Make Your Own: "Ribbon Wands"

There are terrific products out there for teaching music...but who can afford them all?  Sometimes I devise ways to make my own for much less money.


Some time ago I bought rainbow ribbon wands at musicinmotion.com.  My students and I love using them for performances, showing phrases in music, creative movement, and many other activities.  But $26.00 (plus shipping) for only 6 makes the cost too prohibitive to have enough wands to involve an entire class of students in an activity.

Happy Birthday, Dr. King!

photo credit: time.com

Did you know that singer Stevie Wonder was instrumental in making Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday?  Stevie's "Happy Birthday" song is really referring to MLK!



This is worth sharing with your students, and for the younger crew, here are simple songs to learn some facts about Martin Luther King, Jr.

Spaghetti Conducting

As an elementary music student, and truthfully all the way up to about 10th grade, I felt that conducting patterns were pretty mysterious.   No music teacher covered learning or practicing conducting patterns, and when I played flute in elementary and junior high school band, I always wondered what the director was waving around up there.

In my music classes, I introduce conducting patterns for 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4 time signatures beginning in fourth grade and continuing review until sixth grade.  Students this age like taking the part of the leader of a group, and we practice conducting as a class to recorded music for each time signature.

What are we doing today?

My students ask me this question often, and these magnets I made help me keep it all organized:

I used heavy cardboard, large die-cut numbers, smaller die-cut letters, glued, laminated, cut out, and added magnets on the back.  Very durable, and well worth the time investment...these still look great in their seventh year of use (just a little dusty from chalk, that's all!)

Seasonal Bulletin Boards

I'm trying something new this year: student-created Seasonal Bulletin Boards.  In the past, I found that it was very time consuming to devise bulletin boards for each month, by the time I completed one, it was time to start over on the next month!  Next, I switched to bulletin boards that could stay up months at a time, but I really missed the changes and was tired of looking at the same things all the time. 

For November's bulletin board, I took a Thanksgiving song that we learned, and added some turkeys to color.  I gave copies to my kindergarten students to color if they chose to during their indoor recess time, and the ones that they returned to me were stapled on my fabric-covered bulletin board.  Easy and fast!

Quiet!

Every teacher needs to develop a "quiet signal" for those times (and they happen often...) when their students are too loud. Elementary students of all ages can get carried away by an activity, excited for any reason, and sometimes just want to visit with their friends.  For these times,  a quiet signal is necessary.

Worthy Websites for Music Ed: "Metronome Online"

Every music teacher, whether they teach privately or in a school setting, knows the importance of a metronome to help their students keep a steady beat and tempo. A metronome is a practice tool that produces a steady pulse (or beat) to help musicians play rhythms accurately. The pulses are measured in beats-per-minute (BPM). Most metronomes are capable of playing beats from 35 to 250 BPM. Common uses of the metronome are helping you to maintain an established tempo while practicing, and learning difficult passages.

Great Expectations

As a student, I always hated "THE RULES". Of course, without rules life would be chaos, but there was always a part of me that resented being told what to do! Even as a teacher, I resist saying "Follow the rules". Instead, I ask my students to "Fulfill my expectations".

Kick the new school year off right...with Music Football!

I like to start the school year off with a review game for my older students (4th, 5th, and 6th grades)...and what better game for the fall season than (American) Football...although I've tweaked the rules to review musical vocabulary or instruments that the students can identify.

Making the football field by hand was a big time investment when I made the first one (about 10 years ago!), but today I think that I'd take a simpler route and use Google Image to find a simple view of a football field such as the one pictured here. I'd then blow it up using a color copier and laminate it for durability.  The game board that I use for my classroom is roughly 2 1/2 feet by 6 feet.

Substitute Planning...Do it while you're healthy!!

Back to school season is here again, and when setting up your classroom, please don't forget to plan ahead for the inevitable day when you might not make it to school because of illness.  Beginning teachers are especially prone to picking up sicknesses going around because they haven't built up an immunity.  So, your sick self is going to thank you sometime mid-winter when you don't have to haul yourself out of bed in sub-zero temps to get to school to set up for a sub!

When it comes to sub plans, keep it simple! Most of the time your sub will not be a music specialist, and will not feel comfortable picking up lessons where you left off.  My best sub plans include a music game or activity that anyone can teach, or a video that reinforces or extends concepts taught in music.

Here are some good activities to leave in your sub folder: