Music Classroom Set Up

Hello, and welcome to a new school year. I am already two days in with my students, and August has just been a whirlwind, so I am just now getting around to putting up all of the pictures I took of my room as I was putting it all together. I am linking up with Mrs. Miracle's post, "My Music Room Set Up". You can click this picture to see her room set up as well as several other music teachers who have linked up at the bottom of her post. Let's be honest, I have no idea where I would be without Pinterest and other music bloggers when it comes to setting up my room, so I am really excited to share my room this year!

                    

I have a huge room.

                   

It is a blessing in so many ways that I can have plenty of room for any folk dancing, the sound is great, I get natural light from outside and the high ceilings make it seem even more open.

There are a few downsides to my room though. Nearly all my walls are covered with windows, white board, and cabinets, so I really don't have as much wall space as I wish, and I have not gotten really brave and put anything on the walls really high up. 

I decided I wanted to go with a nautical theme in my room this year after seeing some really cute clip art and being inspired by a few images online. I have two small bulletin boards and one big one and that's about all of the wall space I have. On my first board, I decided that I wanted to have something with the lines and spaces of the staff, so I came up with this board:

For my big board, by the entrance in the back of my room, I decided to replace my quote board from last year with this new quote:

I made the lighthouse out of wrapping paper, the bottom of the board is burlap scrunched and stapled. I really like the other boarder I used. It was double sided border and has animal print on the reverse side. I figured I could save it for whenever I do a "Wild About Music" board.

In the limited wall space beside my window, I hung my recorder rules.

 These bookshelves house my small Orff instruments, all of my classroom percussion instruments, vocal exploration toys, puppets, small buckets and tin cans for bucket drumming, and a few of my manipulatives.

Last year I created a story corner in my room and I love it. I like having my books displayed so that I can easily find what I am looking for and have a dedicated place to put them. I also have my movement/folk dancing word wall in this corner. 

I found these cute fish magnets at Dollar Tree, and I have 16 small heartbeats and 8 larger heartbeat magnets. Those are SO useful!!!  

On my other small bulletin board, Solfa Street has morphed into Solfa Sea this year! I've just been using push pins on them so I can take them off and add them with different grades. I keep a lot of manipulatives (rhythm flashcards, student staffs, high/low charts, pointers, etc.) on this table that I use frequently, and it's a good place to lay what I will need for the day. I'm also using Aileen Miracle's "I can" objectives for each grade level. I love how they work even when I am preparing a concept!

Because of my limited wall space and my addiction to pinterest, the last two years I have used the sides of my file cabinets as makeshift bulletin boards. I used wrapping paper for the background and just taped trim around it. I plan to use one for a "Composer of the Month" and on another I am thinking about creating a magnetic tone ladder. I'll post pictures if I do! :) 

                   And I have my music rules are displayed on the board.                       

 

Thanks for peeking in my room! What do you think of the theme this year?

Products for Prep and a TpT SALE

Here are some of the things from my store that I think will help your year get started off on the right track!

1) MUSIC Rules {Posters and Songs}

I believe it is so important to get kids used to singing, moving and playing games from the first day of music. Last summer I was really stuck on how to get in more singing on the first day while you are also worried about getting all of your rules and procedures covered. I decided one thing I could do was set my rules to folk tunes. Now, this is not a very "Kodaly" thing to do because obviously the words are contrived, but it is much more enjoyable for both me and my students to learn the rules through song. I found that it helped the remember the rules better and if a rule wasn't being followed, sometimes I would only have to hum the tune and the kids knew exactly what I meant and were right back on track.

For my rules, they spell out "MUSIC"
M- Make good choices
U- Use kind words
S- Show respect to classmates, teacher, and the music
I- Involve yourself
C- Care for our room and instruments

I have a little poster for each one.

I put magnetic tap to the back and hang them on my board. This stuff is amazing! I cut a piece for each corner that was maybe a 1/2 inch and I still have plenty left!

Each rule has a song, set to a familiar folk tune. Last year since the rules and songs were brand new to my students, I just focused on one a day so we could talk about what it meant, learn the song, but not waste our entire 30 minutes on learning the music room rules songs. So it took me five class periods to cover all of them. This year with the upper grades, since most of the kids will already know them, we will go over all of them quickly on the first day, with a bit of role playing and breaking/following the rules demonstrations, sing the song that corresponds and move on! K and 1st grade I will do as I did last year and do one per day.

