All about my life

So, I have come to the conclusion that one can be quite productive while procrastinating! I really need/want to spend some time revamping my program with new unit and lesson ideas. I opened my laptop today with the intentions of working on that and instead ended up creating visuals for a September Bulletin Board. Yeesh! One of the amaaaaazing teachers at my school ( The Reading Corner ) suggested using Powerpoint to create visuals, handouts and posters instead of Word because you can move things and format so much easier! I LOVE IT!  Below is my take on Music "Mooves" Me! You can actually buy posters for a Music Moves Me bulletin board from  Music Bulletin Boards  if you prefer. Here are some photos of what I created (although I haven't put up my bulletin board yet... more photos to come of that). Thanks to my friend Sean, also a Music teacher, who added three posters to my original creation! Here is the pdf for the bulletin board  Title Letters  in cow font. He...

Thank-you so much for those of you who have been checking out my new blog! Special thanks to an amazing grade 1 teacher at my school, Ms. St. Laurent, who has an awesome blog and who nominated me for a Liebster Blog Award! Check out her creative ideas and incredible classroom at  The Reading Corner ! Thank-you also to Alex at the  The School Potato  who nominated me for a One Lovely Blog Award! Her blog is so cute and is full of great ideas! I nominate the following blogs for the Liebster Blog Award: 1. Renee at The Reading Corner 2. Alex at   The School Potato 3. Claire at  Learn Me Music 4. Jennifer at  In My Music Class 5. Kelly at  Kelly Riley's Music Classroom The rules for this award are: 1. Thank the blogger who nominated you and link to their site. 2. Present 5 other bloggers who have less than 200 followers the award by commenting on their blog and link to their site. I nominate the following blogs for the One Lovely Blog Award: 1. Renee at...

There are so many great self assessment and reflection ideas out there for classroom teachers to use with their students. I beleive reflection is an essential part of learning, but as a specialist I struggle with coming up with different ways to incorporate this into Music with only 30 minute classes! Something that I did try this past school year was my outcome silouettes! I created these because I wanted students to understand what we were working towards in Music. I had seven students, one from each grade, come to the Music room where we traced a body outline of each student onto bulletin board paper. We cut out each body outline and then painted the edges with black paint. There were 7 bodies in total, all different sizes and colours and each representing a different grade from Kindergarten to grade 6. I then typed up keywords for each grade from the general and specific learning outcomes of our Manitoba K-8 Music Curriculum ,...

A few months ago I got a brand new Smartboard in my classroom! Before school was finished in June, I was able to try a few fun games with the kids that focus on music literacy. Here is what we tried out. STAFF WARS! My students absolutely love this. I even had students come back the next day and say that they had played the game at home on their own! I love tricking students into learning... muuahahaha. The game works by choosing a mission first. We always choose treble clef. Press the start button and go! As a note travels across the screen on the staff, a student must  press the correct note name. If a note name is incorrectly identified, the note explodes! As the levels increase, so does the speed of the travelling note! It is so exciting! I observed another music teacher in my division do this with her class. She is amazing and incorporates Smartboard activities into her lessons on a regular basis! I follow her model for how we organize the game. I have all the students stand i...

Finally! After hours and hours of reading and watching tutorials, testing things out and googling for answers... my blog is up and running! I am trying it out! I am brand-spanking new to blogging, but I am also pretty new at following blogs, especially teaching blogs! Any suggestions? I would love to follow you! -Steph