Finally ready for show

Next week, I have two grade levels doing their shows on the same day. Fourth grade sounds great! My fifth graders, however, were really worrying me. Last week, after too much playing around and not sounding well-prepared, I cut two songs (they loved the two songs, but they love most of them) and I decided that many others they would only sing one verse of. So this weekend, I loaded songs into Garage Band and cut out verses (I was really proud of figuring out how) and burned a CD with their new concert repertoire. Then today they blew me away. All of the sudden they sound much better. Apparently they realized it would be embarrassing to sound bad on stage (that's what one boy remarked). So I put a song back in (the teacher running the CD player will just have to switch CDs for that one). I'm feeling much better now.

Breakthrough!

Today I had what I consider to be a major victory. It involved one of those students I never felt I could get through to. He wouldn't make eye contact, and he would mumble at me. The only time he would talk to me is when he was in trouble and I would tell him he had to answer me before he could go to recess. Then he would mumble "OK" to my question about how he's going to behave better and take off. This was an issue other teachers had with him, although he talked to his peers with no problem. He just seemed to have a hard time with adults.

Lately, he's been making progress. First, he was opening his textbook to the correct page! (his classroom teacher dissmissed that as trying to get a good report in the upcoming conferences). Last week, I invited students to write questions about George Gershwin on the board, and he wrote one incorporating a fact I had told them about him. Then, today, he raised his hand to answer a question and gave me an appropriate answer!!! I'm feeling so much better; I will never forget the girl who left last year and I never felt like I could get through to her: she was a classic "revenge behavior" student. So now I have hope.

Cool, free resources

Today, I found a cool resource. There's a PBS show which features young musicians, interviews them, and shows them performing at Carnegie Hall. PBS allows you to download them into itunes, and has lesson plans that go along with them here. I put them all on my work laptop, so I can project them for my students. I'll probably just play clips so they can really see the musical instruments, and see that kids their age can play them.

Also, if anyone knows some great Gershwin resources, please let me know in the comments. Thank you : )

Music teacher meeting (the fun part of my job)

Today, all the music teachers from my district got together (all three of us). Last year there were four, and two of them tended to go off on tangents about stuff, but one's been out so just the three of us met. We had a really enjoyable time. We're working on a song to present when our boss retires. So we spent our meeting singing and making up a dance together. Plus we did some gossiping (the principal I've had some issues with is resigning! and so the others are being moved around). This is one of the great parts about being a music teacher. Other teachers go to inservices about reading, but ours involve singing and dancing. When sharing lesson plans, we end up drumming. I think it's important to have that good adult time in my job.

They can read!!!

My first year teaching music, I assumed that my sixth graders knew how to read notation. I realized, about halfway through the year, that they didn't. I assumed this meant that their previous teacher hadn't done a great job with them. My next year, my sixth graders didn't seem to remember learning to read notation. That year, I knew exactly what they had been taught, so instead of placing blame, began trying harder to reinforce notation.

This year, finally, my students have retained from last year how to read notation. There are a few things I've been doing that I think I'll continue with. One thing I do is connect the staff to their hand. That was Guido's intention in the first place, and it seems to work. As students say Every Good Boy...or whatever, they touch each finger with the opposite hand, kind of like playing "this little piggy". Then they wiggle the appropriate finger at me (and I haven't yet had a student associate B on the third line with a vulgar hand gesture). This kinesthetic reinforcement seems to have made a difference.

I also make sure that students are learning to read music in association with playing it. Some teachers in my district will only allow students to play recorders after they can fill out a worksheet identifying all the notes. I'd rather use recorders as a teaching tool than a carrot, and I'm finally happy with the results. Today, I gave my sixth graders some easy notation and a review on recorder fingerings, and they figured out the songs with out me. Woo hoo!

Mainstreaming Special Ed with Music

At my schools, special ed students are mainstreamed for music. That means that a class of special education students (about 15) come to music at the same time as a regular class (32) in my little tiny classroom. My first year, they were just sent with an aid. After discussions with the principal, union reps, and others, we determined that their teacher needed to be present as well. It's still a very frustrating situation.

The worst part for me is the behavior. It's really difficult to manage the behavior of that many students in that small a space at one time. The special ed teacher doesn't do much to help, either. At first, I was hoping she would do all the management of her class since I don't know as much about their disabilities. That didn't work because she doesn't seem to monitor their behavior. So I teach all these students while monitoring and correcting behavior.

Here's what I've tried: Communicating with the teacher so that she'll be more involved with the lesson. Unfortunately, she seems really dingy and either interrupts me and the flow of teaching or just sits off to the side.

I've proposed giving them their own class time (can't because their IEPs specify mainstreaming them in music) or having just a few of them in many different music classes with an aid (the teacher wasn't willing to part with an aid for that much time).

I've tried having the teacher work with them in small groups while I do a whole-class activity with the rest. This doesn't work well when singing, and the time we did this while they were doing group activities, her group totally missed the objective, even though they were just writing what she told them to.

Has anyone had similar frustrations? Are there any suggestions you have? I love all of my students, but the current plan is just not conducive to learning.

Conversations with students

With a special ed student who had walked in the door late and sat down for five minutes, then got up to leave again. His class usually comes with the class that was in there, but hadn't today. I didn't realize he belonged to the other class:

Me: Where are you going?
Him: It's been five minutes, so my teacher said to go back.
M: Your teacher sent you to music for five minutes??
H: Yes. I got in trouble so she said to go for five minutes then go back.
M: Your teacher sent you to music for five minutes as a punishment???
H: Yes. Well, no. I was being lazy on a project so she told me to come here and choose.
M: OK. Have a good day.

Then his teacher called to see if he was on his way. I wish she'd sent a note with him or something.