Here's an example of what the songs are like:

If you are interested in a set of rules posters and songs like this for your classroom, I have these three different themes:

- Bright Chevrons, Birds and Owls

- Music Notes and Kids

- Nautical Theme (pictured above)

2) Yearly Planning Guide

In my poolside planning post, I shared a free sample of how I get started with my yearly. If you would like to see each grade level laid out by rhythmic and melodic concepts for the whole year as well as a song list for each grade level divided by rhythmic and melodic concepts, you might be interested in my "Ready, Set Plan" file which will map out the whole year, or my "Off to the Races" which will map out the first semester. 

The excel files are completely editable (for personal use) so if your kids are in different places or you need to spend more or less time on a concept, you can totally adjust as needed. The song lists should not be taken as "grade level" song lists, but more of "concept song lists" so if your fourth graders are just now getting to re it's not a big deal, you just go with where YOUR kids are at. Everyone's schedule is different I have seen a LOT of crazy schedules out there. We are all doing the best we can with the time we are given. 

3) Music Room Decor 

Whether you would love to have some new posters for your wall, instrument labels, binder covers, or ready-made bulletin boards sets, you can probably find it in my store.

This year I am going with a quotes of "Music Washes Away from the Soul the Dust of Everyday Life" and "Music is like the ocean, it belongs to everyone" as my inspiration for my nautical themed music room. 

Although my room decor isn't all up yet, I really love the way it is coming together!

I will be sure to post more pictures when I get the whole thing done!

Yearly Planning for Music Teachers

My first year teaching (during my pre-Kodaly training days) I planned for each day and and no real long term vision for my classes or from year to year. During my Level 2 training, Lisa Simmelink really helped me understand concept and long range or yearly planning. One of our assignments was to map out concepts for the whole year for one grade level.

Every music teacher wants to get their year started off on the right track, reviewing where they left off with each grade level and getting new students caught up to speed.  From there we hope to stay on track progressing through the musical concepts we have planned for that grade level. In addition to that, we are thinking about our music programs and performances and how that all fits in to our yearly calendar and planning.  Having a plan in place helps to guide my planning for the whole year. 

So let's get started with yearly plans. When I do long term planning, I like to start with yearly plans and break it down by month, just looking at concepts. What do I want my students to be practicing by that month? Will I be preparing any new concepts? Will I be presenting a concept? Make sure that you are always working both melodically and rhythmically in every lesson. Go month by month for each grade level deciding about how long you will spend preparing/practicing each concept. Remember to be flexible!

Here is a sample of what my long range planning looks like. This is for kindergarten from August through December. I make different colors for different concepts (pink for Kindergarten concepts, yellow for rhythmic concepts, blue for melodic concepts, and the older grades also include scale and meter). I separate by month across the top and the light shades of each color represent concepts that are in the Practice stage (known concepts), while the darker shades represent the concepts that are being prepared and presented.

Want to see more?

These templates are samples from my planning sets on TPT which includes both yearly plans and song lists by concept for each grade level.

Getting from Yearly Plans to Lesson Plans Once you have the concepts you want to teach for each month and each grade level, make song lists for each grade level. Make a list of all the concepts you included on your Monthly/Yearly plans for that grade level (I’ve started one for you for each grade level, but you may need to adjust it to fit your needs). Under each concept heading make a list of all the songs you plan to use while working on that concept. That way when I are look ahead to my third grade planning in September I can see I want to be practicing re and tiri-tiri and preparing ti-tiri, then I would go to my third grade song list and find a song list for ti-tiri to find songs under that concept to weave my lesson plan together.

Here's a sample of what my first page of my 3rd grade song list looks:

For the little kids I like to have a ton of songs/games/activities in each lesson (probably 7-10) in a 30 minute lesson. For the older kids, I choose less song materials per lesson, but go deeper with the songs. Plus by then, their songs are a bit longer. 

Want a closer look at my "Ready, Set, Plan" yearly planning set? Check out this video:

Do you have different strategies for long term planning? I'd love to hear them in the comments below!

Design My Music Room Contest

Every summer I spend so much time thinking about how I am going to decorate my music room for the year. I spend hours (probably days or weeks) on Pinterest scouring through music bulletin board pictures and classroom organization idea. 

I loved my room design and bulletin boards this year. I kind of went with a bird theme!

Click on the picture above to see my MUSIC room rules posters and songs in my store.

Click here for bulletin board cut outs, lettering counts, and instructions.

Have you ever day a great idea for your music room decor, but just don't have the time or know how or resources to put it together? Well next year may be your lucky year.

I am so excited to announce a "Design My Music Room Contest!

