Hi everyone! This is Aileen from Mrs. Miracle's Music Room. Today, I'm blogging about something that has been on my mind quite a bit lately as I've been planning lessons: how to foster a student-centered environment in the music room.
There are so many things that I love about the Kodály-inspired classroom...but at times, it can feel somewhat teacher-centered if taught in a traditional way. Sometimes, students DO need a whole-class approach. They need to sing together as a community, they need to prepare and practice rhythms and solfa together, they need the teacher to share musical knowledge. However, at some point, in order for students to transfer their knowledge, the teacher does need to step away and become more of a facilitator. So how do we do that in a Kodály-inspired classroom? Here are my favorite strategies!
#1: Rotating Centers
Several years ago, I began experimenting with centers in my classroom. I had seen them done well in my daughter's Kindergarten classroom, and thought I would try it in my room. It has been a wonderful journey, and a great way to not only foster a more student-centered classroom, but to provide time to work with and assess students one-on-one while the other students are engaged in exciting activities! With rotating centers, I typically have four centers around the room that are focused on practicing the same concept in different ways. For example, for ta and ti-ti, I might have one center at the SMART board, where students are throwing a squishy ball at the board and then reading patterns, another center in which students play rhythm patterns on non-pitched percussion, a third center with worksheets for ta and ti-ti, and the last center with me, in which each student individually reads five patterns. Every five or so minutes, I have students rotate to the next center until they've been to all of the centers. It does have a much more student-centered feel to it, because instead of you teaching the students, students are often teaching each other! Whether they are explaining to each other how to play High D on the recorder, or reminding each other that la is a step above sol, it's a really awesome thing to step away and let students process the information and teach each other! If you're looking for more information about centers, here are several blog posts with more details about using centers!
Hi everyone! This is Jamie Parker. A week before school
began this past year, I arrived in my classroom to find five iPads sitting on
my desk. I
was thrilled! BUT I had no idea how I was going to use them with my students. I
wanted the iPads to be used in a meaningful way. I began digging for different
tools where my students could prepare and practice different elements, could
create something new, and could be assessed on known material.
One app I found for assessment is Socrative. This app allows
teachers to create their own questions and tracks all answers from individual
students. I began exploring how I could use this app with my students:
I. Getting Started
My first step in getting started with Socrative
was to create a teacher account (completely free!) on the website: www.socrative.com.
Then, I downloaded the student app on each of my
devices (also free).
Once I was set up, I tried to think of ways I
could create quizzes. I wanted my quizzes to directly reflect what the students
were learning. I realized that I could not input musical notation into my
question, but I could insert a picture (more on that below).
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...." Hi - this is Karla from CMajorLearning. That statement is how I feel on the first day of having a student teacher! I'm sure many can relate to this as I LOVE having a student teacher, "best of times", but not knowing what they are going to be like can be the "worst of times". So, what are some things that I can do to set us both up for success? Here are a few ideas that have worked for me!
Be Organized - There is so much information that needs to be shared between the cooperating teacher and student teacher! I have found the way that works best for me is to put everything together in a student teacher handbook. Check out my version, available on TeachersPayTeachers by clicking here.
Hi everyone! It's Aileen from Mrs. Miracle's Music Room. Since many of us are headed back tomorrow after a long two-week break, I thought I'd write about reviewing after a long break. Granted, two weeks isn't super long, but since I only see my students once a week, it will be three weeks by the time they see me again! Here are a few quick and easy ways you can review with your students after a long break, so you can jump back into your lessons.
#1: Reading rhythm patterns
Sometimes, simply reading through some rhythm patterns can go a long way to getting students reacquainted with rhythms they should know well. Since it's the New Year, I just uploaded these rhythm flashcards to my store for free! Just print them out, cut them out, then read each with your students. You might try 4 beats apart, then 2 beats apart, then the third time through, no beats apart, which is a bit trickier and requires musical memory!
Since "Star Wars" is all the rage right now, another fun way to review rhythm reading with your students is to use "Rhythm Wars" by Amy Abbott (which can be purchased in a bundle or separately). The rhythms come on the screen just like the opening credits to the movie...so fun! (For more "Star Wars" activities for the music room, see this blog post.)
You could also simply have students read the rhythm to a known song. You may even ask them before reading what each rhythm is called. Then, dive into reading!
#2: Melodies/ Poison
I like to have students echo me on solfa, in an activity I simply call "melodies." If practicing do, you could sing sol-mi-do with hand signs, and students echo, then do-mi-sol, and students echo, etc. This is a great review activity, in that all they have to do is echo you!
To make it a bit more difficult, you could only sing the first solfa and show the hand signs for the remainder, and they have to sing back all. Or, you could play it on recorder and students have to sing back!
A game that students LOVE is called "Poison." You can write a melodic pattern on the board. You sing a pattern, they echo, UNLESS it's the Poison pattern! If they sing, you could either have that student sit down, or do a teacher against class challenge--if even one student sings, you get a point, but if no one sings, they get a point. They love the competition!
With this game, you could simply write the patterns on the board. If you want them already made, I have some Poison games in my store; here is the one for sol-mi.
