As the new year gets under way, names can be an issue, especially for those of you working with transient populations. As I have stated in the past, I love doing name games in the beginning of year…and throughout the year for the little ones. Kids love the sound of their name and it helps connect them to you, as their teacher, as well as to what you are trying to teach them! This game is simple, fun and filled with endless possibilities for building important skills! Here are some ideas to get you started! (Each step can be done for days, weeks or until you feel they are ready to move on to the next step.)

1. Start off with singing it as is~ I use a fish puppet to sing it to the kids so that when they say their name, their focus is on the fish and not on the fact that they are speaking or singing by themselves!! I also tell them that they can shake a fin, if they would like!
2. Sing, but elongate the “do” on the 7^th beat. As you sing it, move your hands for as long as you sing it so that students can see the length.
3. Ask students what you did differently. Encourage them to sing it and decide how long the “do” should be. They can move their body, as well, to show their sound.
4. Now sing it, but sing the “do” very short and add a hand burst gesture to show this (hand starts off as a fist and immediately outstretch the fingers and thumb).
5. What did I do that time? (You can add several short sounds, if you would like.)
6. Have kids experiment with this ~ they can choose to sing a long “do” or a short one. (NOTE: Because it is a name game, you can have one kid sing a verse, choose a student, and then that chosen student sings a verse and chooses the next person, and so on…)
7. After they master this, move it to drums or any other instrument. Have kids sing it and play it at the same time (using the above method so that each student gets a chance and plays by themselves).
8. Then eliminate the voice and have kids look at the next student while drumming the syllables of the name. (This is great for getting kids to develop non verbal communication in an ensemble setting!!)

This is where I will leave it for now….I have some ideas of where to go next, but I want to hear from you! What are your ideas and thoughts on how to build on this? Leave a comment below!

When creating a center based curriculum, there are a lot of logistics involved beyond what concepts/ skills you want your kids to learn. Questions arise: what procedures need to be taught? What materials are involved? Do I need to set them up, or can the kids do it? How does only having 20 minutes play into this? How much do the kids already know as far as working in small groups? Etc.. a lot of these need to be answered in order to proceed, but some will be answered as we go…..like most of what we do!

Typically in a regular classroom, there are several different centers; kids rotate through them after a mini lesson in each. Considering this will be the first time I am doing it with this group, I wondered if this would be feasible right off the bat, so I decided to do only one activity per grade level and have them break into small groups for the first month. This way, we could work out the kinks before it got too complicated.

I also decided that we would do an activity from each of the categories (4 categories, so 4 week’s worth of activities) explained in the last post (read HERE); thus kids would know what major concepts were being covered this year and the standards we want them to master. Last year we did a lot with Note Knacks and reading, so I thought that The Reading Center would be a great place to start!

I chose the activities first, then thought about what the kids needed to know before we started. There is first day stuff (names and what we are going to do here) and then there is the procedures that we follow to work efficiently and safely throughout the year. I always do a name game of some sort to start and then we can dive into the procedures.

Procedures:

1. Line up outside door quietly ~ Is it really necessary to have kids enter your room quietly? According to Fred Jones in Tools For Teaching, kids understand that your classroom is a place for learning, not fooling around. When they enter quietly, you are cutting out another opportunity for issues to arise.
2. The Briefing ~ I am formally adding this. In the past I would tell kids what materials they needed to gather, where they needed to sit, etc…., but this year I want to try to have a written out statement of what they can expect that day with specifics. Because it is written out, the older kids will be able to read it ~ I’m not sure if this will take too much time, we shall see!
3. Kids enter room ~ kids go to where they need to be. I will let them sit where they want for now, but I am leaning towards assigned group seating. I am hoping it will cut down on hurt feelings and chit chatting.
4. Mini Lessons ~ If this is the beginning of a center cycle, I will have a mini lesson on each of the centers they will be doing for this cycle. This lesson will include the steps and final result, which will be on a note card so that when they forget next week (because you know they will!!), they have a reference that they can figure out on their own. The more independent they are, the better!
5. The 5 minute warning ~ 5 minutes before the end of class, I will let kids know, so they can wrap up.
6. Clean up ~ Expectations for leaving the space.
7. Line up and exit ~ Expectations for lining up, leaving the room and walking in the hallway to my colleague’s room.
8. Entering the other room ~ how to enter quietly and respectfully

Throughout this process, I will have kids model what they think I expect for each of the categories. (What does it look like when we enter a the classroom? Type of things) Because it is the first week of classes for us, they will be on their best behavior, so this is the perfect opportunity to “catch” them being model choristers! I will have lots of chances to praise them and give them a sense that I know they are bright and helpful!!

Next week I will dive into what centers I decided on and how they are working! In the meantime, have a great week!

whim·si·cal

/ˈ(h)wimzik(ə)l/

Adjective

1. playfully quaint or fanciful, especially in an appealing and amusing way.

“a whimsical sense of humor”

synonyms: fanciful, playful, mischievous, waggish, quaint, quizzical, curious, droll, fantastical, Seussian; eccentric, quirky, idiosyncratic, unconventional, outlandish, queer, fey;

informal: offbeat, freaky

“a whimsical sense of humor”

2. acting or behaving in a capricious manner.

