Room for 2013-2014!!! We're ready to go!!!

Hello again!!  I thought that I would put up pictures of my room this year to show everyone what it looks like for 2013-2014!!!  So here goes:

Genres and the music word wall is featured on my cabinets this year!  The paw print will move to focus on a new word each week!

This is the back of the room and the seating for this year.  I decided to go with an unusual idea this year and put some chairs and tables in the room so the kids aren't met with just this huge open (wild) space!

Boomwhackers!!!! ... and the best little poster in the world from my friend Julie!

Here's the front of the room with books on the far right and computers on the far left.

This wall has their file folders for each grade level and the cutest decorations in the room!  Each year my Honor Choir does a festival and we get t-shirts, so I'm stapling the shirt to a canvas each year and adding more to the wall as we go!

This is where the kids' supplies are... clipboards, dry erase boards and markers, crayons, etc.... all within reach!

I've got a desk again!!!!  This is my own personal corner of the universe which features the Chicago Cubs, Chicago Blackhawks, a little Wicked, and other random fun things and of course Harm.... he's my beautiful Macbook Pro on the desk!

This is in the front of the classroom and has become my motto:  "Be a Problem Solver, Not a Problem Maker!!!"

And the last is a board in the front of the room that show just a few things right now... I would assume that more would be added in... right now it just shows the blog address for the kids, what their edmodo logins are going to be and a poster about tattling...

So there's my room for the year!!!  Now I'm off to work on the school music blog to show off for the parents!!  If you want to see what we are doing during the school year, check it out: Music At TW

More to add with Binder Organization

All right... here is another one.  As I'm putting my stuff together for my room, I'm realizing how much stuff I actually have.  I also realized that when I'm teaching during the year, I sometimes forget what I've got in my toolbox for teaching.  For that reason, I'm organizing my curricular tools into a certain format in my binders now.  A lot of you saw my binder system from a previous post, but I've decided to tweak that just a bit this year for ease.  Instead of creating the lesson plans for each year, I want to remind myself of the resources I have available to me.  So for each unit of the different grade levels I'm composing a list that follows this format (for example)

1st Grade Rhythms (tells the unit)

Rhythm Performance (1 on 1 Assessment) (gives the assessments of the unit and their format)
Rhythm Creation (P/P Test)
Rhythm Dictation (P/P Test)
Cabinet: (location of resource with list of items I can use - in this case filing cabinet)
     - Rhythm Baseball Cards
     - Rhythm Books on Binder Rings
     - Pool Noodles with Rhythm Symbols
     - Rhythm Train Cards
     - etc.
Music Library: (Kid Picture books I use to teach with)
Curriculum Pages: (Pages in the textbooks I can use to teach concepts with)
Worksheets/Other Print Sources: (This would be kept in the binder)
Teacher Computer: (Things like powerpoints or SMARTboard lessons I have saved)
Videos: (Web-based or saved to my school computer)
Web-Based Resources: (Websites with games or things I can use)

Now when you look at it, you might think that it is some serious micromanaging... which it is... in the beginning.  If you don't have any videos or books to go with a unit, don't include that topic.  My thoughts are this though... I'm only going to put resources on here that I have used or I want to try.  I can easily add new things to the list each year or take things away.  The best part is that when I go to plan out my unit, I know what I have.  I know that I have to assess them three different ways at the end of the unit.  I know that I have rhythm books available for them to use on their own.  I know the different games that I want to play with them, and I'll know what other resources will make up my unit.  Anyways, I thought this would be a helpful idea for those that look at their classroom and realize they have all these resources and don't remember what they have and don't have when they start their unit.

Binder Organization

I thought that I would do a couple things in this entry to talk about organization for an elementary music teacher.  This is HUGE!!!  Most schools don't have either a set curriculum or a set of resources for the music teacher, so it becomes a hodge podge of creating your curriculum from what you know and what you can make or get with your tiny budget!  Being inspired by a 1st grade teacher who puts all her stuff into binders, I decided to do the same thing.  I seperated by binders into the following categories...

The reason why I had Instruments and Rhythms in their own binder is because we do both in every grade level in my district, so they have a LOT of resources.

In each binder there are lesson plans that go with the subject.  That way you can just add lessons as you come up with new ideas every year and take out ones that weren't successful.

All of the resources I use from books were also copied.  This way you don't have to go through your books looking through to find where it is.  You have the resource written down on the top corner (5th grade book, 4th grade book, Railroad CD, etc.), and I highlighted the CD track number so I could easily play the song for the kids.

I also like to use power points in my lesson, so I print out the power points so I know what is coming next and when I've got to switch slides nd whatnot.  All making your life a little easier!

Then you've got tests and projects in there as well, so you have a master to make copies from if you need them.

Again, all of this is so you can have everything in one spot when you are lesson planning.  Then, paired with my lesson plan book, I look through the week and decide what to do.  In the example below, you can see that there are some classes with X's in them.  That's what I do when I know that I won't be seeing a class that time.  So 2K and 2G miss their class the first time that week, and resume with Steady Beat lesson 1 on their 2nd meeting time. 

Having all these lessons to pick from is also good because I KNOW that there are some lessons that we put in as filler lessons for those classes that never seem to miss music.  When you have it all laid out in front of you, you can then decide that since one class is behind, they can skip a certain lesson or game and still get the objective that you are aiming for!  Anyways, that was my random idea for the new school year, and we'll see how it works out!!