What it entails:

A few lucky people will receive a music classroom kit (bulletin board layouts, letter counts, posters, instrument labels, solfege hand signs, anything you can think of that you need to decorate your room) designed by yours truly absolutely free!

How to enter:

Comment below with the following:

1) Room theme- choose a theme for your room. It could be based off a quote like mine was this year ("The woods would be very silent..."- don't choose this or birds since that was my theme from last year!), or it could be a more generic theme like "Soaring High in Music", "Wild About Music", the list goes on.

2) Come up with two bulletin board ideas/headings

3) List any other room decor that you would want included in this kit besides bulletin boards. (MUSIC class rules with your theme, schedule cards, hand sign posters, lesson planner cover, dynamics posters, instrument labels, inspirational posters- SERIOUSLY, include anything you need to decorate your room- that I am capable of!).

4) Leave your email address so that if I chose to create your music room design, I can send you a free copy!

Selection will mostly be based on whether I can find good clip art to suit the project and whether I feel excited and inspired by it. I am not sure at this time how many winners will be selected. It all depends on the number of entries and the time I have available to work on them over the summer.

If you enter, please read through any other entries to make sure that your idea hasn't already been said. If two ideas are really similar, the free file will go to the first teacher that left the comment.

I am excited to see what you come up with!

Music Room Organization {Part 1: Digital Files}

Let's face it! Music teachers have a LOT of STUFF! Our rooms are full of instruments, sound equipment, puppets, books, manipulatives and that doesn't even scratch the surface of keeping everything organized on our laptops!

On my Facebook page, I asked for some topics to blog about and one teacher requested that I write a post on how I keep all my visuals organized and ready to use without wasting too much down time!

For today's post, I am strictly going to show some ways that I (try to) keep organized so that I can quickly find what I need for each class, especially when you have classes with zero break in between and so that there is as little down time as possible DURING the class. I don't know about you, but I only see my kids for 30 minutes twice a week- each second counts!

To start off with I have anything and everything that I would ever need at school all saved to an external hard drive.

I bought two of them on sale during Black Friday.

I have several reasons for doing this, and it may or may not be something you want to look into. 

1) If anything should happen to my computer, I can take this and hook it up to ANY computer. I've had to borrow my PE teacher's laptop for a day when mine decided not to work. Having all my files stored on an external hard drive was a life saver and meant that I could continue on with my lessons as planned.

2) It gives me a permanent back up of all my files that I create or download from other TPT music teachers. (I also store many things on dropbox and google drive). I'm just SO terrified of losing my things.

3) I store a TON of clip art that I use to make all of my files, so I really need a lot of storage space.

To start off with, I save to that hard drive in one main folder with several sub folders.

Click to enlarge

Within this main teaching folder are many, many sub folders organized by concepts. I also have a big one titled "Songs" which I will explain in a minute.

So, say I am working on my lesson planning for teaching half note, I pull up my half note folder and it has ALL of my digital files for that concept.

Click to enlarge.

I start by going to my concept plan.

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(snapshot taken from my concept plan for half note, available in my Songs and Games to Teach Half Note) Here I have outlined all of the songs I can use and I make a column that says teaching materials where I list any resources I have created (or collected) that I don't want to forget. I haven't made visuals for all of the songs on the repertoire list, so I make a note of what songs I do have those digital visuals ready to go.

I use my concept plans, my notes from my Kodaly Certification, the American Methodology and Yearly Plans while writing my own plans, but this organization on the digital end helps me figure out what songs/activities I can plug where. If you don't have those materials, I highly suggest you look into them. Another thing that you might find helpful in your long term planning is my Jan.- May Planning Guide

It includes song lists by grade level as well as rhythmic and melodic concepts mapped out for when I plan to prepare, present and practice them (from Jan-May). I hope to make another set before back to school for Aug.through Dec.

Once I have my plans done, and the school day is upon me, how do I transition between files for each class/grade?

In the morning I see 4th, 3rd, then 5th, so I go to my lesson planner before school and I see what digital files I will need for the morning, and have them all pulled up so they are ready to go and I can quickly move from one to the next while my kids are singing.

If they are all songs, an easy way I have found is to have a folder that has all my song visuals. I just go to that folder and type in the song title and poof! There it is! That way I don't have to dig through all my concept folders. 

Song File contains ALL my song visuals in ABC order

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Quickly find what I need by typing in the title.

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At lunch I close out of all my 3rd-5th files and open all my 1st and 2nd. 

