. After that I use different examples depending on the year, but this year since I taught these lessons during Hispanic Heritage Month I included this example of Five Beat Mambo by Tito Puente (this was the first one I showed them- it should be pretty easy to pick out the bass player since the rest are percussion!), and this performance of La Cigarra performed by Mariachi Flor de Toloache. I always include a singing example as well- a looped video like many creators post on social media is great because many of my students are familiar with the style of video and you can hear each part individually, like this one of the Grace Kelly trend from a few years ago.

The last part of these lessons, which actually comes up several weeks after the rest of the lesson activities, is creating their own basslines. After studying bass we move on first to learning about chords, and learn how to play some basic chords on ukulele, and then students create a chord progression to play on the ukulele. Then we come back to the idea of basslines by identifying the chord tones for each chord and using those chord tones to create and notate in bass clef a bassline. I have students put the notes they choose into Song Maker in Chrome Music Lab so they can add a percussion part and adjust the speed to play their chords along with the bassline/ percussion! I have all of the worksheets, teaching visuals, and lesson plans for this whole chord composition project in this set if you want to try this with your students.

I hope this gives you some fresh ideas to use with your older elementary and middle school students to learn about basslines! I think it's so important to contextualize anything students are learning, so if you teach bass clef, I highly recommend adding some or all of these lesson activities to the same grade's curriculum so they can understand the purpose of the lower register notes in different musical styles. You can find all of the lesson plans and materials for these lessons included in the 6th grade Organized Chaos curriculum as well!

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Sports in the Music Room

For some reason sports and music are often treated like opposites- people assume you're either athletic or artsy- but we all know that's not true! Helping to counteract stereotypes and give all students a sense of musical identity and belonging in the music room by incorporating other parts of their identities and interests into what we do is such an important part of an elementary music teacher's job. One way to do that is by incorporating sports themes into our lesson content so that students who are interested in sports have more opportunities to connect. Here are some of my favorite ways to do that with different specific sports.

I've written separate blog posts for each specific sport linked below, so click on each image to read those posts and get tons of different simple, concrete ways to incorporate that sport into whatever you're teaching at any elementary grade level. I will definitely be adding more to this list so stay tuned and I'll update this page as more posts are added!

What other ways have you incorporated sports into your music lessons? Are there other specific sports your students are into that you need help coming up with lesson ideas for? Leave your questions and ideas in the comments below!

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Basketball Themed Elementary Music Lessons

One of the most popular sports with my students is basketball. I love having different lesson activities prepared that address different skills and concepts I'm teaching with themes that will get students hooked, so today I'm sharing a collection of lesson ideas that tie into the theme of basketball. This would be perfect to incorporate during basketball season, especially March Madness, but really they are a great way to make a lesson more fun any time of year!

1. Space Jam

Maybe I'm showing my age here but when I think of basketball music I think of Space Jam. The theme song from the original movie Space Jam is a great track for having students practice steady beat movements- have students take turns choosing a basketball move to do on the beat for everyone to copy! It's also a good tempo for reading and performing basic rhythms- write a few measures of rhythms they're learning on the board and have them practice playing them on instruments with the track. For shorter note durations like sixteenth notes, We Win from Space Jam 2 has a slower tempo that works well for the same activity.

Another track from Space Jam 2 that I love using in my lessons is Crowd Go Crazy- this is another one that can work well if you need something with a slower tempo, but I especially like it as an example of high do. The main line in the chorus has a very clear octave jump that repeats multiple times so it's a great one to have students sing and identify the note.

2. Basketball Percussion Composition

While we're on the topic of basketball-related movie soundtracks, the beginning of the music video for Get'cha Head in the Game from High School Musical is a great, quick example of using basketballs as percussion instruments to perform rhythm patterns. Another great example I love showing my students is this video the Harlem Globetrotters did with STOMP. After showing them an example or two to get the idea, have students create their own rhythm composition just using basketballs! You can use this lesson activity to incorporate a variety of different concepts students may be working on by giving them specific parameters for the composition, whether that's telling them to include ostinati, specific rhythms, or even specific expressive elements like dynamics or tempi, and it's a great way to have students practice notating those by having them find simplified ways to record their compositions.

