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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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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Elementary Music Classroom 2025-2026

It's that time of year again: we're getting my elementary music classroom ready for a new school year! This is my 13th time setting up my classroom in this space, and I had a few "a-ha moments" about the way I've decorated and set up my classroom works for me that I want to share, plus a few tweaks that are relatively small changes but I'm happy about! So here's my elementary music classroom for the 2025-2026 school year.

First here's a quick video tour around the room to get our bearings:

One of the small tweaks I made was switching out the blue circle spots for a lighter blue that matches the line I have marked for the blue row chairs. This was sortof a happy coincidence more than anything- a few of my blue circle spots from last year were getting too worn out and I had some light blue ones from a set I had bought to replace another color a few years ago, and I realized the lighter blue matched the tape after the fact! This is obviously not a big deal for me but I can practically guarantee this is the  thing my students are going to notice first when they walk in my room :)

The other two tweaks are things I've been thinking about for a while and I'm glad to be in a place where I had the time and energy to do them: adjust my Kindergarten learning target spot (again) and update my teacher toolbox drawers. I got the teacher toolbox (something like this one, but I think I got mine at Home Depot) YEARS ago before I had any sort of set color scheme in my classroom, so I had just used a random set of scrapbook paper I thought was cute to decorate the drawers, and it just stayed that way all these years. I finally got some plain colored paper to put in the drawers instead, and now the toolbox finally looks like it belongs in the room! 

Here's my blog post from when I first made the toolbox if you're thinking of making one yourself- it's truly just little pieces of paper stuck inside the front of the drawer but if it lasted me a decade it must be good enough! :)

After doing a lot of work to make posted learning intentions something that actually works for me and my students over the last year and a half or so, I realized that the spot I had set up for posting the visual learning intentions for Kindergarten was way bigger than I needed it to be... which would be fine except I always felt like it was too much pink in one spot and looked a little out of place. Now I just have the same background that I use to write the 1st-6th grade learning intentions so the pink is no bigger than the other colors. I am all about streamlining visuals to keep the room from getting overstimulating!

You can read more about how I use pictures to create visual learning intentions that my pre-readers and language learners can actually benefit from in this blog post.

After doing those few small tweaks and setting up the rest of the room, it ended up taking me about 3.5 hours total to get my room ready for students. Going through the classroom setup process this year made me realize a few things that I thought were worth sharing, especially for newer teachers just starting out in a new classroom and trying to figure out how to get their rooms ready:

use a color scheme as your "decor theme"

Seeing how much my room instantly went from drab to fab just by setting out my ukuleles, boomwhackers, djembes, writing supplies, chair lines, and circle spots gave me fresh affirmation that using the common colors of the instruments and supplies I already have in my room as the "theme" for the rest of my classroom has been a game-changer for me. Using a color scheme instead of specific patterns or aesthetics etc already makes things easier (and makes them more universally appealing to a broader range of students), but I think using the colors of common elementary music classroom instruments is the boss move more elementary music teachers should be using. So many classroom instruments, from boomwhackers to handbells and everything in between, now come in similar colors to help students associate colors with pitches that it makes sense to use those colors. 

If you want to use any of the same posters I have to coordinate with the instrument colors, you can find the full set here.

classroom setup is an evolutionary process

I'm sure it has been said before but getting to the place I am now where I feel comfortable with where everything is and how everything is organized has been a process that has gradually evolved, with lots of trial and error, over the course of over a decade. If you are in your first year in a new classroom it's important to remind yourself of the old saying, "don't let perfect be the enemy of good". Rome wasn't built in a day.

classroom setup can eventually become an easy task

This is related to the last point but I was so pleased with how quickly I was able to set up my classroom this year, and it hit me that there does come a point when classroom setup is no longer the huge ordeal that it often is when you're first starting in a new classroom. Dealing with the pandemic probably made it take longer for me to get to that place since I had to rethink everything during those years, but this is the longest I've ever been in one classroom and it's nice to feel like things are where they should be.

I hope this helps give you some encouragement, inspiration, or at least solidarity if you're setting up your classroom as well! If you want to read more about the different things in my room, or how I think about classroom setup, here are some relevant blog posts below. And of course leave me questions in the comments below or send me an email, I'd love to chat!

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Elementary Music Classroom Management

Classroom management has always been a challenge, with very few comprehensive resources or training that is specifically for elementary music teachers. Part of the problem is there isn't one single strategy that will magically make everything run smoothly- there are so many facets to building and maintaining a positive, productive elementary music classroom that celebrates and meets the needs of all the hundreds of students that come through its doors each week. This post is intended to serve as a resource hub for all of those many facets that affect classroom management, so you can find strategies that will best meet the needs of your students.

Let's start with what everyone thinks of first when they think classroom or behavior management: a concrete system of tracking, motivating, and holding classes as a whole accountable for their behavior in class.

Concrete systems for responding to both positive and negative individual student behaviors are also important:

Having procedures and predictability is one of the most important strategies for fostering positive and productive classrooms, especially when students aren't there every day and have less time to feel settled!

Another key element of procedures and predictability is assigned seating, including assigning students to a "team" that serves as a way to give students classroom jobs, build in procedures for handing out and collecting supplies, and give students more ownership in the classroom:

Now that we've got some concrete systems in place, it's important to make sure we have the right framework / mindset for interacting with students in positive and productive ways, and encouraging students to do the same:

Now let's talk about specific strategies for specific situations that we commonly encounter as music teachers, whether for individual students or classes as a whole:

That is a lot of information but it also just barely begins to scratch the surface! You can browse all of my posts on management by clicking here. If you have any questions or topics you'd like to see addressed in a future post, please leave a comment to let me know!

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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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