Afternoon Ti

Afternoon Ti Podcast Season 9 Episode 167 Classroom Rules Rules provide boundaries, create safe spaces, and create community when set up well.  They’re often as much for us as teachers as they are for the students.  They guide how we interact with our students, how we establish transitions, handling of instruments and materials and basically the structure of our entire classroom.  Rules help us decide when to take action when something happens in the room that isn’t okay and when to praise and recognize students for their efforts and successes.  Rules are guides.  In fact I often refer to them as goals with my students.  Because they’re things we work towards and work on together as a team. Too many rules and it’s stifling.  Too few and it’s chaotic.   We’re going to break our discussion about rules into three topics.  The first will be choosing the main rules for your classroom - these are the broader areas that cover a wide range of...

Afternoon Ti Podcast Season Eight Episode 164 Back to School Organization: Music Edition Free Afternoon Ti Scope and Sequence Guide !! Our final summer health series episode is here!  At this point some of you may already be back at school and some of you have a few more weeks of summer remaining.  No matter where you find yourself, this episode is a great pivot point for you for entering back into a teacher mindset.  And hopefully a positive and hopeful one.  In thinking about returning back to the classroom, here are five things that you can use as a starting place to start off the year: Knowing what you can and can’t do this year (Singing?  Masks?  Social distancing?) If you have your schedule for the year, think about how you’d like to structure planning time, seating chart arrangements (do students need to be 3-6 ft apart, can you sing, will they be masked… etc…) Scope and Sequence Where are your students at?  You may need to adjust where you s...

 Season Seven Episode 150 Virtual Xylophones with Brent Geyer Vandercook FREE Zoom Music Webinar - Brent is presenting one on Virtual Xylophones using Scratch on Thursday, April 29!  Sign up here ! Brent Geyer has been teaching in the Westfield Public Schools since 2007 as both a general vocal music teacher for grades 1-5 and a strings specialist. During this time he has directed the All City Orchestra and All City Chorus and also directs the high school Men's Chorus. Brent's 5th grade choirs have sung with the NJ Festival Orchestra and were chosen twice to be aired on NJ 101.5 for their Christmas Choir contest, in which they won first place in 2015. Brent holds both a Bachelors in Music Education and Piano Performance from West Chester University, a Masters in Music Education from the University of the Arts, and completed his Orff levels at Villanova. He is also the creator of the virtual xylophones found on the coding site Scratch. On the American Orff Schulwerk Teacher Gr...

 Season Six  Episode 132 Sequencing Rhythmic Concepts What grade should students learn sixteenth notes?  How long should we focus on a specific note value?  What should be taught first:  tika-ti or ti-tika?  The answer to all of these questions is “well, it depends.”  There’s no ‘must’ in terms of when students should learn specific notes or how long we should spend in making sure students understand the concepts.  Some years my students move at a faster pace and other years students demonstrate that they need more time practicing certain rhythms.  However, it is helpful to know the order that you will be teaching rhythms so that you know not only what students already know, but where they’re heading so that you can build sequential learning over many lessons. I’m going to share the sequence that I use with students and the why behind it.  Let’s start with the why. When we look at the musical pieces that we are using with students, we...

 Season Six Episode 129 Rhythm Systems: Ways to Speak and Count This school year I am unable to sing with my students as a result of Covid so I’ve been spending a lot of time on rhythmic concepts.  There are so many ways to count rhythms in music and reasons you might choose to use one system over another.  It is not helpful for your students if you use multiple ways to count using several systems because they will get confused.  That said, you may decide to use one system over several years with students from grades K-4 and then bridge your 5th or 6th graders into using the counting system that you know they will be using in middle school band, orchestra, or choir.  This can be helpful if students are used to one counting system in elementary, but your middle school music directors use another system.  Older students who are familiar with your system could benefit from having an introduction into the system they’ll be using in coming years in middle sch...