3. Basketball Routines

I'm sure many of you have seen the basketball routines and play-along's before, but this is an easy activity to throw in to get students moving, practice rhythms, get them to internalize the pulse, and give students some ideas of moves they can do before having them do a composition activity like described above. This play-along with Ho Hey is a clear, easy one to start with, this one with Natural includes whole notes and half rests with some more different kinds of moves, and other routines like this one for In the Wild are a good way to review note names and durations with more advanced routines for older students. There are plenty of other videos like these to use for this!

4. March Madness-Style Song Bracket

For March Madness specifically, my absolute favorite idea is to do a bracket of songs. Because March Madness happens during  Music In Our Schools Month®, I love to do a bracket based around the NAfME theme for MIOSM that year, and I have students vote in their homerooms every day for the whole month of March. You can see all of the brackets I've done over the years in this post, and see how I run it in this post. I love doing this each year because it introduces students to a wide range of songs including songs from different genres and time periods, in different languages, and from different cultures.

I hope this gives you some fresh ideas for incorporating a basketball theme into your elementary music lessons for all different grades, no matter what you may be teaching! It's fun to tie in different student interests to get students excited and help everyone feel like their personality and interests are recognized and included. If you're looking for more sports related lesson ideas, I've also written posts on incorporating baseball, American football, soccer, and ice skating! What other sports do your students get excited about? What other sports themed lesson ideas have your students loved? I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments.

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Elementary Music Classroom Tour 2026-2027

My elementary general music classroom has had pretty much the same setup (other than covid) for at least a decade now, but this year I had to make some dramatic changes because the screen that I teach from is now on the opposite side of the room! It has honestly been fun to be able to rethink my setup so I'm excited to share a bit more detail about my classroom space than I have been the last few years.

First here is a quick spin around the room to get the lay of the land:

If you want to hear my talk through all of the elements of my classroom in video form, here is a video tour of the entire space with more explanations of each area- I've also written out some of the highlights with photos below if you'd rather read than watch as well.

Here's the view of the room when you first walk in the door:

To the left of the door as you walk in, I've added a small plastic shelving unit next to the ukuleles. I was primarily needing a place on this wall to keep the tissue box and hand sanitizer, but I'm excited to now have some shelves where students can drop their hoodies, water bottles, and other belongings instead of having to put them on the floor! I got 2 of these shelves from Walmart and combined them so I could have 4 shelves instead of 3, and then used the other 2 next to my teacher desk (which you can see in the photo above). The shelving unit also comes with wheels, actually, but I wanted them to be stationary so I just left the wheels off.

This was sortof a "why didn't I do this sooner?!?" moments but I also moved the 2 tracking sheets for keeping track of when the classroom jobs rotate through the color team groups they sit in and when classes get to the top of the black, white, or all piano keys in the classroom management point system, onto the same magnet board where I have the jobs and the piano keys themselves. You can see what my board used to look like, and read about how I made the board itself, in this post. I now have my Kindergarten illustrated learning objectives next to the magnet board as well.

Next to the ukuleles I have the table students use as a writing surface when we're doing a writing activity, with 2 different calming corners on either side. The table also holds caddies of supplies like dry erase markers, colored pencils, and crayons organized by color team. I used to have just one calming corner but I wanted to split the books up into two crates to make them easier to get in and out, and I realized I could set up two spaces for those times when two different students need to separate and take a minute to get themselves together. I also have some posters with different coping strategies and breathing guides, and for the side with the books for older readers I also have a bin with some notecards and pencils so students can write down what's going on when I can't have a private conversation right away, and both sides also have noise canceling headphones that students can use while they're there or grab them to use during class if they need them. You can read about how I incorporated noise canceling headphones for the first time last year as a tool for students who need them in this post.

Next to that is my main classroom seating for 1st-6th grade (Kindergarten mostly sits on the floor). I have the giant grade level expectations posters on the wall behind the chairs, and the chairs are organized in 6 rows of 4 chairs each, marked with colored duct tape on the floor to group them into "color teams" which I use for everything from organizing writing supplies to assigning classroom jobs. 

At the front of the room I have my electric piano and next to that, a table with a rainbow table skirt around it so I can hide the two bass xylophones I have stored underneath. Above that table are the world map and elements of music anchor charts, and next to that are the hand signal posters for water/ bathroom/ tissue on the left side of the screen. On the other side of the screen are the picture frames for each grade where I write the learning objectives for that day's lesson, and the dry erase board underneath that I use for writing the student-generated success criteria as I go through the lesson. Next to that are the "respect" posters and "MUSIC" letter board that I use to keep track of class points, with my music stand that serves as my command center in front of those. 

