What Christmas In July Taught Me About School Traditions

This year marked the seventeenth year that my Dad's side of the family has spent a week together at a lake in Minnesota.  Like many traditions, it has simple roots.  My dad's family camped at Widow Lake when he was a kid and my grandmother thought it would be a good thing to do again.  There are fifty people on my Dad's side of the family, so holidays are a bit crazy with all of our schedules.  My grandmother did not like how rushed Christmas became, so after a few years of going to Widow Lake, she suggested we celebrate Christmas while we were there.  We still celebrate in December, but that time is only for family time.  All presents are exchanged at the lake.  Due to schedule conflicts, the selling of the resort and financial issues, we are now on our fourth lake.  The location and activities may change (we are after all getting older and our bodies cannot endure the amount of water skiing, tubing and knee boarding we used to do), but the bonding time and family stories continue.  It is one week during the year that my whole family looks forward to with great excitement.  I was in sixth grade when we starting this tradition and this year I went to the lake with my husband.

What school traditions do you look forward to each year?  More importantly, what school traditions do your students look forward to?  When I taught in Alaska, we had Fries Friday (parents would make french fries out of our school grown potatoes), All School Hikes in the Fall and Spring and a 5K Race at the end of the year.  These were all events that our students and staff looked forward to each year.

Traditions do not need to be complicated.  They simply need to be something that people look forward to each year.  It could be a field trip, a unit of study, a school activity, a special day or an assembly.  My school cut elementary music a few years ago and I am still working on getting my students excited about music.  My goal this year is to continue things from last year and to start even more traditions this year.  Imagine the power if students and staff were constantly excited and looking forward to the next event or activity.  Traditions are a way to build this excitement.

Creating Magic

There have been a lot of articles and Tweets about stepping outside your comfort zone.  As I have been working on ideas for this upcoming school year, I realized that my comfort zone was preventing me from trying new ideas.  This is probably going to sound odd, but I do not like public speaking.  I am fine with my students in my classroom, but outside of this area, I get very nervous.  Due to this, I did not do a lot of parent communicating (unless it was forced).  This is one area I am focusing on this year.  I have created a Grade Level Syllabus and I am going to continue to update my Class Website and Digital Portfolios.  My hope is to give parents many platforms to see what is going on within their child's music class.  We all know that true growth and magic happen when we are outside our comfort zone.  

What are you doing this school year to step outside of your comfort zone?  What are you doing this school year to help your students step outside of their comfort zone?  I would love to hear about the new things you are trying in your classroom. 

Procedures

I recently had a Twitter conversation with a fellow music teacher about what to do during the first week of general music.  This conversation really make me stop and think about what I do during the first week and if what I have been doing in the past meets by goals.  During the first week I have two main goals: I want me students to get excited for a new year of music and I want to make sure my students clearly understand procedures.  There always comes a point during the school year where I wish my students would do something a certain way, so I am going to be even more deliberate about procedures this year.

Procedures That I Focus on the First Week
1.  How to enter/leave the music room.
2.  How to sit/seating charts.
3.  Hand signs (sit, stand and rest position.)
4.  Classroom expectations.
5.  Rules for playing instruments.
6.  Talking rules (sometimes I have them raise their hand and sometimes they can "shout" it out.)
7.  Handing out recorders and putting music folders away (3rd and 4th grades.)


What routines and procedures do you feel are the most important in your classroom?  How do you make sure your class starts off the new year in the right direction?

Music Syllabus

One of my goals this year is to be more intentional with my communications with parents.  I realized last school year that many parents do not truly understand what general music means or what it looks like in the year 2013.  Using technology and handouts, I have the ability to easily cure this problem.

I decided to create a "Syllabus" for each grade.  It lists performances and units of study for each month. I hope that this will help keep parents up to date on what is going on in their child's music class.

2013-2014 Music Syllabus

Do you use a Syllabus or similar document to show parents what their children are learning?  I would love to hear how you keep an open line of communication with parents.

Warm Kitty, Soft Kitty

I am starting the year off by using Warm Kitty, Soft Kitty as my August Song of the Month.  Along with being a folk song, many other concepts can be explored using this piece. 

1. Round (Grades 2-4)

2. Orff - Melody 

3. Harmony (Grade 4)

4. Boomwhackers

Recorder Karate 2013

This year I decided to make a slight change in how I organize my Recorder Karate.  In previous years, I have lamented colored pieces of paper and I would write student's names on the corresponding belt sheet when they passed their test.  This became very time consuming for me and my students were continually getting annoyed when I would forget to write their names on the paper.  This year I am trying this setup (I found this idea on Pinterest).  I wrote each student's name on a clothespin and there are responsible for moving it to the right colored plate.

I also use colored string on the end of their individual recorder, but I have found having a bulletin board also aids in student motivation.

Classroom Tour 2013

This will be my second year at the same school and after rearranging many times last school year, I have found a setup that I am happy with.  Therefore, I am only changing a few things for this upcoming school year.

1.  The upper portion of the inside of the classroom door.

2.  The bottom portion of the inside of my door.

3.  Music History Area-Along with the time periods, we keep track of the music we listen to.

4.  Orff Area

5.  Word Wall Area

6.  For some reason I have two pianos in my classroom, so I use one of them has a book area.

7.  The front of my classroom-I post the National Music Standards under the white board so that students know what we are working on.