Below are the links and notes for my OMEA/TI:ME conference session "I Have a SMART Board... Now What?" presented February 16, 2012 at 2:45 PM.
1. Setting up and orienting the SMART Board and projector
Hardware Basics for Front Projection SMART Board Interactive Whiteboards
Orienting your SMART Board interactive whiteboard
2. Commonly used tools and SMART Notebook software basics
Basic SMART Board functionality, understanding the layout of Notebook software, familiar toolbar buttons, and tools unique to the Notebook software. (Please download the session Notebook file for more information. If you do not already have the SMART Notebook software, you can download it here.)
3. Find and/or create music lessons for the SMART Board
exchange.smarttech.com: Tons of downloads and teacher created lessons
mustech.pbworks.com: Mustech Wiki - lots of downloadable SMART Notebook files and others
shop.smartboardnow.com/main.sc: SmartBoardNow sells four volumes of high quality elementary music activities for the SMART Board
www.google.com: You can find all kinds of good ideas and files by searching "SMART Board music" or something more specific to your teaching needs
www.klsriley.com: Download this presentation and some of my other SMART Board files here
4. Use your new lessons with your students!
[vimeo=36649404]
[vimeo=52717387]
[vimeo=36659530]
[vimeo=35853330]
[vimeo=36884252]
Watch the whole presentation below!
[vimeo=38280792]
What are we going to do this December? The same thing we do every December: learn about Tchiakovsky's ballet, The Nutcracker. I mean, why not? Tchaikovsky is widely regarded as a master composer, the music is interesting and familiar, the kids love the story, and ballet is an important art form to expose kids to. On the other hand... I am so sick of The Nutcracker. My Nutcracker lessons have typically gone like this:
First grade: Tell the story and throw my shoe across the room. Explain what a ballet is. The kids pantomime the story while I play musical highlights and narrate, aka the "Nutcracker game." Second grade: Review the story and about ballet. Create motions based on listening maps I photocopied out of an old music textbook series. Play the Nutcracker game. Third grade: Review the story, ballet, listening maps. Play the Nutcracker game. (You see where this is going?) Fourth grade: Review the story, ballet, listening maps. Maybe make up a dance to one of the dances from Act II. Try to avoid playing the Nutcracker game. Fifth grade: Pretty much the same as fourth grade, if I can't get out of teaching The Nutcracker all together. (Why, for the love of Pete, do they love that Nutcracker game so much?!?)
So this year, I decided things needed to be a little different, a little more creative. You know, I've got this great SMART Board and all kinds of cool technology at my fingertips. Below are the lessons, many utilizing technology resources, that rejuvenated my Nutcracker unit this year.
Lessons for Primary Students (Grades K-2)
Tell/reenact the ballet version of the story. Act out Clara, the Nutcracker, and the Mouse King during the battle scene, culminating with hurling your shoe across the room at the imaginary Mouse King then dying dramatically when the Nutcracker defeats the Mouse King who has been distracted by Clara's thrown slipper (trust me, you absolutely have to do this for kindergarten and/or first graders).
Read aloud Susan Jeffers's beautiful picture book, The Nutcracker. After reading and discussing, listen to the Classics for Kids podcast episode "The Nutcracker" while flipping through the pages of the picture book. Discuss the differences between the picture book version and the ballet version.
Lessons for Intermediate Students (Grades 3-5)
Listen to selections from the Nutcracker and discuss the mood evoked by each. Guide the class in brainstorming a new idea for a story that could be written to accompany the music of the Nutcracker. After one idea is chosen, listen to each piece in turn and write the narration to match the mood of each song. Audio record the students narrating their story, and use GarageBand or other audio production software to pair the musical selections with the narration. Listen to my fifth graders' stories based on the music of the Nutcracker below!
Mr. Jones and the Miraculous Journey
[audio http://www.klsriley.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Mr.-Jones-and-the-Miraculous-Journey.mp3]
The Adventures of Fred and Tiffany
[audio http://www.klsriley.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Mr.-Jones-and-the-Miraculous-Journey.mp3]
Lessons for All Elementary Students
Discuss what a ballet really is. There is another great Classics for Kids podcast for this (I found this episode to be a little dry for my youngest students). Watch some videos of ballet dancers. YouTube is blocked in my school district, but I found some amazing videos on Vimeo of rehearsals for the Birmingham Royal Ballet's production of the Nutcracker here, here, and here. One of my students also brought in her mother's old pointe shoes that I shared with all of my classes.
Use pre-made or student created listening maps for guided listening of selections from the Nutcracker. This is great for the SMART Board. I scanned maps from an old music textbook series (I can't even remember which one now) and imported them into a SMART Notebook file. We use the different tools and pens to mark up the maps. I didn't have a map for the Spanish Dance, so one of my fourth grade classes used images from the gallery to create one. Identify form, melodic contour, instrument identification, and other elements. Use the maps to guide body movements to illustrate these elements. Older students can choreograph their own dances for the Act II dances. (See my fourth graders' dances here!)
Watch the "Nutcracker Suite" portion of Fantasia. Lead the students in identification of the songs and discussion of the relationship between the animation and the Nutcracker ballet story.
