11.20.08
Posted in Teacherly at 9:11 am by Abby
Classroom Management. It’s my biggest fear by far when it comes to becoming a teacher. The kind of fear that at times makes me have second thoughts on what my future really needs to be. I’m good at teaching private lessons, granted my students are all a bit spoiled, and I’ve never had any extreme problems when working in classrooms so far. But so far, I’ve always had a ’safety net’ of the normal teacher being in the room to get me out of trouble before things turn bad.
I have yet to develop the ‘eyes in the back of my head’ teacher-sense. Heh, I tend to not notice things when I’m looking right at the problem when it happens! I guess it comes from the musician/writer side of me. I’ve spent so many years training me to zone out everything that’s around me except for my focus, that now it’s become a problem for going into the classroom when the exact opposite becomes the nesessity for my survival. At least I do tend to notice noise-level differences, but on several occasions I’ve just had the feeling that I’m not being listened to by anyone. Of course, I’m still not ‘The Teacher’, and have less authority in the eyes of the students, and due to my not being ‘The Teacher’, I don’t know when to call them out for getting them quieted down. So sometimes I’ll notice something, but not yet know just what to do about it. I tend to want to over-react to things, though I’m getting better on that.
Not sure where this picture is originally from, maybe King Kong? But it’s one that shows up /everywhere/ for use, including fast-food chain ads among many others.
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11.16.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:46 am by Abby
So, after spending weeks debating with myself on the values (and the addiction) of joining that delicious public bookmarking site place, I did so. While I spent almost an hour messing around on there and adding lots of rather pointless bookmarks to my list, I think overall it’ll be a really handy thing to have. Good for saving things that I might not want to be instantly accessible to me but might want to have in the future.
Of course, talking about something called Delicious has lead to me simply having to add a picture of something simply… delicious. ^_^
Pic from here.
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11.13.08
Posted in Blog Reference, Music at 8:55 am by Abby
While Music Teacher’s Helper is a blog designed for private lessons, I still have found several of blog posts to be useful for a classroom setting. This one in particular, I found to be quite informative and interesting for some of the things that she suggested doing and does herself. In her post on Recitals, she discusses ways to help younger students how to settle and not be afraid of performing with so many people around. This is important not only in studio recitals (where it’s one, maybe two, students performing at a time), but also when working with young students for the school concerts.
She talks about various ways to help students to be settled and calm both when watching as well as when performing. Teaching students the proper ettiquette and rehearsing it often so that they not only know what to do, but are comfortable and understand how to do it. I don’t think it’s possible to rehearse such things enough, but a big trick is getting it done repeatedly without the student growing bored with it.
Overall, I really liked her blog post and would encourage others to read it as well. You might get some new ideas, too!
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11.10.08
Posted in Interactive Sites at 5:10 pm by Abby
Like the title says, another interactive music website that I have managed to find is the one for PBS Kids! This is a nice game site for younger kids that are learning about music. The colors are bright without being distracting (so not too bright), and the pictures are large and of happy cartoon characters from PBS. The site has a long of good songs that have kids sing about being healthy and making good choices, and also has several different games under The Music Box, though the games tended to load a bit more slowly on the computer than the rest of the site. There’s also an area that has songs about locations around the world, as well as about varoius states.
Overall, I think it’s a nice site that uses music to teach young children important skills and beginning knowledge about the world that they live in.
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11.03.08
Posted in Technology at 11:32 am by Abby
My dream classroom settup would include a SmartBoard, Clickers, and PowerPoint. Especially for use in the general music classes, though not exclusively to them. But in reality, I’ll be lucky if I have a projector system even set up in the music room if I’m lucky enough to even have a music room. (I remember having music class in the ’storage’ room during my early grade school years until the first school addition, and in Jr. High and early High School we had band and choir on the gymnasium stage until the HS addition.) This has brought up my thoughts on how to achieve my ideal classroom dream. Where would I start to begin building up my technological ‘repertoire’ for the classroom? Projector would obviously be the first thing on my list of desires, but after that? Would I go for the Clickers, which are more affordable but after awhile have a rather limited potential for enhancing learning, or would I go for the far more expensive, but almost limit-less possibilities of the SmartBoard?
No matter how I would approach the matter, I’d need to do a LOT of research on all the possiblitiies, and come up with a pretty good demonstration on why a music classroom (as poorly viewed as these seem to be these days) is worthy of having something expensive for use.