Next to that is my giant blue chalkboard wall :) I have my solfege posters on the pillar to the left of the wall, and my instruments of the orchestra posters above it. I have a black rolling cart with clipboards, pencils, and erasers, plus bins to keep any manipulatives or other small group supplies I need for that day's lessons, organized by color team, and the bass drum for band class tucked behind the rolling whiteboard. The clear bins on the floor hold my emergency sub plans, and my teacher toolbox is on top of the piano. Next to the piano I have a rolling rainbow drawer set with one drawer for each grade to keep my master copies and any student work or forms they turn in, Next to that is my small teacher work area, and then the boomwhackers are hung on the wall next to that. 

The open shelving wall has hardly changed at all! The only thing I really changed was the labels on the shelves where I write the names of the instruments so that students can get things more independently- you can see a closeup of those in the video tour above but they are just address label stickers. Kindergarten sits on the circle spots you see on the floor on this side of the room, and I use the same spots whenever we are doing a circle activity with the older grades as well- because they have the same 6 colors I can easily have students find a spot that matches their color team to give them some choice without as much arguing over who will stand where.

So that's it! It has been a long time since I wrote a post this long but I hope I've included all the information you may be curious to hear about. If there's anything I didn't cover or that you want to know more about, though, please leave a comment below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. If you want to use the same rainbow patterns posters that I have in my classroom, you can get printable files for those here. 

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"Together" Theme Elementary Choral Program

For this year's elementary choir winter concert, I've chosen songs with the theme of togetherness. This is a great theme because there are so many possibilities, and it can work well any time of year, plus it is such a great message! I'm really excited about the songs I've picked and they have been great for teaching a range of skills and incorporating a variety of genres and styles, plus I thought I would also share the other songs I considered that could also work well with this theme depending on the performance and students you're working with. 

This year my choir rehearsals are at the end of the day (which hasn't happened in over a decade and I know is going to make rehearsals more challenging), and my 5th and 6th grades are smaller groups, so I'm trying to keep the songs a little less challenging than what I normally take on while still making sure I'm choosing pieces that will help students learn the specific choral skills I'm targeting. Here are the songs I've selected for our winter concert:

Peace Between I found this piece when I was looking for a choral octavo with partner singing and fell in love! It has 3 different verses that get layered together, each in a different language (Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin), with classic texts about peace and unity. I was only able to find an arrangement for mixed chorus but I think it will sound just as good if I have my students sing the one bass clef part up an octave. It has an accompaniment part but I'm actually thinking of doing it a cappella. 

Where We Come From As soon as I found the first song I knew I wanted to do this one to connect to the theme of togetherness. I'm adding an upper parallel harmony for the chorus, and then doing the first half of each verse as solos (probably having students take turns singing 1-2 lines each). The second half of each verse is repeated (where he sings "I done seen things") so we'll do that part in unison each time.

Whatever Walk Off the Earth is one of my go-to artists for pop songs I can arrange for my elementary chorus, and I've had this one saved for a while now. I usually have students sing at least some of the verses as solos when I do pop songs but since I'll have quite a few solos in the other song and the lyrics are easy enough to memorize in this one, I'm planning to do all of the verses in unison. I'll add an upper parallel harmony for the chorus (except for the "when you're with me.." and "bum ba dum" lines that jump around a lot, which we'll sing in unison), and have them do the last part as a partner song with one part singing "bum ba dum" while the other part sings the main lyrics.

Those are the 3 songs I'm planning to do but there were a few others that I strongly considered that I still think would be great options to go with this theme! I was originally thinking about doing a Michael Jackson song because the students have been so interested in his music since the recent movie came out, and We Are the World would go perfectly with this theme. Another Walk Off the Earth song that works well with this theme is I'll Be There- I've done this with my choir before and the students loved it. And it's a bit of a stretch but I really did think about using one of my favorite elementary choir songs, I Bought Me a Cat, with this program as well. Because it adds animals throughout the song it could work with the theme of togetherness, and it's just such a fun song to do! I honestly decided with the other songs we were doing, this one would be too much to learn in time for the winter concert.

