menu   home About Me My Classroom Guest Post Workshops Guest Post

Making Music Interactive and a Music Teacher Facebook Frenzy

Happy Wednesday,

I am linking up today with I'm Lovin' Lit's Thursday Throw Down: Ways to Make Learning More Interactive with ways to make music more interactive plus a link to some cute interactive notebook ideas for music teachers.


Usually when I think about the word "interactive" I think about technology and interactive notebooks. I haven see some really cute ideas for music interactive notebooks at Emily's blog The Sweetest Melody, but I haven't really taken the interactive notebook plunge in my music room yet (future goal for sure!).
Picture from The Sweetest Melody
Picture from The Sweetest Melody

But looking at the word, something else comes to mind.


DANCING!  and more specifically, square dancing!


There are some wonderful square dance and folk dances that you can find. I use a lot of resources by the Amidons for my students. 


When you are square dancing, you are have to listen and respond to the music (or the caller) as well as communicate (mostly non-verbally) to your partner, corner, and the other members of your square.

At my school we do a HUGE Kansas Day celebration and part of that evening is folk dancing and square dancing. Each grade performs a dance on the stage for the parents. I really want to expand this in the future to a community folk dance night, but until I get really comfortable with teaching the dances, I will just stick with the kids! :)

This is such a great, interactive way to make those connections between music and dance and preserve a part of our culture and heritage. My kids LOVE to dance, and my fifth grade boys even beg for it!

I cannot count the valuable social aspects, especially when you start early. Dancing becomes a part of their culture. They forget about the opposite sex and cooties and just have fun and try to keep up. 

If you don't have your kids dancing in the music room yet, I highly suggest trying it out! 
If you are already dancing with your kids, you might be interested in this movement and folk dancing word wall. I use it to reinforce terminology that is new to them such as "longways set", "allemande", "dosido" and lots more! 


Here are a few sample pages:


Are you a music teacher on TPT? We are currently searching for some music teachers to take part in a Facebook Frenzy in early December. Here's a little info on how it works. Basically it's an organized Facebook event that is held during a weekend where teachers offer a free item via an application that is downloaded to your business facebook account. It cannot be something that is currently offered in your TPT store. This means that anyone who comes to get your freebie simply has to "like" your facebook page, and then there is a direct link to the next music teacher's facebook page once they have grabbed your freebies. Its a great way to build up followers and collaborate with music teachers around the world. 

The requirements for this frenzy are you have to offer a Winter/Christmas themed freebie and you must have a facebook business account (if you don't have one, now would be a great time to set one up!). 

If you are interested in joining the Music Teachers Facebook Frenzy follow this link:
This is a preliminary sign up, just to make sure we have enough music teachers to participate. A real sign up will follow soon!

If you are not on TPT and want to get started, here are some tips. Feel free to use my referral link. I'd be happy to help you get your store up and running in any way that I can! Just copy and paste this into your browser. It will look like the normal TPT site, but it tracks that it is from my referral link.
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Signup/referral:LJervis

If you're not interested in selling, you may still be interested all of the fantastic freebies that will be available during the frenzy so make sure that you are following my Facebook page, Lindsay's Kodaly Inspired Classroom or blog so you don't miss out!

Happy Thursday,

Lindsay

4 comments:

  1. I love this! Square dancing was always my favorite unit in PE! Haha! Thanks for linking up today, and good luck with your music teachers frenzy!
    :) Erin
    I'm Lovin Lit

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Erin! I have to take advantage of those adorable frames! :)
      Thanks for motivating me to do a blog post this week!

      I am REALLY looking forward to the music teacher facebook frenzy. This will be my first facebook frenzy and I love that we were able to get a category to ourselves! :) Do you have any frenzy tips?!

      Lindsay

      Delete
  2. First of all, this post is great! I hadn't thought about adding folk dancing words to my word wall and I can't wait to do it! You're awesome!

    Also, I know we've emailed and talked about the Kansas connection but somehow I lost your email! Ugh!

    Finally, I just looked at your TeachersPayTeachers Store and it's amazing! I am seriously so blown away by all the cool stuff you have there and especially by the Kodaly Super Pack. That's one crazy fantastic resource!

    Grabbed your button and added it to my site. What an awesome resource this page is!

    David
    MakeMomentsMatter.Weebly.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much, David! My email is LindsayJervis@hotmail.com Feel free to email any time!

      KMEK is hosting Dr. David Frego in Wichita on Jan. 4th. If you are interested you should definitely make the drive down! There will be tons of movement ideas since he is big into Dalcroze which I think I need more of in my life! :)

      Delete