Music Is Not for Insects

In a previous post, I asked you to help me write the “10 best ways to plan for the school year”.

Several of you responded with some great ideas (see below) and I want to share with you a tool I use to help me organize my general music classes. The example below is for a 1st grade general music class, but you could adapt this for any music class:

I like this form because it has 3 essential sections:

1. What is this course about? Can you answer that question clearly in the area provided?
2. Course Questions. Student accountability questions that begin with “Can you…identify, sing, play, etc.”
3. Course Standards. Question you will be held accountable for as the teacher- “What are the students supposed to learn? How will we know they’ve learned it?” And Value-weight given to each measure.

Wrap that all up in a nice looking graphical design, and you have a course organizer that works for me. You can see more examples from other classes and download some more course organizers here. If you use these in a workshop, presentation or blog post, please trackback or link back to my blog.

YOUR GREAT IDEAS FOR PLANNING

# Msgallanton

I am an elementary school music teacher (Grades 1-6). I’m beginning my second year of teaching next month, and this method of planning was hugely helpful to me in my first year of teaching, when I needed lots of structure to get me through:

I created a binder for each grade, each with 10 index dividers inside. I labeled the dividers for each month, and on each divider, I stuck a post-it note with a list of the major concepts/songs to be covered for the month. This way I can reuse the dividers in future years, but I can easily update/change my monthly plan with a new post-it note.

For each month, I insert photocopies of songs (so that I can write my notes all over them), copies of worksheets or handouts, note pages, pictures, etc. in the order that I want to teach each song or concept. My school uses “Share the Music” as our main resource, but we are not expected to teach it page-by-page. By using the binder method, I’ve given myself the opportunity to photocopy pages from Share the Music and other resources (I love “An Orff Mosaic from Canada” as well). This saves me from searching for songs mid-year in my stack of song books. I have it all at my fingertips! Using a three-ring binder is also beneficial because it allows for easy insertion and removal of songs and ideas.

Hope this is helpful!

# Paul Schernitzkion

Ken,

Is is time to prep already? While I have a thousand things to organize for the school year, I am really getting a handle on lesson plans. I’ve noticed a lot of classroom teachers don’t realize that elementary music teachers really make their own lesson plans, usually pieced together from various sources.

I may be one of the few music teachers who actually does this, but, I do write (on the computer) a lesson for every class, every grade. K-5 sees me once a week, it usually amount to about 30 lessons a year. 30 lessons for each grade amounts to 180 lessons plans.

Back in school when I was learning how to teach I remember teachers having us write long, detailed lesson plans – “Teacher says this, students do this,” etc. My lesson plans aren’t that detailed because a lot that info I carry with me.

The lessons are based on the Washington state EALRs, that’s where I get my lesson topics. On each plan I have a space for what supplies I will need for the lesson (elementary music sometimes requires a lot of stuff), tech stuff I need turned on or files I need pulled up, and usually a list between 5 and 8 things to do that enforce the topic. At the bottom is a place for evaluation – things that worked or didn’t, maybe a class didn’t get everything done, students who had behavior trouble, etc.

Since this is my 4th year with these plans I have tweaked them each year on the computer, and always add new things (usually to the intermediate grades).

This year all I had to do was look at each one, tweak on the computer, and print the new ones off. When the year starts I put each grade level’s plans in a folder and put last years plans in them as well. For example, the first grade folder this year has last year’s K plans in it so I can see what I did with them last year. This works great because a lot of the EALRs build on concepts throughout students’ elementary music careers. I can always say, “remember back when we sang ________? Then we sang it faster and slower? Today we are going to add names to when music is played fast or slow.”

Being this organized takes a lot of time up front, but it sure pays off during the year.

Now, back to school year planning!

-Paul

# Brandt Schneideron

Oh boy, I am jumping into a new program and I have no idea what I am going to be doing. There is room to grow here.

Week 1: Assess, assess, assess.
Week 2: Plan for year.

I always plan back from the concerts and how many minutes I think I need for each song. Then I build in the lessons on reading, ear training, etc…

But this year…who knows?

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