I used to say I'm not a concert theme person but after doing 4 themed concerts in the last few years I don't think I can say that anymore! I still think that finding good songs the students will love that incorporate the choral and vocal skills I want to teach them with a variety of genres, styles, tonalities, and languages is the highest priority for selecting elementary choir concert pieces, but when a theme naturally emerges in the process that is a cool bonus! You can see all of the themed elementary choral programs I've put together in this post if you're looking for more great theme ideas:

And if you want to see all of my posts related to teaching elementary choir, from rehearsal techniques to my favorite songs, arranging pieces for elementary choir to my favorite warmups, you can see them all here.

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Making the Most of What You Have

With public school budgets, and music program budgets in particular, continuing to get tighter and tighter, it is so important to be able to make the most of the instruments, equipment, and supplies that we have in our elementary music classrooms. Whether you've got an instrument or item that you inherited from a previous teacher that you don't know how to use in your lessons, or you're looking for fresh ways to use what you have, here are all my lesson ideas to stretch your instruments and supplies to use with a broader range of grade levels, organization and management tips to help make it easier to use those things you were too afraid to give your students, and creative ways to use what you have in ways you may not have thought of before.

I've written quite a few posts over the last year or so with all of my best management and organization tips and tons of lesson ideas and teaching strategies for using various items that are commonly found in many elementary music classrooms, and if and when I write new posts for this series I will add them here, so bookmark this page and let me know in the comments which instruments or supplies you need more ideas for how to use better in your teaching!

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Self-Contained Music Lesson Outlines

It's no secret that routine, predictability, and structure are critical for self-contained music classes for students with special needs. One of the most helpful things I learned from observing other teachers and reading books on the topic of teaching adaptive music was finding some general lesson outlines that work well in these situations that I could adapt to use with my own classes. Once I found some outlines that worked, it made it so much easier to find lesson activities to use in each slot in the outline from week to week to help my students be successful! 

First of all I want to point out that having a general lesson routine in place- especially for the beginning and end of each class- is good for ALL learners. In fact, most of the practices that I have learned to help my students with special needs are helpful for all of my students! So if you don't already have some specific routines in place for all of your general music lessons, I encourage you to put something in place for the beginning and end of your classes. Here is how I start my early childhood/ Kindergarten lessons, here is how I start my 1st-6th grade lessons, and here is how I end all of my lessons.

For my self-contained classes, I develop a basic lesson flow for each class based on their energy levels at the beginning and end of the class (which can depend a lot on the time of day when I see them), what happens in the transitions to and from class, where I am teaching them (sometimes they are in my regular music classroom, and sometimes I need to teach them in their homerooms), and how the students respond to different types of activities and transitions between activities. It usually takes me some trial and error at the beginning of the year to find what works best for each class, but once I find the one that works I pretty much use the same template for every lesson the rest of the year! 

For example I had 2 different self-contained classes last year, and I had slightly different lesson outlines for each: 

Class A

drumming with a track

drumming exploration

movement activities

singing activities

instruments/ notation decoding

closing song

Class B

opening/ welcome song

singing activities

movement activities

instruments/ notation decoding

closing movement activity

You can see I have a lot of the same categories between the two classes, but the specific order, and the beginning and end of class, are different. The main reasons for that were class A was taught in the music room while class B was in their homeroom, class A tended to have students trickling into class while class B everyone was there at the beginning of the lesson, class A had more experience with instruments and equipment than class B, and class B was more verbal than class A.

Within each of those categories in the lesson outlines, I am targeting different musical skills and concepts, and making sure I am changing up the specific activities to help students learn and grow while also keeping some activities the same each time so they always have things that are familiar and comfortable. Generally I would maybe have 2-3 new songs/ activities each week while the rest of the lesson stayed the same, and I would usually repeat the same lesson for both of their 2 lessons per week before changing anything else. Obviously some categories in the outline like movement and singing activities often had more than one song/ activity within that category, so I might keep one familiar song and add in one new one, for example.

I hope this gives you some concrete ideas for structuring your self-contained music lessons, especially if you are new to this area like I was a few years ago! If you want to read more of my tips and resources for teaching students with special needs, click here to see all of my posts on the topic. I have learned so much from some music therapists and educators who have much more experience, training, and expertise in this area than I do, including several colleagues as well as some authors and content creators I highly recommend: the book Creative Miracles by Kelly Surette, and all of the online content from Music for Kiddos by Stephanie Leavell are my top 2 recommendations that have had the most significant impact on my own teaching practice. If you have any other resources to recommend, or questions about specific parts of my lesson outlines or other self-contained adaptive music lesson topics, please leave them in the comments below!

