One of the biggest challenges every teacher faces is classroom management. Your most challenging class might be a kindergarten class with many behavior challenges or it might be a Grade 5 class with attitude. In this newsletter, I’m sharing some tips that have helped me with classroom management.
Long term planning for K-6 music classes is a time consuming challenge. There are new provincial curriculums, new Nafme standards, new district and school expectations to deal with, and there isn't any more planning time for the teacher OR instructional time for the students. Where to start?
The newsletter this week was prompted by a question posed in the Musicplay Teacher's group:
Quick and Easy Ideas for assessing Rhythm Reading and Notation
June 12, 2016
The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns is one of the most loved works for elementary students. Selections 6-19 in the Listening Resource Kit 1 and the Listening section at musicplayonline are from this work.
Peter and the Wolf Lessons
We are surrounded with sound all day every day. But are our students actually listening? Every teacher in your school would like to have students in their classes that are better listeners. Here are some ways that music teachers can really help the students improve their listening skills.
For the past 2 weeks I've been teaching a new class of Grade 1 and 3 students. In order to plan instruction, I need to know what they know. When you hear a class perform together you might think they "get it" but it's when I listen to individual students that I can really assess understanding.
I've been doing a music residency with a grade 1 and 3 class at Grandview Elementary in Red Deer for the past week. I've seen the children every day for 35-45 minutes, and have had an amazing time with them!
In primary music classes, the students should sing, play instruments, move, listen and respond to music, read/write music and create. Fitting all of this in to a 30 minute lesson takes careful planning. It helps to fit it all in, if it all fits together. If you want the students to understand call and response, you teach them to sing a call and response song. If they can then listen to and respond to a call and response song you've tied together singing, read/write music (understanding form) and they are listening and responding. If it's a singing game, they are also moving to music.