Music at Moonlight

In elementary music we play games all the time. These games are not online, but games we play while singing a song we learned and we move around the room to keep students active while we learn. My students are use to playing games in class, so I think incorporating online games would be an easy switch to make. Gamification is a term that I am hearing more often. Teachers are trying to use more games in their classroom to help motivate students. The article Gamification: Using game like elements to redesign our classrooms  says gamification does not have to mean playing online games in the classroom, but it is "changing the atmosphere of the classroom to make it more game-like." Having a game-like atmosphere in the classroom can help students to become more motivated and can promote persistence, collaboration, and creativity. Using games in the classroom and creating a game-like atmosphere can have a great effect on students. A survey I found interesting was done in 2013 b...

In my classroom I have not used technology for collaborating due to lack of devices, and sometimes lack of knowledge on my part. At an elementary level sometimes it seems easier to have students collaborate face to face, but that is not really setting them up for successful technology use in the future. I think an easy way for me to implement collaboration would be to add Skype in the classroom. We talk about different composers in music and I think it would be awesome if I could find a composer to Skype with so students could ask them questions and learn what goes into composing music from a composer point of view. Skype could also work with talking to a musician on a certain instrument that we have been learning about or an instrument family. There are several ways that I could use Skype in my classroom and it would hopefully not cost me anything, it would just take time finding someone willing to talk to my classes and setting up a time. In order to have students collaborate wit...

In my classroom I think the overarching goal for students is to be able to read and perform music as well as evaluate their performance, as well as others, to help them improve. In order to accomplish this in 4th grade we learn to play recorders. When we start I try to show students videos of what we will be working towards to give them a goal to look forward to. I also use recorder karate and students get a piece of yarn to tie onto their recorder each time they master a piece of music. At the end of the unit we get to take our recorders and play and sing along with the Kansas City Symphony at the Kauffman Center. In an elementary room, giving students a recorder and pieces of string usually gets them pretty excited and they can't wait to try to get to the black belt. When we start working I tell students about my first experience with recorders and how I could not play them well at first and was not excelling at the same rate as the rest of my class. This frustrated me and some...

My first encounter with Google was during my undergrad at MNU. We used Google Docs to work on writing papers together or Slides to create group presentations. I loved using Google because it allowed us to work together with all our crazy schedules. My first year of teaching my district made the switch over to Google. There were several teachers in my building who did not like this because they had to learn something new. I loved it because I was already familiar with Google, but I was in no way an expert on all it has to offer. Somehow I became the go to person for my building and I still have teachers coming to me for Google questions. I have not had the opportunity to use many Google apps with my students due to the lack of technology devices in our building. I would love to have students collaborate together and create a presentation about a composer using Slides. Using Forms would be a great way to get formative feedback quickly on a topic we are learning about. Once we have mo...

If I were getting to select what type of technology devices I would most benefit from in my classroom I would choose a variety. I would love to have a few iPads in my classroom for different music apps that students could take turns using. There are limitations to what the iPad can do, so I think we would also benefit from having laptops in the classroom. From the article Choosing the Right Device for Digital Learning, Bob Moore says "devices designed and intended for simple app use and content browsing on mobile web sites are not idea tools for students." An iPad may not support a task students are asked to complete due to how it is created or the operating system it uses. However, Chromebooks or laptops will not run the music apps I would like to use in my classroom like GarageBand or forScore , among others. For a whole school or district, I don't think tablets are the way to go. They can do a lot, but teachers will not get the maximum potential they could from a ...

Digital citizenship should be taught to students starting as young as kindergarten. Digital citizenship helps students be safe while using the internet. It helps them to protect themselves and others. It teaches them how to properly communicate with people all over the world. Most students do not learn about digital citizenship at home, so it is important to teach it at school. In the article  What Your Students Really Need to Know About Digital Citizenship , Vicki Davis discussed "9 Key Ps" of digital citizenship: passwords, private information, personal information, photographs, property, permission, protection, professionalism, and personal brand. All of these are good starting points on what to teach students and how all of these "Ps" can effect them if not taken seriously. Not only are these points good for students to know, it is also a good reminder for adults. An article like this would be good to share with families at home. After discussing all of the Ps...

In my school community I would rake the following activities in this order from most critical to least critical: wraparound services, fun with friends and extracurricular activities, safe care, and deeper learning. I believe all of these activities are important for student learning, but the wraparound services stuck out to me the most. My school is a title one school and the majority of students live in a trailer park. About 40% of students do not live with their parents and instead live with grandparents, other relatives, or foster care. In order to create an ideal learning environment for our students, my school could integrate practices "to help not only the students but also their neighborhoods and even the child-rearing practices of their parents" (Horn & Staker, pg. 83). I think that by helping the whole surrounding community it would help students to feel safe and loved and they would feel more encouraged to learn and not worry about what is going on at home. I ...

In my classroom I currently have one computer and an interactive whiteboard (IWB). In my first two years of teaching I used this computer and projector mainly as a presentation device. This year I have been using my IWB more often and have seen great results. My students were fully engaged in lessons and students who do not normally speak out or like to participate were coming up to the board to answer questions or play review games. I was still teaching the same content that I had done in the past, but now I was able to engage more students and have a better outcome by using the IWB. I would like to have more devices in my room so that students could compose songs together or individually. We could also do more independent research on composers or musicians. There are several other lesson or new ideas that I would like to be able to incorporate individual devices with, but my school does not currently have that option. This coming school year our 4th graders are supposed to be getti...