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What To Do With Those Scarves

If you are starting a new job in a new classroom and suddenly find yourself with a bunch of scarves you don't know what to do with, or you have had them for a while and feel like you're not getting as much use out of them as you should, this post is for you! In this post you'll find tips for managing their use with students, plus plenty of ways to use them in specific lessons as well!

1. Storage

I used to like the idea of wall-mounted storage for scarves, either by hanging them from a velcro strip or storing them in those containers with holes on the sides that are made for keeping plastic bags (like this). I still like those ideas but I have found for my purposes, I like being able to carry the set of scarves around rather than having them tied to one place and having to have students go get them from a specific place in the room. I have, over the years, accumulated quite a few scarves though, and I've realized it's important for whatever storage system I use to have enough space for students to be able to throw them in and fit without too much extra stuffing, so I have ended up splitting my scarves into cool colors and warm colors and keeping them in 2 separate bins:

The side benefit of this system, I've realized, is that it's easy to pick out specific color schemes, which is handy for some of my favorite scarf activities where I want cool colors to evoke water, rain, the ocean, ice, or snow, or warm colors to look like fall leaves, etc, and if we're using all the colors it's a little faster to have students put them away by calling their scarf color two at a time (one cool and one warm) to put away in two bins simultaneously. 

2. Management

Scarves don't present too many management headaches, but when I'm handing them out students often want to a) drape them over their heads, or b) ball them up and toss them (both of which are not particularly problematic, just distracting), and when they're waiting to put them away they want to spread them out perfectly on the floor and fold them into neat squares (which is very thoughtful of them but time-consuming when you're trying to transition quickly to the next activity). To help manage those behaviors I do 2 things: 1) give them something specific to do with the scarves when they are getting them out and putting them away, and 2) give them time to explore and choose what to do with the scarves at some point. 

With any instrument, prop, supply, etc, giving students time to explore the new item before demanding that they use it only in the way you instruct them is a really effective strategy. So the first time we're using scarves each school year, or if it has been a long time, I often will turn on some music and tell students they have until the end of the song to play with the scarf without leaving their spot (after spreading them out around the room). This gives them time to try throwing it, balling it up, putting it on their head, etc and not only "gets it out of their system", but gives students time to figure out how to manipulate it before they try to do anything specific with it.

Exploration time is obviously too time-consuming to do every time, though, so once they've had that chance the first time, in subsequent lessons I will tell students a specific way to hold the scarf/ stand/ sit as soon as they get the scarf. Often it is to get into whatever position we start the activity in, but sometimes it's totally unrelated- the main point is just to give them specific direction for what to do without having to tell them to sit there and stare at the new colorful toy I just put in front of them without touching it! 

For putting them away, I do the same thing. Sometimes I tell them to put it on their heads until I call their color, or drape it over their laps, etc. Other times, if we have the time for it, I will go around the room one student (or a small group of students) at a time and have them do a short song/ rhyme that ends with them putting the scarf away (like this flower song).

3. Lesson Activity Ideas

Scarf songs

My favorite way to use scarves is as a movement prop with a song. It can be a great way to help students demonstrate specific musical elements of the song, or connect with the lyrics with movements that go with the words, or a way to get students to sing with something that makes them a little less self-conscious and sparks their imagination. You'll find my top favorite songs for early childhood/ self-contained music classes in this post:

I also have to mention my other favorite singing game with scarves that I use with my middle grades: Draw a Bucket of Water. You can do it without scarves too, but it works best if you have scarves for students to pull back and forth while they sing. Here's a video showing the movement game if you aren't familiar- it's a great song to use to learn about same and contrasting sections.

Movement with instrumental pieces

Just like with scarf songs, scarves can be such a great tool for getting students to demonstrate specific musical elements of an instrumental piece of music. It can actually be a really useful assessment tool for that reason! I use it especially to have students demonstrate pitch, by having them move the scarf up for high notes and down for low notes, and to demonstrate form, by having them either use different predetermined moves for each section, or use a scarf for one section and put it down to do other movements for the other.

-The Bird from Peter and the Wolf is a great one to have students show pitch by making their scarf go up and down with the notes like the bird flying in the air.

-Aquarium from Carnival of the Animals is another one I have students show the notes going up and down with their scarves, pretending to be the fish swimming around in the water.

