Goals for 2011-2012

I have been turning my thoughts back toward school this week, as I gear up for the convention. Two things I want to do this year in my classroom, which will hopefully enhance the learning for my students have been rolling around in my head.

1. Play more recordings of GOOD choral singing for my students. It needs to be at least once a week. My students aren't listening to good singing by and large, and their idea of good singing and mine are often quite different. They need to hear what a good choir sounds like. Regularly.

2. Use my rhythm cards more. I made a whole set of rhythm cards when I was a student teacher that I used all the time when I taught elementary music. I haven't hardly used them at all as a secondary teacher, and it's a shame. I should be pulling them out over and over again, especially at the school where I tend to have lots of kids move in through the year. There are games we can play, and I can reinforce those music-reading skills which are so vitally important to the sight-reading process. I have taken it for granted that they'd be too easy, but I know there are some tricky ones in there, and I can mix and match... There are so many days when it's two weeks until a concert, and we know our music well enough to take some time out to do something else (and should for sanity's sake!), and I just haven't thought about those old rhythm cards enough. I need a magnetic chalk or dry-erase board, and then I'm good to go.

All it takes to implement either of these things is a little forethought and planning. How hard is that?

Ask me again when the school year is rolling and I've got a hundred other things going on!