Episode #78: What's Working

Music Teacher Coffee Talk · MTCT #78: What's Working

In this episode, Tanya and Carrie discuss what's been working this school year. We talk about ideas for in person learning, remote synchronous learning, and remote asynchronous learning. All of these ideas are tried and true activities we have tried with our students with success!

Main Theme: What's Working in Our Classrooms This Year

• Use Boomwhackers as arm extenders to play games such as Apple Tree or London Bridge where you catch students in a bridge.
• When playing an elimination game remotely, have a Google Slide with students names on it, and point to names while screen sharing. Drag the name of the students who is out to a different place on the screen. Another option: use the attendance feature on Class Dojo and point to their monster icons.
• Hide and Seek type games work will for socially-distant music. These are games where students hide an object in the room, and while one student is looking for the object, the students sing louder or softer. Songs that work well for this are Lucy Locket, Closet Key, Button You Must Wander, and Blacksnake. Be sure to use plastic items that are easy to clean.
• Remote learners (both synchronous and asynchronous) can enjoy an instrument scavenger hunt where they look for things to use at home to hit, shake, and scrape.
• Consider using Orff instruments and ensembles to take the place of singing and other melodic activities.
• Be sure to include physical writing activities in addition to tech-friendly versions. Students can used shared white boards and markers that are cleaned afterwards, individual music kits with manipulative and writing supples (see Carrie's kit items and templates here), or bring their own pencils to music to do a worksheet. Drag and drop tech activities are great, but students still need to write!
• Seesaw is still a favorite tool for literacy activities, and especially for having students record themselves, either video or audio.
• Consider doing centers/stations, but be mindful of what materials students are sharing and how you will encourage social distancing. Many stations can be done using individual tech devices, but still rotating around the room.
• When doing focused listening, give students sentence starters that help students make observations on what they hear.
• Seesaw is a great tool that allows students to draw, type a note, or record audio or a video to answer a prompt for music listening and evaluation.

Know Better, Do Better

Be aware of the use of gender norms and roles in the music room, whether it's a part of a song, game, dance, or your own use of gender assignments in simple directions such as putting things away or lining up at the end of class. Rather than calling "boys" and "girls" in groups, call students by the color they are wearing or birthday months. Instead of saying "boys and girls" when addressing your class, consider "students," "musicians," or "5th graders." Also think about pronoun use in songs and chants and be inclusive in your use of they/them/their as well as he/him and she/her.

Coda

Tanya has been enjoying the book Matched by Ally Condie

Carrie has been enjoying watching Schitt's Creek