#3: Flipped classroom
Since I sent home recorders with my 4th graders before break, I made videos so they could review at home in front of their computers. This idea is often called "flipped classroom," in which students teach themselves at home. Even if you're going back to school tomorrow, you could notify your classes of videos they can watch to help them review, so when they come back to music class the first time they haven't forgotten everything! Here is the video to review "B":
Click here to see other recorder videos on my YouTube channel. I made them general enough that any music teacher could use them. If you want to make your own videos, you can record right from your computer (I used QuickTime) then post to YouTube!
#4: Vocal exploration
Since many students have not used their singing voices over their break, it's always good to do some vocal exploration to help them warm their voices back up. Here are a few blog posts all about vocal exploration! Even with upper elementary students, you can do vocal exploration, simply by having them echo you, on sirens, on nonsense syllables, etc., to help them get back into their head voices.
#5: Just sing!
As important as it is to teach musical concepts through songs, it is just as important to sing for the sake of singing. One of my favorites I've done this year with 3rd grade is "Boots of Shining Leather." It is a beautiful song, works well in a round, AND has a great dance which can also be performed in a round! Yes, it is a great song for 4/4, for half note, and for low ti, but it is also just a great song to sing, especially to get students singing again after break!
Here is the notation:
And here are my 3rd graders performing it in a round:
I hope you all have a wonderful first day back, and that your students remember just as much as you think they should. :) Enjoy, and Happy New Year!
As we know, last week there was a terrible tragedy in Paris,
in which people from ISIS set off a series of coordinated attacks on civilians,
resulting in the deaths of over 100 people.This is horrible.This is something
that is hard to fathom. This is something that should never happen again.
But tragedy strikes, and when it does, it affects all of
us.I believe that for music educators,
such experiences provide opportunities for us to offer support towards the healing
process, by consciously engaging in musical experiences in our classes that can
directly or indirectly allow children to process the issues that may have
emerged for them.
In people’s lives, music serves a variety of important
functions.One of them is that it allows
us to express emotions that may be difficult to express.In music education (particularly at the
elementary level), we are wary of opening too many cans of worms when it comes
to emotional topics.But I believe that
we can do our children and our school communities a great service by providing
them with ways to address difficult life situations.Different teaching contexts will call for
different responses, and knowing your population is important.However, that should not be taken as an
excuse to avoid difficult situations – we can all grow from them.
Hi everyone! This is Aileen from Mrs. Miracle's Music Room. I've blogged quite a bit about picture books for the music room (see those posts here), but today I thought I'd focus on picture books that can be used with upper elementary, since they can be harder to come by!
Here are some of my favorites...I'm planning on posting about some more soon! Click on each picture to view it on Amazon or Alibis.
"If you find a Rock"
by Lember and Christian
I found this picture book a few years ago, and immediately thought that it would work really well with "Obwisana," which you can find here. It is such a beautiful book, with poetic language and higher level prose.
"Before John as a Jazz Giant"
by Weatherford and Qualls
I'm a big jazz fan, so was super excited to find this book! What a great way to incorporate jazz into your lessons and teach a little history! I plan on using this soon, and am thinking of playing John Coltrane as I read the book.
"The Drums of Noto Hanto"
by James and Tsukushi
Based on a true story in ancient Japan, this book is a wonderful way to introduce taiko drumming to your students. I've read this book to my 4th graders (and even created a program based off the book and had them act it out) and they were actively engaged and excited! You could read it before a taiko or bucket drumming unit, or before a taiko drumming listening lesson.
"Marching to the Civil War: Drummer Boy"
by Turner and Hess
I really love this book as a way to delve into the song "Fire in the mountain," which you can see below:
To play the game, one student stands in the middle, playing the drum to the beat. Half of the students stand, and half of the students sit. As the drummer plays, the standing students walk around the circle. Whenever the drummer stops (halfway through the song, at the end of the song, halfway through the second time...whenever!) all the standing students have to find someone to stand behind. The drummer also has to find someone, so one person is left without someone to stand behind (much like musical chairs.) Then, that person becomes the drummer, and the sitting students stand, the standing students sit, and the game continues.
The song is actually about the Revolutionary War, but the book is a great connection about what drummer boys had to do. I will warn you...it is a sad book with very real sentiments, as the drummer boy laments about the sounds of war, and about his friends who have died. I have had to be careful to not get choked up as a I read it to students. That being said, I think it is a great book for students to read, as it gives them perspective about how much life has changed over the years, and gives them some historical context behind a song they love.
Looking for more picture book ideas? Here is one of my Pinterest boards, focused on picture books:
What are your favorite picture books for upper elementary? Feel free to comment below!
One of the raps on Kodály-inspired teaching is that it can
be rigid.People think that there is
some prescribed method that dictates exactly what you have to teach and when
you have to teach it.
Not true.
The reality is that while Kodály-inspired teaching is
methodological and sequential, it doesn’t come in a one-size-fits-all
package.Every teacher has to take the
overall principles and apply them to their own setting.
For me, what that means is that each year, I re-visit my
teaching sequence in the fall, when I am doing my long-term planning (see
this link for a description of one way to do yearly planning). Lately, my basic sequence of teaching rhythmic elements has been something like the following:
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