Make It / Take It for Music Teachers

Last Winter I organized a Make It / Take It for the Kodaly Music Educators of Kansas.

I thought I would share with you what we did at this make it/ take it in case other districts, chapters, or groups of music teacher friends are interested in putting together their own "Make It / Take It".

We decided that we would make the following manipulatives/games at our workshop:

1) Solfege texting sticks

For this manipulative, each teacher got a set of Popsicle sticks and a pentatonic page of the texting tone ladders to cut out. We stuck them to the Popsicle sticks with rubber cement. It was a little sticky. Hot glue might work better, but glue along the top edges of the paper will help keep students from picking the paper off the sticks. Download a FREE template here.

(Photo credit: Jennifer Patterson)

A few ideas for using them:

-        Sing a known song on solfege and have students use finger to “text” the solfege as they sing

-        Sing a known song on words and have the students “text” the solfege

-        Sing do pentatonic melodic patterns and have students echo as they “text” the pattern

-        Sing melodic patterns on neutral syllable and have students respond with the solfege as they text. 

2) Foam rhythm cubes

Teachers got a set of 16 cubes. You can order them in bulk here. They could chose what rhythms to put on the sides. I really wanted a set for just ta, titi, ta rest, and takadimi (tika-tika, etc.), so I left two sides blank. Leaving those sides blank opens up the opportunity for student composing or improv if they can fill in their own rhythm on those empty beats. 

Ideas for use:

-        Students use the cubes in centers or small groups to find the rhythms of known songs (8 or 16 beats)

-        Compose new rhythm

-        Dictate 4 beat rhythm patterns

-     Compose or improvise new patterns on the blank cubes.

3) Sorted bags of colored transparent bingo chips to use on student high low charts or staves

There wasn't anything to make at this station, but a lot of teachers wanted these bingo chips to use on their high/low charts and staves. I have a high low chart, a staff without the clef, and a staff with the clef that is laminated for each student in my class. These chips are cool because although they are colored, they are transparent, so students can see the line going through the middle of them if it is supposed to be on a line and they fit between the lines perfectly for space notes. Each teacher got 250 chips and they could put however many they wanted in bags depending on their class sizes. You can order these chips in bulk here.

Ideas for use:

-        Use the chips to notate, dictate, or compose melodic patterns on student staff paper

4) Four Beat Heartbeat Charts

Teachers got 120 heart die cuts and 30 strips of paper that were cut/punched out ahead of time. They glued down the hearts four to a strip to create 4 beat heartbeat charts. 

Ideas for use:

-        Students may tap the beat to known folk songs or recorded music

-        Students use Popsicle sticks to dictate patterns on top of the heartbeats

-        Students use erasers, beads, etc. to show how many sounds they hear on each beat

5) I Have, Who Has game cards

I had a class set of "I Have, Who Has - Tika-tika" cards printed for KMEK members. If you want a ready to print set of cards, you can find them in my TpT store here (lots of different concepts are available), or you could create a rhythm list and create your own cards by handwriting them. If using my set with a big group of teachers, email me at lindsayjervis@hotmail.com for special pricing on additional licenses. The teachers who attended the workshop just had to cut them out and laminate them! 

Prep Work Before the Workshop

To prep for the make it / take it workshop, I spent a lot of time looking for ideas on Pinterest. I put together a Pinterest board with some ideas and let KMEK members comment in our Facebook group to say which manipulatives they would like for us to make. You can see the idea board here.
Once we decided what we were going to make, I ordered all of the materials. Some KMEK members helped in advance cutting out all of the heart die cuts cutting strips for the heart beat charts. Once we had enough materials for all of the participants, we sorted everything into bags for each teacher and I printed up a contents sheet with instructions and ideas for use for everything in the bag. Download the instructions page we used here and feel free to edit it for your own personal use!

Participants had to pre-register for the workshop so that we could anticipate how many sets of materials we would need to order. There was a lot of prep work that went into this workshop to make it a success, but it was a lot of fun, and our students got to have lots of new hands on manipulatives and games to use in music class as a result! It is always so much more fun to make these things with a group of friends than on your own, and you can benefit from buying in bulk if you are splitting the costs between several teachers.