And the season would just not be the same without teaching and playing the Nutcracker game. For this activity, I made a SMART Notebook template of all of the roles in each "scene" of the Nutcracker game. I let the students choose roles and wrote their names on the template. We reviewed that ballet dancers are absolutely silent while they perform and use only their bodies to tell the story (the kids really want to make sound effects, especially during the battle scene). The next time we play, I can see which students had minor roles and let them choose their new roles first, allowing them to have the chance to choose one of the "leads."
I just realized that today is the second anniversary of the SMART Board installation in the music room at Washington! Here is the photo I took of it exactly two years ago when I walked in the morning after Thanksgiving break to find it installed. (I took this picture with my phone that day, and immediately posted it to Facebook in my excitement.)
I am so grateful to the Hilliard Education Foundation and the Washington Elementary PTO for funding this amazing interactive tool that gets used every day in my music classes. This Board is a SMART Board 680 with UF55 Integrated Projector on a SMART Height Adjustable Wall Mount. The adjustable mount is absolutely essential in my classroom so that all of my students, from the teeny little kindergartners to the taller-than-me fifth graders, can operate it comfortably and safely. The documents I submitted as a part of my grant proposal can be downloaded here, and I would be happy to offer any assistance I can to those seeking similar grants.
In honor of this momentous occasion, here are some of my favorite IWB (interactive white board) links:
I was recently asked by my district administration if I would be willing to supervise a student teacher. Yay! It's been a couple of years since I had the opportunity to work with a student teacher. I've been lucky to have some really great pre-service teachers to work with in the past, and I've missed the experience.
So it got me thinking about what I need to do to prepare. I haven't had a student teacher since I've been blogging and using social media for professional development, so I wanted to make sure to give a good introduction to the benefits of these to my future student teachers. I was inspired by this Glog (which I found via #musedchat) to make my own!
Related links:
Music Teacher 2.0: Blogging Your Way to a Better Classroom by Andy Zweibel, the presentation at TI:ME 2011 that inspired me to jump on the blogging bandwagon.
10 Reasons Why Teachers Should Blog and Tweet by Gabrielle Deschamps.
10 Ways Twitter Has Made Better Teachers by Mercer Hall and Patricia A. Russac.
New Music Teachers: Things Not to Worry About by Rhoda Bernard, Ed.D.
Some nice examples of online music educator portfolios:
Elizabeth Gravitz Teaching Portfolio
Rachel P. Harney's Music Education Portfolio
Joy Wilson's Online Teaching Portfolio
Andy Zweibel's Online Portfolio
Sample blogs of student teaching reflections:
Reflections from Student Teaching at NCHS by Mary Sue at Life is a Song, Love is the Music
Student Teaching Reflections/Experiences by Elizabeth Heist at Music Education Highlights
UPDATE: Nov. 27 - Top 10 Glogs for Professional Development. I was just introduced to this great post on the Glogster Blog via Twitter. These Glogs have tons of great links for classrooms!!
[caption id="attachment_618" align="alignleft" width="368"]
A close-up view of Europe on the folk dance map[/caption]
Year Nine?!??!? Yes, I am solidly into my ninth year of teaching elementary music. I can hardly believe that it was well over a decade ago that I decided to become a music educator. Last year was a difficult one for me. I had a hard time getting as excited as I used to about starting the school year. It took me forever to get my year plans in order and my performances on the calendar. My students probably didn't notice a major difference, but I just felt "blah" about teaching last year. I was in a major rut, and I knew I had to get out of my funk right away to get this school year off to a better start. All it took was two small decisions about my teaching practice have already gotten things off to a much better, more energetic start this year.
First, I decided we needed to dance. A lot. I love teaching folk dancing, and last year I spent very little time dancing with my students. One of my best memories from elementary school was the yearly square dance unit we did in our general music class. Second, music history instruction has always been a struggle for me, so last year my big push was the Composer of the Month series I started. The kids loved learning about the composers, and I enjoyed it too, but the folk dance piece shouldn't have been pushed completely aside.
Because my students like learning about composers so much, I knew that was a keeper. So I had to find a way to get both composers and folk dancing in during the short time I have with my students. We started the year with a dance during the very first music class for grades three, four, and five. It was a hit, of course. The fifth graders will even be performing some of their dances at a district event in the beginning of November. I have a pull down world map that I have barely touched since getting the SMART Board that I put Post-it flags on to indicate the countries from which we have learned dances. My plan is to keep adding to the map all year. Having a visual keeps me honest (Composer of the Month bulletin board, word wall, dance map, etc.). I primarily use dances from Phyllis Weikart's Teaching Movement and Dance and the accompanying Rhythmically Moving recordings.
As far as Composers of the Month go, sometimes I don't get started on a new composer until part way through a month, or a certain grade level will be very focused on other content, and we'll gloss over the composer, but I really try to expose each class to music and information about the composer. For October and early November, we're learning about Danny Elfman, culminating in each class watching either Corpse Bride or The Nightmare Before Christmas.
I've been really pleased with how just a couple of curriculum refreshers have made a huge difference for me and, I hope, for my students too. And of course, both folk dancing and learning about composers are directly tied to many of the National Standards for Music Education. What are your ideas and tips for energizing a stagnant curriculum?