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 Nine Episode 166 Teaching Advice You Need to Hear There are many ways to inherit great teaching advice - through reading books, talking with colleagues, attending workshops, taking Levels courses, and lots more.  As I was cleaning out our office shelves at home this summer I came across teaching notes I had saved over the years, but hadn’t looked at in a while.  Things from my student teaching, TMEA conferences, and observations from principals or others who shared ideas that helped me grow.  I skimmed through pages and thought about how much great advice has been shared with me over the years and how useful it was to see it again.  So much great advice.  And thought about how we could all use great advice full of encouragement and wisdom as we head into this teaching year.  So here are ten pieces of teaching advice for you to think on, ideas for you to incorporate, and positive messages for you to believe about yourself and y...

 Season Seven Episode 136 Soundtrap Rap Project Cheers to 2021!  I’m ready for a new year of new lesson ideas and thought I’d share one of the projects I’m doing with my students as we return back to school.  This project would be a really fun one to do at the beginning of the school year as well - it’d be a great way to get to know your students, what they like, and who they are.  Since I see my students in trimesters, sometimes I have to modify when I do lessons and introduce material so I decided to use this project to start off the new year with my fifth graders. I first saw the idea for this lesson in the Soundtrap Blog.  The original idea was created by Meredith Allen and inspired by Katie Wardrobe.  I took their amazing idea and expanded upon it.  You can find the links to both the Soundtrap Blog page - click on ‘That’s a Rap’ to see the lesson plan - as well as the Google Doc with the lesson idea from Meredith.  I highly recommend Mered...

 Season Six Episode 115 No Singing. No Instruments. Then What? What we are able to do with students in our classrooms this fall keeps changing.  I feel like the more I learn, the more questions I have.  And the answer we’re likely to get is ‘I don’t know’ because truly no one knows. A major change this year is that singing and playing instruments in many schools will not be able to be done as usual.  And of course in the music classroom this is a lot of what we do!  But it’s not the only thing we do.  And there is still much that we have available to give our students so that they can have the best music learning experience possible even with the limitations. One of the things I did earlier this summer was make a list of the things I can do in the classroom.  This was extremely helpful.  If you’re feeling overwhelmed with knowing where to begin, this was the task that allowed me to start.  It places the emphasis on the positive and gives y...

Season Five Episode 113 Re-Entry We are right around the corner of returning back to school for the new year.  And it’s made me think about two things:  how I returned back to my normal life after my summer levels courses and how a space shuttle reenters earth’s atmosphere after being out in space. Comparisons: A) Reentry to normal life after a levels course B) How space shuttles reenter earth’s atmosphere - you’ve left the place you’re comfortable and you experienced online teaching and now you’re returning to the place you’ve always been comfortable, but it’s going to be new and it won’t just go back to how it’s always been. So how can we re-enter the teaching world? 1 - Identify the things that are pulling you down fast   Mindset Frustrations 2 -Identify what is causing friction What is it that’s making it hard for you as you face going back? 3 - Picking the right corridor  Full speed ahead Tentative Unsure where to start 4 - Giving yourself time to acclim...

Season Four Episode 98 Music Genre Madness Lesson TRANSCRIPT OF THE SHOW If you are listening in real time, we are at the end of the 2020 school year.  Most of us have only a few weeks left of the school year and we’ve spent several weeks figuring out how to teach music online as a result of school moving to an online platform.  As the year begins to wind down, I’ve been challenged to find meaningful ways for students to interact with music.  One of the most accessible tools for students at home is the ability to listen to music.  I’ve tried to continue to have students creating music, reading rhythms, singing, and composing.  I saw this idea for music madness brackets in a teacher group on Facebook - similar to what is done during the March madness basketball brackets, but using music songs from different genres instead - and loved it.  I have rearranged several of the songs as I wanted to use some of the song material shown on the example onli...