Using Music To Build Community

I absolutely loved the activity we did in class today. I now understand differentiating a whole lot better. The way the groups were mixed up based on readiness after a pre-assessment was done really made something click in my head. Well duh, getting to know your students makes differentiating so much easier. I love, love, love the idea of using music in the classroom to build community, is something I have thought about a lot. I had a teacher in 4th grade that played the guitar and we sang songs together, solo, anything, EVERYDAY. That was my favorite year the entire time I was in school. Everybody in class was friends and I was never afraid to speak up because I felt safe in his classroom. I feel that is my number one goal as a teacher, build an environment where all of my students feel safe, where they are excited to come and learn and engage with their peers and me. I know there is a lot of curriculum to delve into in the classroom and it will take lots of work, but I honestly feel that school should be fun, kids should want to come to school to learn. Obviously it is hard to make EVERYTHING fun, but I want to make it my goal to make school as interesting and engaging as possible for my students. Knowing how to play a musical instrument would make the goal of using music in the classroom easier for me. Even though I can't play one, I plan on using music as much as possible, whether it be through songs like we learned in class today and in Management or making songs up with my students to help them remember certain things they are learning. I think chants and song making to help students remember things is an amazing thing, I to this day still remember The Preamble because of a song. I WILL use music in the classroom to make the environment more fun, more engaging, and to build a strong classroom community. What Mr. B is doing at PS22 in New York is amazing and I want to be just like him. He reminded me a lot of my 4th grade teacher, and every single one of those clips made me cry. The sense of community I saw in that school was overwhelming, he knows what he is doing and he is good at it. He loves his students and even though I am sure what he is doing is so much work, he enjoys it and loves doing it. I want to be just like that.

Student Success

When you are teaching in an actual classroom it is extremely important that you know what you are teaching, you need to look at the standards and decide what essential understandings you want to communicate to your students. Once you have done this you need to decide what the students really need to know and how you are going to assess their knowledge of the topic. If you can prepare before hand what objectives you want to meet, then you will be more prepared with how to help your students grasp the concepts. Think ahead, evaluate the students in your classroom and use what you know about them to plan your instruction. You need to incorporate ways to teach that will be significant and doable for all the different learning profiles of your students, and whenever you can, so, most of the time, make your instruction engaging and meaningful! When you teach a lesson you need to plan out what they are going to learn and be able to plan your instruction in a way that you are reaching ALL of your students, not just a select few. You must always take in to account that each student is different and have a variety of ways set in place for them to reach the goals you are setting out for them, TIER your instruction!!! Every student in your class must learn the established curriculum, so it is up to you to deliver it to them in a way that is attainable and understandable for them all. You should always be looking for new and fresh ways for your students to explore ideas. I know it is easy to get comfortable with material you teach year after year, but be open to new strategies and ways of teaching your children. We live in a digital age, so, even though it will be more work for you, go to trainings to learn how to use technology in the classroom. I can promise you that it will benefit you in the end. Technology allows the students to interact and manipulative concepts and it may help you reach learners in a way you have never been able to before. Look for new ways of doing things and always get to know your students and structure your lessons around their strengths. It is our job as teachers to help our students obtain success. I don't know about you, but I want all of my students to be successful and I want to help them discover what they are good at. One last point I want to touch on is how important it is to integrate real life into what you are teaching students, validate for them why they are learning something. I don't know about you, but there were many times while I was growing up and learning that I thought "why am I even learning this, I will never use it." WE ABSOLUTELY NEED to communicate to students that what they are learning in the classroom is something that is beneficial and will be useful in the world around them.

Suzy Cox-Brown Bag

This presentation was fantastic! I love the idea of Project Based Learning. I think this idea of building a project to learn something is so much better, in a lot of cases, than having students come up with a project after learning. It encourages student participation and collaboration, not to mention creativity! To me, in a way, this type of learning is Backwards design. The teacher looks at what essential understandings they want their students to take from the "research" and then lets students choose what they want to do. I think using a Project Based Learning concept that you can differentiate for readiness, process, and product. As the teacher you can decide on the essential understandings, then give the students choices on what they want to do for the project, all the while tailoring to student readiness. Meaning, having different types of projects for your lower, middle, and higher level students. With your lower students you could start with having them do simple digital stories and then students that are higher you could introduce them to more complex things like Google Maps Migrations, Blogs & Wikis. Just because a student is a little lower does not mean they can't handle technology, who knows, maybe using the technology will help them. The process can be different for all of your students depending on their "choice" but because you have established the essential understandings, the product will be the same because they are all learning the same thing, but coming about that learning in all sorts of different ways. I really enjoyed listening to Dr. Cox present on this because she has given me so many resources to use in a classroom to get the students more engaged in their learning. I am so excited to get into a classroom and start using some of this stuff!