Get Your Wishlists Ready!

The great thing about a whole week off is the time I have to catch up on my work and make some great resources for my lessons.

In anticipation of my 3rd - 5th graders coming back I've been making more powerpoints to accompany the songs they will be learning along with some pretty cool spur of the moment worksheets I've been coming up with.

With cyber-Monday coming up.  Teachers Pay Teachers is getting ready too join in on the deals as well.  Check my store (and others's as well) and start a wishlist to be ready for amazing deals on Monday.  I will be offering 20% off my store Mon - Wed.

Check back for the TpT banner and sale flyer!

Hooray for Great Teachers who make better worksheets than me!!!

As I was sitting down to write out another tedious workbook for my middle school students a Google image search of some worksheets led me to Susan Paradis.  I now have enough worksheets to put a work packet together for my students without it taking too much time.

There are a lot of resources for teaching piano, so one day maybe if I get a piano lab I know where to find resources. Much of the activities that are for piano I can use to help my students begin writing melodies.

How I missed this earlier on, I do not know...or maybe my brain is just extra creative today!

This Just in from TpT!

Very happy that I discovered this site.  See their status update below for a discount code, "LIKE" them on Facebook, and spread the word!

WOW!!!! We did it together! 100,000 LIKES ON TeachersPayTeachers.com! We are thrilled, proud, and think every one of you is fantastic. To celebrate, please use promo code "FB100K" for 10% off the entire TpT site (including sale items!). This promo code is only announced on FB and will only be active through midnight Hawaii time on 10/14 (that's a day and a half to get everything on wish list). WE LOVE OUR TpT'ers! (Date corrected: We're a little excited over here :))

The Babies Have Arrived!

None related to me, but my K-2 babies.  Some brand new, and some coming into my room for the second and third times.

I wish I could say I knew what to expect from all of them, but with the mix of a lot of students new to our school and some continuing difficult behaviors, after the first day of getting them oriented, I hit the ground running with routines and happily it wasn't complete chaos.  I am waiting for those kids I have been warned about to show their true colors, but I'm fine waiting until June for that.

My hope is to foster more cooperative learning with all of them to see what will result.

Here is the basic seating arrangement for the little ones (sorry for the blur, my camera did not want to focus that day).  Amazingly, they all fit fairly comfortably and it is perfect for the kindergartners.  I have between 25 - 29 students in each class so I'm happy they all fit well.  It has been a challenge to get them moving with the different leveled platforms in my room but I've appreciated the kids' flexibility as I continually figure out how best to use the space I have

The colored mats have been my best idea so far.  Now I know it's only been 2 days but amazingly they have survived the tugs of the kids (here's hoping they can make it through 5 more weeks).  They were smaller than I anticipated but for the price they will do and it doesn't bust my budget to get more if I need them (thank you Amazon!)

As I work out the tiny issues I still have in the room I will get some more photos up

Time Signature

The bane of my existence (next to syncopation) is when I have to teach time signature to my students.

I was a product of music educators that told me that when I saw a symbol that it meant "______________" and I assumed they were correct and did not question them further

Teaching ELL students and students who are in general more analytical, this simple task of just hoping that they will think about time signature as simply as I did is wishful thinking. They use their funds of knowledge more than they even know and end up over-thinking this all the time.

When I had to stop and think about what a time signature was all about, my right brain decided that I couldn't just break it down as precisely as it was and leave it at that.  Since I am making a more conscious effort to promote more right brain thinking in my students, I gave them a visual to help offset their tendencies to over-think.

You can purchase this PowerPoint at my TpT Store.  Later on I will add another PowerPoint that helps with the bottom number of the time signature which is much more complicated for my students to figure out.

In third grade the state standard pertaining to time signature states that students should be able to "Explain the function of the top number of a time signature involving two, three, and four beats." and then the bottom number is added for fourth grade

I animate my powerpoints so some of the images look a little weird or make absolutely no sense.

Since I have just finished teaching my students steady beat, and they will start to read written music, start by having them realize that the beats need to be organized (I've always pictured beats and bouncy balls that will go wherever they want)

I call a measure a box, and the box only fits so much inside of it.  But we do not know how many beats can fit unless we have a helper:  time signature.

I love my animation on this slide, each dot will move itself into the measure!  The reason I use a quarter note instead of the common 4 in the bottom position is because it does not look like a fraction so my students do not think of a time signature as a fraction (which a lot of times ends up happening).  I have also seen this time signature format used in some recorder and elementary method books and when it comes time to change over to having a number in the bottom I can simply tell students that it means the same as the time signature they were seeing before

I then walk my students through how to figure out the time signature of a rhythm (the time signature appears at the end).  

• First I have the students say and clap the rhythm
• Second, I have them say the rhythm and tap the steady beat on their laps (this took about 5 tries for all of my students to get the hang of this)
• I then ask how many times they tapped their laps when they read their rhythm (they show me the number on their fingers)
• Then my students tell me the number of beats in the measure and I confirm if they answer correctly.

The amount of "ah-ha" moments that they all had all at once was awesome !

There are several slides following that allow the students to practice figuring out the time signature and then as an extension (especially for my 4th graders), I give them correct and incorrect measures and using the step-by-step process we used earlier, they can tell me if the measure is correct or incorrect.  If it is incorrect, I ask them to offer a solution as to how the measure can be corrected to match the time signature.

TpT Works!

I was apprehensive about joining Teachers Pay Teachers, but I am completely sold on this site which is by far one of the best ideas I've ever encountered for teachers.  The resources I purchase or download for free have been helpful in helping me generate ideas or executing a lesson.

I've marveled at the potential of earning extra money as well.  It has been slow but the fact that I have some decent stuff people are willing to purchase is a huge boost in my confidence that what I make for my students is helpful for someone else!

If you haven't joined you really should!

The Accomplishment of No Effort

I'm not sure what my students are trying to prove to me when they turn in work with:

-no name...I suppose they still think I'm kidding when I say I'll throw it out?

-work where they clearly did not read the directions

-incomplete work after I had informed them that every paper they turned in might count for their grade

I get it, end of the year, we go to school longer than the districts, I don't really care mentalities reflected in their work, and so on.  But for some reason they forget that I will teach them again next year...

What disappoints me more than anything is that they can do this work; NOTHING is new! My current 6th graders learned all of this in 5th grade.  The students that were new this year are doing better than the ones who were my students the year before. If they know what they are doing, they definitely do not show it, if they don't  they are so easily defeated and completely fine with it.  They are just waiting for me to show them how to do it correctly,  but I can't anymore.

Learn by doing doesn't work when only a handful want to try.  Knowing full well that they can if they put forth the effort, I will continue on.  For some of them it is going to be a frustrating struggle, but I am now picking my battles and with those few who hold the whole group back it will just be themselves holding them back.

I hate to say that I'm just letting the time go by until the three current middle school grades are gone and then I'll have the type of program I want is unfortunately the first thing I think, but what else am I supposed to think?   

I know the type of teacher I can become if I work at it this summer, but I find myself at an impasse with middle school and channeling my track coach, thinking to myself: "I can't make chicken salad with chicken crap".