So, I did a bit of searching on using technology in the classroom, and found a site that talks about the benefits of integrating technology into a classroom setting using the frame of mind that the school they are going to deal with has little to no technology in it yet. It has all kinds of information about various things. But it also listed more affordable technology gizmos (even mentioning the use of Sticky-Notes in a classroom!) as well, and also has some excellent statements on why technology is useful (and really quite necessary) in today’s classroom environment. The place also had quite a few links to other sites for furthering your technological exploration for the classroom.
Without further ado, I provide to you a link to the Star Tech Program.
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11.01.08
Posted in Blog Reference at 4:21 pm by Abby
One of the blogs that I am now checking up on from time to time( That isn’t one of my fellow classmates) is Music Teacher’s Helper blog, which is exactly what it sounds like! The post I’m going to talk about this time is one specifically on promoting your music program, which she titled Promoting a Class.
It’s a bit long to read, but I very much liked the way that she wrote it. She uses a very down to earth style that’s practical as well as easy to understand. Not to mention easy to integrate into one’s one program, or future program as the case may be. ^_^ For myself, I think that posting flyers would be a good way of promoting a music event. Flyers, a local newspaper. She even suggested a local radio or TV station, which I found to be quite interesting. I need to stop limiting my ideas to ’small town’ locations that don’t have such a thing as a ‘local’ channel. Or typically don’t.
Of course, her goal was to help promote for private lessons, rather than for a school setting, but for myself, a lot of the information she gave is potentially useful for both! At the least, it reminds me that there’s a lot more to do than just teaching music. If I can’t promote it in some way as well in the community, it’s going to be tough to have a good music program.
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10.30.08
Posted in Interactive Sites at 1:03 pm by Abby
Resuming my quest for good ‘game’ sites that are music based, I came across this place. Music Tech Teacher is a more professionally organized and arranged interactive website for learning about music than the Sphinx Kids site. MTT also has a good hundred links or so for educating viewers about instruments, music theory, music history, musical styles and genres, and probably some other things that I’m not listening. There’s even some Rhythmic Math games, so not only does this site teach music, but it’s successfully integrating other curriculums into it as well!
It has quizzes on specific composers, specific musical styles, musical theory… pretty much everything. I’d say this would be a wonderful site to have kids visit that are in the later grade school, or the Junior High age level. High Schooler’s would probably benefit from this as well if you can get them to actually do it.
This site even includes printable worksheets for music!
All in all, a very good find!
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10.27.08
Posted in Technology at 7:23 pm by Abby
Until my Technology class, I’ll admit I had no idea that these things even existed. But ever since my introduction to them, I’ve come to adore the possibilities that these Smart Boards are capable of doing.
On the Smart Board website, (which is the link provided above) the majority of the examples that they provide are for the business world, but of course my interest is in regards to the classroom use. With the programs possible on this, I could have students easily compose their own works, have interactive ‘worksheets’ and quizzes. I could have them create their own quiz as a quiz! I like the site, though, because it gives examples of a lot of the various possibilities that exist, as well as prices, designs, company names, and other good things to know.
If ever I was to have my dream classroom come true, having a Smart Board with all of the nifty programs for it is one of the top things on my list to have!
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10.24.08
Posted in Interactive Sites, Music at 11:31 am by Abby
On my quest for finding good and useful interactive websites that might be used by my students either in class or out of class, I have come across this nifty little site, called Sphinx Kids.
It’s not the best of sites, but it has a nice use of bright and appealing colors and would be fun for the younger to middle range of general music grades. Maybe up to fifth grade. The games are simple, and I really like the interations that you can do for learning about composers. Overall, a good little site to keep track of possible future use.
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10.21.08
Posted in Blog Reference at 6:01 pm by Abby
I’m writing this post tonight about another post on a blog that I have started to keep up with that is not that of one of my fellow classmates. The blogger, Mystro2b, has a lot of inspiring and thoughtful things to say, and I enjoy reading them. Go give him a visit and see for yourself!
This post is specifically about one of his own posts called “You can never have too many sharpies on hand“. In this post, he gives quite a few wonderful technique suggestions, as well as ideas on how to word things not only when talking to students, but also to their parents, something very useful to keep in mind for the future! I think the best thing about this post is that it takes a humerous approach to things that are really quite serious for keeping in mind. You need to be highly prepared and have an abundance of resources of the oddest things because the kids will ultimately forget them when they need it. I had never thought of the fact that I might want to be certain and have numerous sharpies handy for use! Nor had I ever thought of having kids ‘fake play’ while working with the rest of the ensemble, though it seems like the most practical thing in the world to do!
His post just makes me think that despite the number of years of education classes that I’ve taken to prepare myself for the big picture of teaching, there’s still a LOT of fine points that I don’t yet know about. But it’s people like Mystro2b that helps me to learn those fine point things before I go to the job!
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