“the whimsical arbitrariness of autocracy”

synonyms: volatile, capricious, fickle, changeable, unpredictable, variable, erratic, mercurial, mutable, inconstant, inconsistent, unstable, protean

“the whimsical arbitrariness of autocracy”

(according to Google)

For those of you that are starting school so early (July 31, really???), I thought I would offer 5 whimsical activities that are meant to be fun and engaging….after all, it is still technically summer. I offer these not as serious opportunities for hardcore learning and assessment, rather as a way to have fun with your kids in the beginning of the year when the summer-to-school year transition can be a little tough….for both the kids and us!! Each activity can last as short or as long as you would like and can also serve as time fillers in-between transitions or if you have a few minutes to kill at the end of a lesson. The main point is to connect or reconnect with your students after a long summer vacation, so embrace the absurdity of starting so early and have a blast!

1. Move. Move as much as possible with your students! Here is a link to some excerpts of whimsical classical music that will inspire your students to get up and dance…and be a little silly J
   1. http://www.dewolfemusic.com/search.php#/?id=9283579&code=7P8twh
2. When you are singing or hearing music for the first time, have kids identify the long notes. The second time you hear it, have kids use a scarf to show the long sounds.
3. When singing with sheet music or music textbooks, have kids count the number of half notes, then eighth notes etc… in that piece of music. 5 points to kids that are correct. Its fast, fun and gets kids noticing notation details. What you do with the points is up to you!!
4. Put kids into small groups and ask them to create a short (appropriate) silly song about something they did this summer. Have them perform it at the end of class.
5. Give kids instruments and ask them to find a different way of making sound with it ~ of course in a way that does not damage the instrument!

I have been thinking a lot about teachers who see their students so little these past few weeks. The problem is not just there isn’t enough time to go deep into the information, but also there isn’t enough time for thoughtful practice. We know that students need a lot of repetition with a concept before they internalize it, yet our schedules do not support this well know fact.

For the last installment of this series, I would like to offer 5 ways to provide thoughtful practice that are quick, but are still meaningful. Here they are:

1. Create a 5 minute ritual (of course in game form!) for every class where they are practicing the basics of rhythm and pitch.
2. Planning is EVERYTHING!!! I love letting the kids take me where they want to go, but when time is an issue, you always have to take them back to where you know they need to go! …ok, this one isn’t quick….but it will be meaningful J
3. Use class transitions as opportunities for practice. Examples: kids echoing short rhythms and/ or solfege syllables.
4. Create a mystery phrase of the week that you sing or play over the morning intercom. When you repeat it in class ~ the class with the most correct answers gets a small prize. (You could do this by grade level to make it fair)
5. Ask kids to be detectives and to find as many things in their everyday lives as possible that sound like a steady beat. Examples: turn signals in cars, clocks, etc…

We still need more time, no doubt, but I hope this series helped in finding fun and simple ways to get as much out of our kids as possible!!

As always, if you have ideas, please share them with us!

I am in the process of reading Edwin E. Gordon’s Music Theory for Newborn and Young Children. So far, I am most impressed with 2 points that he makes:

1. “Children are ill-equipped to learn what most teachers are attempting to teach. Without the same kind of acculturation in music young children receive in language by parents and caregivers during five years or so before they enter school (the first eighteen months being most important), there is little hope for debilitating circumstances in music education to be alleviated.” (Kindle Location 50-58 of 1975)
2. “….yet most children have never had a chance to perform music individually before they begin formal music instruction, and once they do begin formal instruction, they are seldom offered or allowed opportunity to perform solo in class. Most formal instruction involves teaching groups of children to sing by asking them to repeat in ensemble sounds a teacher or others make. Yet imagine outcomes in language learning if children were asked to speak only in groups, repeating what a teacher said. They would learn to imitate only what others around them are saying and so would not give meaning to what they themselves said. They might not ever create a sentence of their own to express personal thoughts.” (Kindle Location 212-220)

I am convinced that these two points are connected and will even go so far as to say create a vicious circle. Most children get the idea in their music classes that they are:

• incapable of creating music without very specific guidelines
• not musically talented

As a result, we have parents not singing to their children. Personally, I think it stems from the music elite who think that if someone doesn’t have a “perfect” voice or Mozart like talent, they should not sing or play at all. I have heard this said to music teachers, as well. This kills me. This isn’t to say I support mediocre standards in our field, but there MUST be a middle ground:

1. If you teach music, sing with your kids as much as possible. If you feel that your singing needs improvement, get better. Period. Take classes, get a singing teacher, whatever!! NEVER stop singing and making music together. Think about the message this sends to your kids ~ don’t make music unless you are perfect. How many of them do you think, think of themselves as perfect singers? Also, you have absolutely NO leg to stand on when you are encouraging them to participate in ANY activity in which they feel insecure!
2. Encourage spontaneous music making and improvising in your class. Continuously send the message that there are times for creating music that may not sound good right off the bat, but it is through this exploration that kids will get to know how music works and will then be better musicians overall.
3. And, of course, there are times when accuracy in playing/ singing are necessary. This is important, not only because the situation demands it, but also because this will also help us in improvisations and composition.

In the end, we must empower our students to feel confident enough to create and make music on their own. Only then will they always have some kind of music making in their life.