Here are a few more photos of our make it / take it workshop:

If you have any questions about our make it/take it workshop or organizing your own, please do not hesitate to email me at LindsayJervis@hotmail.com

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:

Making Musical Transitions

When I first started teaching I had no concept of musical transitions. I would simply move from one activity to another. Often during this time the kids would get off task waiting to see what the next activity was going to be. During level 1, I got to see how the fabulous Jo Kirk would weave her songs together through stories and though I am not as creative as she is, I began to create stories to connect the songs I was using with my first and second graders. After my Kodaly Levels 2 and 3, I feel like am better at making MUSICAL transitions.

A musical transitions will guide your students throughout your entire lesson, connecting songs with melodic and rhythmic activities. These should never be drills, but simply a way of getting from point A to point B.

Here are some examples of melodic transitions using the melodic element "fa" and the songs,  "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" transitioning to "Chairs to Mend"

Students sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on solfa with hand signs.

Teacher then shows 4 or 8 melodic flashcards. Here's the key. They are NOT FOR DRILL! The flashcards should be purposefully selected, not just "let's do a stack of flashcards". The first flashcard should have some tonal pattern from the song you are coming from and ending with a tonal pattern of the song you are going to. In between are tonal patterns of known songs. I would write down the exact tonal patterns I was going to use in my lesson plans including what songs they are from so that I could have all my visuals ready.

Here's how it would look: 

(pattern from "Twinkle Twinkle"

(pattern from "This Old Man")

(Pattern from "Are You Sleeping?/Brother John")

(pattern from "Chairs to Mend")

Which leads right to our next song! Sing on text then add canon:

Another way to get from songs with similar tone sets would be to use a tone ladder. Taking the same two songs, you could first sing "Twinkle Twinkle" then point to the pitch ladder having students sing on solfa with hand signs. You could do the whole song, then move to song fragments from other known songs ending with your starting phrase of the next song in your lesson. Your tone ladder could be projected onto the board like this:

Or you could use cut outs like these:

Rhythm transition activities:

Another rhythmic transition that could be used here would be flashcards. Again, the use of the flashcards is not for drill, but to guide us from one song quickly to the next for a seamless transition with no wasted time.

I could start with:

(from "Chicken on a Fence Post")

(From "Dinah")

(From "Golden Ring Around the Susan Girl")

(From "Old Brass Wagon")

And off you go with singing "Old Brass Wagon" and performing the square dance!

One of my goals for the upcoming school year is to work on including more musical transitions like these for grades 2-5. What other kinds of transitions do you use? What are your goals for the upcoming school year?

If you like the transition resources I have used in this post, they are all available at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store:

Fa Melodic Transition Staff Cards {FREEBIE}

Tone Ladders (Over 50 Pages of tone ladders that you can project or cut out and put on your board)

Rhythm Flashcards - Available by concept or in a Mega Set-The ones I used in this post were from my tiri-tiri (or tika-tika, takadimi, etc.) set

2, 4, 6, 8 and the Featured Item of the Week- click to see!

Thank you for visiting my blog! For those of you who are new to my blog or Teachers Pay Teachers store, every week I feature one of the items in my store. In the past, I have advertised the what the item is on my blog and on my Facebook page. This week, I am changing it a little so you have to click on the picture to see what the sale item is. If you take advantage of this sale, please take a moment after reviewing the product or using it in your classroom and leave feedback on the product page on Teachers Pay Teachers. This helps me to know that you found it to be accurate, a valuable tool to your teaching toolbox, and hopefully that it saved you some prep time and that your kids LOVED it! If you find any errors please let me know so that I can fix them. If this ever occurs, I almost always have the item fixed that same day! By leaving feedback you also earn credits towards any future purchases on TpT! It's a great way to save on excellent resources created by teachers for teachers. 

Don't forget to enter my April Giveaway to win any item your choice of any item from my store. The winner will be drawn on May 1st. 

I just finished some really adorable slides for the song "2, 4, 6, 8." This song is awesome for teaching rhythm as the "way the words go" or in your prepare/present/practice of ti-ti.

Here's a preview of some of the slides and student worksheets:

Title Page

Lyrics

Icons for steady beat- I use these before I introduce the heart beat, if I am preparing steady beat.

Lyrics added: 

Now with heart beats:

Heartbeats plus lyrcis.

Icons for "the way the words go", rhythm, and visually preparing ta and ti-ti.

I have also come up with the following student worksheets that are great for tracking the steady beat, and pre-reading ta and titi with "long and short". Print one for each student or print and laminate a class set to reuse. 

"2, 4, 6, 8" Is available on my store here.

Thanks for stopping by!