Field work

We are taking the kids to the art institute today so casual tones down is good. I have on my tennis shoes just in case I have to run down a bus.

Socks

Interesting patterns and colors make the kids pay attention to you. I have found that interesting socks are great for my small ones and they really do look out for it. I have never once told them to either.

Piano City

As it is Friday, I can wear jeans to work today. This is what I chose to wear instead of a school spirit t-shirt. My students and colleagues have grown accustomed to my Friday Music need shirts.

Hi 5

Today's crazy music teacher outfit is brought to you by the threadless company and their awesome hi 5 shirt.  Also by trendy pants from old navy and a crazy sweater my mom purchased for me. It is pretty much a perfect outfit for the first week after break.

Side note: we use high five at my school as an everybody listen strategy so it is doubly awesome for me.

Simply Seuss

Today's crazy music teacher outfit is accented by the amazing earrings purchased for me by my partner teacher.

Concert planning

My second grade concerts are coming up and the real secret is getting tons of work done before the kids even know they have a concert. I am so lucky to have a partner teacher who also understands this. We were planning out details last night until about 6:00. One of those details included researching costs of a pirate costume for our principal.
It may be lots of work with early mornings am late nights but I still have the best job.

Grading

I am in the midst of a massive grading session. I am really not the best at getting all of my grading done right away. I have about 175 students of every grade so the first class of 25 is no problem, then you get to kid number 100 and you can't look at the assignment any more.
One of the most difficult parts of being a specials teacher comes with keeping all of the work organized and getting it to the right classes every day. I don't typically have a lot of paper and pencil work in my music classroom.The work I am grading now is assessed this way though due to the nature of the task.
Second graders just finished some note reading work with recognizing the direction of the notes either up, down, or repeated notes as well as writing the notes as a step, skip, or repeat on the staff. This has to be assessed in some sort of paper/pencil way until I have a tech app that can be used across the whole class.
Third grade was writing their own music and performing it. The parts I am grading on paper are the students' writing works. I am checking for their understanding of how to write notes on the staff, put the correct number of notes in a measure, and checking to see if they wrote their own music of just copied my example off the board. It is amazing to see how I can do the example on the SMART board and then take the whole thing down and they can recall exactly what I did and reproduce it with no changes. I had one class where 6 kids came up to me for checks, all having my example note for note.
I also have been watching the videos they took of each other playing their songs. This gives me  a performance grade as well. Can you write it? Can you do it? It is so much fun seeing my students not only create their own work but work together to practice and perform their works.

A New Start

As I bring more and more to my profession, I have been putting more and more online. I realized that I don't always want to blend my home and work life. So, I will be keeping this blog as a space for teaching ideas, lessons that worked, and all things revolving around my classroom.
Enjoy!