How to transition during/between classes:

Since all my files that I need for a class are already open, all I have to do to transition between files, is hover over the PowerPoint of PDF icon at the bottom of my screen, depending on what kind of file it is, and select my file. I always try to do this when my kids are busy doing something else. Say we were at the board to read and clap the rhythm for "Who's That Tapping At Your Window?", then we went to the circle and played the game, as my kids are going back to the board and I am transitioning to the next song (and file) I can have them sing "Who's That?" and assign soloists or if the next song is one they know well by memory, I have have them sing it while I pull up the slide. They are not sitting there waiting for me because it takes them more time to get to their spot than it does for me to switch files, and I can quickly make the switch to Rocky Mountain.

Click to enlarge

I hope this helps give you some ideas on how to organize your digital files. Later this week, I hope to blog about getting manipulatives organized for each class period.

If you have different/more efficient ways of organizing digital files, PLEASE feel free to share! :) We can all learn from each other! Either comment or link up below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Bulletin Board is Ready for Autumn

Before back to school, I posted about my bulletin boards here.

Today we have a work in our rooms day and this bulletin board got a slight makeover so that it is now ready for Autumn.

I always feel like I am way too busy to change my bulletin boards, so they usually stay up all year, but this is a small change that took less than 10 minutes and will be a "fresh" look for me and my students. 

To change out the colors, I pre-cut out the circles from scrapbook paper, and then paper clipped it over the top of my green circles until I had the colors and patterns arranged in a way that I liked. Then I took the green circles down and stapled these up! Quick and easy!

If you are interested, I have a "Bird Themed Bulletin Board Set" available on my TPT store that has lettering counts and the adorable printable birds for the board above as well as this board:

Click on the picture below to check it out!

How often do you change your bulletin boards? What are some of your favorite bulletin board designs? Do you have any time saving bulletin board tips?

Also, I just found this awesome bluebird knitting pattern FREE on pinterest. He would be perfect for "Bluebird, Bluebird Through My Window" and some vocal exploration. I need to do some begging to the knitters I know!

Picture and pattern by Sara Elizabeth Kellner

Click here to get the free pattern for this darling bird!

Lindsay

Ideas for Organizing Your Music Room

Make sure you scroll down to the very end of this post or you will miss out on linking up with other fabulous music teachers!

Here are some ideas for classroom organization:

1. Velcro spots and circle

I bought my colored velcro from Hobby Lobby with coupons. You can only use the hook side (rough side). It sticks to the floor so well! The first day we talked about taking care of our room and our spots. I cut the velcro small enough that if they are sitting on it, it won't stick out, so they shouldn't play with it. If I notice someone who is playing with it I take a moment to say "Thank you to everyone who is sitting with their pockets on their velcro and not touching it! That really helps take care of our room!" and the student who was messing with it corrects their behavior without being singled out.

I love having a circle on my floor this year. It cuts out on all the time figuring out how to make the circle and gives us more time for making music! To make a circle, I took a plastic solo cup, punched a hole in the top and fed yarn through it. I taped the cup to the floor and the cup was the center of my circle. I used the yarn to help me go around and lay down the velcro. I laid down one color at a time to keep them evenly spaced.  

Board spots: In front of my board, I have three rows of velcro and these spots are numbered with permanant marker. Each student has an assigned board spot. This also helps transition to the circle. I can call "Pinks, go find a pink spot on the circle". That has also helped us mix a little better in the circle instead of being by our best friends or all the girls on one side of the circle and all the boys on the other side of the circle. 

2. Position Posters

Position posters: I  found these on a blog and modified them a bit to fit my needs by cutting off their labels and adding my own (the green). I changed the "group poster" (pink) to the reading corner and used a sharpie to draw a chair, book and hair for the teacher. You can  find these here: http://deborahkoakes.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/three-qs-of-perfect-circle-making/ They are perfect for labeling all of the areas in our room so that I can quickly direct kids where to go and they have a visual for what I want it to look like.

3. Music Rules

I made music rules that spell out MUSIC and coordinate with my music themed bulletin boards. These rules are available on my TPT store in a few different styles and come with a song for teaching each that is set to  a folk tune.

4. Reading corner

You may have read about my ugly record holder here. I painted it a pretty light blue and re-purposed it as a reading corner in my room to have a dedicated space to songtales.

 BONUS  5. Instrument Labels

I accidentally didn't change my printer setting to print to the edge, but I think doing that would get rid of the white border. These labels are available on my tpt store here. 

 

Now head on over to the linky party to link up with other music teachers to see what they are doing in their classroom: