Music Teacher Coffee Talk

Music Teacher Coffee Talk · MTCT Episode #83: New Favorites for 5th and 6th Grade In this episode, Carrie and Tanya discuss their new favorite activities for 5th and 6th grade. We both have had to make many adjustments to our traditional Kodály-inspired curriculum due to COVID restrictions as well as larger focus on SEL, World Music Pedagogy, and social justice in our music rooms. We both have reduced the amount of activities promoting music literacy (traditional Western European literacy) and have chosen to try new ideas and activities in this unusual year. Here are some of our new favorites that we have tried and we felt were successful. Main Theme: New Favorites for 5th and 6th Grade Tanya has enjoyed doing more World Music Pedagogy this year, especially a unit on Brazilian music at the start of the year which helped build relationships and set a joyful tone to her music room. She has incorporated ukulele into her 5th grade classes where students do lots of play-along videos with...

Music Teacher Coffee Talk · MTCT Episode #82: Planning for the Second Semester In this episode, Carrie and Tanya discuss how we planning and adjusting for the second semester of the 2020-2021 school year. Main Theme January is a great time to reevaluate your long-term, yearly plans and make necessary adjustments for the second half of the year. This is especially true this year when so much has changed and is continuing to evolve. We used the following questions to guide our discussion: How have your yearly plans changed this year? How are you adjusting for the second semester based on what was taught in the first semester and what current student needs are? How have you adapted your Kodály-inspired concept plans and the pacing in which you prepare, present, and practice concepts? What concepts or activities have you chosen to remove this year? What have you put in its place? Know Better, Do Better As inspired by a question from David Marx on Instagram, we discussed how we would resp...