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.
