2/4 Tuesday - More Music Books I Love

As I mentioned in previous posts (There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed Some Leaves, Iza Trapani Books, & Get Ready to Romp) I love using books in my classroom.
Here are a few more I love:

1. Freddie the Frog Series: I cannot believe I haven't talked about these already. They are remarkable. They tell the story of Freddie and his friend Eli the Elephant. There are 5 stories in all and they all help teach young children (ages 3-9) different music concepts. This includes tempo, treble clef notes, bass clef notes, and jazz. There is also a great site you can go to and reinforce the concepts used in the books. (Click on the picture to go to the Freddie the Frog Site)




2. Puff the Magic Dragon: This book is the classic song, but has such beautiful illustrations! I love this song and I'm sure a lot of you do, too. My students love this song and ask for it all the time! (Click the picture for Amazon buying details)
   

On a completely new topic, I have continued to update the look of my blog! What do you think? I still have some things I want to continue to edit and I may still even change some of the pieces I updated, but I think it is really starting to look personalized. My goal is to make it look really nice as an inspiration to keep up with this blog. Make sure to check out the CONNECT TO ME links on the right to connect you with all the social media I'm apart of. (Including my new facebook page!) Also, if you have a music education blog button feel free to send it my way and I will add it.

2/4 Tuesday - Rockin' Behavior + Some Books I Love

I'm totally on a roll with my blog posts. If only I could be like this all the time! :)

The first thing I'm using this year that seems to be working so far is my new Rockin' Behavior chart:


This idea is not a new one and is posted all over Pinterest, but there aren't a lot of teachers who have given ways to use this in a music room, so I kind of came up with my own way of using it.

First, instead of each student I just have the classroom teachers name. I keep track of all the expected and unexpected behaviors of my students during the class time on the board. This is just a chart with a smiley face and sad face and I post tallies as I go through class. Students know not to ask for tallies and that sometimes they won't get tallies for a while and then might get a bunch of tallies all at once.

If at the end of music class they have more expected points than unexpected points one student gets to clip the class up, to choose a student I just go straight through the seating chart so I know everyone will eventually get a turn. (If they have NO unexpected points or just one or two, I will sometimes let the class clip up two times.)



Along with clipping up they get to earn tickets towards a reward day. Depending on the color the class lands on they earn or lose tickets at the end of each music class. You can see from my chart they get extra tickets for getting all the way to the top. I do NOT reset this each week, but instead keep their clip where it is. When they get to the red I add a sticker to their clip and put it back on the green to restart. When the class gets five stickers I give them a new clip and post their filled clip on a Wall of Fame. :)

A couple things I would change about this:

1. I would make it so you get to earn a ticket each time your class clips up and lose a ticket every time your class clips down. Otherwise, you have problems like classes being on orange and having to clip down to yellow. Do they still get tickets?


2. This system works just perfect for my classes that only have music once a week, but for my classes that have music twice a week I should have almost added more to the top. I have some classes that have super days each day and so after one week they can already be to the top of the chart.

The other thing I want to share are some books by Iza Trapani. I don't know how many of you have seen them, but they are wonderful for the end of a music class. I actually have all my Kindergarten, 1st Grade, and 2nd Grade classes end with a book or songtale each day. This is a great way to get my students to refocus before going back to their classroom teachers. Otherwise, sometimes music class gets a little wild and crazy (but the good kind, where there IS learning) and I feel terrible sending them back to their classroom teachers all wound up. Iza Trapani's books are based on popular folk songs, but she adds her own twist with new verses. Some of my favorites are below. Click the pictures to see where you can buy them on Amazon:

Outdoor Instruments

As I talked about in my previous post, all my classes at Fairview went outside last week for music class. We had many different activities outside and the students learned a lot!

The Kindergarten and 1st graders were given a task of finding an object in nature that could be used as an instrument. After finding their make shift instruments the Kindergarten students got to share the instrument and play it for the class. I was impressed with the amount of creativity shown. A couple Kindergarteners used pinecones, leaves, sticks, rocks, or a combination of items.

1st grade students filled out a short worksheet to go along with finding their object. This gave them a chance to continue practicing reading and writing skills, as well as, show me what they are learning.

The first part of the worksheet was telling me what their instrument was and drawing a picture of it. After that we figured out how the instrument could make music. I had several ways and each one students tried. As they tried them they would x out the ways that didn't work and circle the ways that did work. (We went one by one as a class so the ones that had more difficulty reading always knew the task.) My 1st graders loved trying to find out the ways their instrument made music. They enjoyed hitting, shaking, scratching, etc. their instrument to try to make noise. I really enjoyed watching them try all the different ways and was SO happy to see them only using their instruments as instruments and not as weapons. (We did talk about that before hand JUST in case.)

At the bottom of the worksheet 1st graders had to come up with a rhythm using quarter notes and eighth notes. I created four boxes and explained that they had to choose either a quarter note or a pair of eighth notes for each box. They could not put BOTH in any of the boxes. All the kids followed the directions! YAY! Finally, each 1st grader got to play their instrument for the class sharing both their rhythm and instrument. It was so much fun!

Here are some of the finished worksheets:





Interested in seeing the worksheet I created. Find it -->here!<---

To finish the day, I always like to share a songtale or story with my Kindergarten - 2nd grade classes. This is part of the routine of my classes and students have come to expect it and know that story time means the end of music class. To go with the theme of being outside in nature I sang the story There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves.

The kids chuckled at the silliness of an old lady swallowing a pumpkin. They also liked guessing what the old lady sneezes out after swallowing all the things she does. What a great way to end the lesson!

Make some musical memories today!