A Day in My Life as a Music Teacher – With Organizational tips!

 

As a music and band teacher at a rural school, I have an interesting and diverse job – I teach 8+ different grade levels and see hundreds of kids every day. It was even crazier back when I taught K – 12 between two schools! Let me take you through my day and give some of the organizational tips that keep me productive and moving.

I get to school around an hour before my first class of the day starts – I’m a morning person, and I’d much rather get up a bit earlier if it means I get to head home right at 4pm! After getting into my classroom and turning on my lights and tech, step one for me is working on my slideshow schedule for the day. This is also organizational tip 1!

TIP 1: Use a slideshow schedule template

I teach alternating days, so I have 2 Google Slides templates loaded into my Google Drive, one for each of my days. Each slideshow has a slide for each of the 8 classes I’m seeing that day where I then fill in a bullet point list of the things we’ll be doing that class. Then I can just flip to the next slide as I see each class through the day, so the kids know exactly what we’re doing and what they need to prepare for.

I write my slideshow schedule while looking at my online planner (I use Planbook, personally). Which brings us to tip 2:

TIP 2: Find a planner that works for you

I was honestly sad to move to an online planner because I love paper planners and stationery so much (and I still use a paper planner for my personal life, thankfully!) But, for the situation I was in at the time (travelling between 2 different schools), a digital planner meant one less thing I was hauling back and forth. Having used Planbook for several years now, I like that I can go back and see previous year’s lessons, which has kept me from switching back to a paper planner now that I’m at a single school. Planbook has a ton of features that I don’t use at all as well, so I think it could be a really powerful tool if you are more of a digital person. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to try different planners out and see what works for you.

Moving back to my day – as I am filling in my slideshow schedule from my planner, I am also making a mental checklist of what I need to do when that day. If I didn’t get my copying done the day before, I might need to stop at the copier on my way to the staff room for my morning tea. I take note of when I have to switch around centers or equipment at recess or breaks between classes and write that down in Planbook so I actually get it done. After all that, it’s off to the staff room to make a cup of tea, and then miscellaneous planning or answering emails until my first class begins.

I teach my bands (grade 7 or 8 depending on the day) first thing in the morning, then have my prep before first recess. Making good use of your prep is essential to spending less time at the school, so here’s my next tip:

TIP 3: Make a list for your prep – and put it in order!

I try to always make a to do list for my prep and put it in order of most urgent to least urgent. I find I’m way less likely to waste my prep if I have a plan going in, and getting to check things off a to do list always feels nice!

After my prep comes recess – most recesses I have at least some middle years students in the room with me practicing whatever instruments (band instruments, ukulele, or recorder) they happen to be working on in class. It’s a good time to get some 1 on 1 instruction time with students and get to know them better! I also have a few special grade 7s who come in to help out around the music room for the payment of Halloween-sized candy bars – which leads me to my final tip

TIP 4: Get the kids to clean things up and organize!

Especially when you live somewhere as cold as I do, there are always students who want to stay inside for recess. Put those students to work! In the last week, here are some things I’ve had my grade 7 helpers doing during recess:

•           Reordering scores and filing them in my filing cabinets
• Hiding cards for write the room activities around the room (and then cleaning them up after the activity is done)
• Sanitizing my loaner recorders for students who don’t have their own
• Checking my ukuleles for any broken strings or other damage
• Searching around my room for the countless ukulele picks that go missing every. day.

There are so many tiny tasks that take up a lot of our time that we can outsource. Plus, having student helpers helps them take responsibility and care for the music room!

After first recess, I teach the rest of my grades in ascending order, starting with grade 1s (I don’t teach Kinders this year, yay!). There’s a break for lunch somewhere in the middle there where I get 20 minutes to eat and then usually conduct some sort of lunchtime ensemble. My school has 2 classes for each grade, so other than my grade 7s and 8s I see half of one grade one day and the other half the next. This means a lot of things need to be set up over multiple days, which is a huge pain in the butt. Maybe I’ll have to write another post about strategies for that someday!

Like I said earlier, I try to get out right at 4 – my last class ends at 3:30, and the first thing I do after they leave is figure out what I need to do to be ready for tomorrow. Usually this means I can leave right at 4 knowing I’m ready for tomorrow, but if not, I at least know I have a complete list of what I need to get done at home after dinner in my home office. And then I’m up at 6:30 the next day to do it all again!

 

3 Easy Ways to Get 1 on 1 Assessment Time in Elementary Music

Assessment in the elementary music classroom is hard, especially when you want a bit of 1 on 1 time with kids to get the most authentic assessment you can. Here are my 3 ways that I get quality assessment time with students in my music room!

1. Centers

Age Group: Gr 3 - 6

I use centers for so many things in my music classroom, but 1 on 1 assessment might be the most powerful of them all. This is the way that I do all my playing assessment for recorder and ukulele, and I’ve used it in other units as well. Choose your other 2/3 centers as you would any time you’re doing centers, but with a bit more thought to making sure students can complete them without needing your assistance (this is why I tend to not start it until grade 3 or 4, although if your students are doing centers they are comfortable with they might be independent enough to do it in grade 2!) One center will be assessment with you. You can have students line up to play/demonstrate a skill for you 1 on 1 (this is how I do my recorder and ukulele centers), or have them play a game or do an activity where the entire center group is performing together and use your watchful eye to assess certain students (this is good for younger students or if you are only needing to assess a few students).

A variation of this method is using an app like FlipGrid and having a center where students record themselves. This method frees you up to roam around and help out at multiple centers but does require you to make time later to watch those videos.

2. Showing a Video

Age Group: Gr 1 – 6

I like to use this method when I’m at the end of a unit and I have a relevant video to show students – they are still engaging with something and learning AND I get assessment time? It’s a win-win! I always do this at the end of our Peter and the Wolf unit (I usually show the Sesame Street version to grades 1 and 2), you can also show composer related movies (Beethoven Lives Upstairs and the like), ballet performances (Nutcracker, anyone?), or even classic music classroom videos like Stomp!

3. When students are “out” in a game

Age Group: Gr 1 – 4

This is one of my favourite ways to assess instrument playing skills – when students are playing a circle game where someone is “out” every round, have the students that are out come sit and play an instrument near you. I find this especially great to use to assess Orff instrument skills if you don’t have many barred instruments to go around!

I hope at least one of these methods helps you out in getting that valuable assessment time with your students!