-Sylvia Pizzicato by Leo Debiles is my favorite song to use with scarves to have students show form. I have them tip toe for the A section and then pick up their scarves and twirl around with the melody for the B section.

Substitutes for other movement props

-If you've ever come across an awesome parachute activity (here are my favorites) and wished you could do it but didn't have the parachute and/or the space for a parachute, a lot of the moves can be done with scarves. Just have students hold the edge of their scarf with 2 hands and move their scarves the same way they would move the parachute! 

-I love teaching my students about poi in my unit in Maori music and I've now made my own out of rope for students to use (there's tutorial in that same post), but for many years I just used scarves to have students practice poi moves, and it works just fine! 

-Of course scarves can also be a great substitute for ribbon wands as well if you come across a great lesson activity that calls for those.

Other creative uses

-If you've ever had classes, especially in upper elementary/ middle school, that get icky about holding hands for movement or circle games etc, have them hold scarves in between each person and you can accomplish the same thing without dealing with the awkwardness of hand holding!

-I use some of my white or blue scarves to represent the "river" when I do my lesson on "Going On a Bear Hunt" with Kindergarten every year to practice steady beat! You can read about that entire lesson (highly recommend) in this post.

I hope this helps you find some new ways to use those scarves that have been sitting in your closet! If you're looking for more ideas for other movement props from parachutes to cups and so much more, check out this post:

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DIY Magnetic Classroom Management Board

I've been using a magnet board I made myself to be my visual for my classroom management tracker for over a decade now, and I like it so much better than the sticker charts I used to use, or the clip charts with clothespins I see other teachers using for similar purposes! I put mine together with scraps of materials and have used it every class period, every day, modifying it slightly over the years as my systems have shifted. If you're interested in trying something similar, here's how I set mine up- it's very flexible so you could absolutely adapt it to your classroom and make it your own!

The board currently serves two main functions: tracking "points" earned towards different incentives that each class is working towards in my whole class management system by moving up the black keys, then the white keys, then all the keys chromatically on the piano (read all about the system, how they earn points, what incentives I use, and my philosophy behind it in this post), and displaying the rotating class jobs to which each color team is assigned (read all about how I use classroom jobs in this post, and about my color team seating arrangement in this post).

The board itself is an oil drip pan that I bought at Walmart years ago. Mine is 25x47 inches, and apparently they don't make the ones that are that size anymore, unfortunately, because they seem to be out of stock everywhere! But this is it, in case it comes back in stock. This one is the closest I can find at 25x36 inches- it's a bit shorter but I think would do the same job.

The rest of the board is mostly contact paper and tape! I had some leftover white contact paper from another project that I used to cut out two large rectangles to be the 2 piano keyboards (I decided to make 2 separate pianos, one for K-3 and one for 4-6, so the piano keys wouldn't be so crowded if I tried to put all the classes on one piano). Then I used a ruler and permanent marker to draw lines to separate all the white keys, keeping them the same width as the black painter's tape I had on hand (I use it to "frame" all of my posters on my classroom walls). Then I used strips of the black tape to make the black keys. 

The colored boxes are just strips of the colored duct tape I use to tape the lines on the floor to mark where each color row sits, then I outlined each square with the same black painter's tape I used for the piano keys. Then for the open space next to those squares, I just stuck on a bunch of music note stickers I had from my scrapbooking days and some leftover bulletin board letters to spell out "Music Rocks!". I've had different ideas over the years for using that space but never have changed it, but it could be a good place to display the main "class rules", keep track of rewards earned, or even display photos of classes that have done something great as another incentive.

I made the magnets by either printing or handwriting onto regular printer paper and sticking the paper to these adhesive magnet sheets: I designed the minion images to show the job each color team is assigned that marking period, and cut out small strips of plain white to handwrite the class names to move up the piano keys.

I pieced all of this together by hand from scraps I already had, but if you aren't feeling super crafty I've made printable versions of the piano keyboards and classroom jobs (minus the minions so they'll fit any classroom theme) that you can get in this set here. 

I hope this helps give you some inspiration to create your own magnet board for your classroom! Like I said there are so many ways this can be customized for whatever system you're using- using the oil drip pan is just a really cost-effective way to get a good sized magnet board on the cheap, and it's so much sturdier (and, I think, looks cooler) than sticker or clip charts! Let me know in the comments if you have any questions, or if you have other ideas for how you've used a similar visual in your classroom!

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