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Test 4 Mrs. Miracle's Music Room

February 28, 2016

Five Favorite Pins of February

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Hope you have had a wonderful February! Since it is February, I am posting my five favorite pins of this month. Here are my five favorite pins this month! You can click on each picture to be taken to the original pin. #1: Bucket Drumming 101 This helpful blog post has some great suggestions for starting bucket drumming! I'm about to do a bit of it with my 4th graders, so I appreciated reading this! #2: Orff Orffestrations This pin leads to 15 FREE Orff arrangements! Woo hoo! I'd love to try "Tideo" soon; the arrangement looks accessible and fun! #3: Tips and Tricks from Level II I …

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February 20, 2016

When to lesson plan

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My first few years of teaching, I sat down for hours at a time, on Saturday or Sunday, and planned all my lessons for the next week…by hand. Now, having kids at home, I really prefer for my weekends to be family time, and make sure to have time during the school day or right after the school day, before I go home, to write lessons (and I do them all by computer!) I realize that some music teachers have little to no planning during the day (as I’ve been there) so today, I’m writing a blog post with different options for when to lesson plan. During the weekend Like I wrote above, you could simply …

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February 16, 2016

Fourth Grade Performance {Olivia's Birds}

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This past week, my fourth graders performed a program based on the book, "Olivia's Birds" by Olivia Bouler.  The book is a really inspiring true story about an 11-year-old named Olivia who helped Audubon by donating her art to people who contributed to the Gulf Clean-Up Campaign. All of the art and text throughout the book is created by Olivia! Today, I'm blogging with a summary of songs and dances I used for the program, as well as scenery ideas and an idea for donating to Audubon! I did this program with fourth grade, but it could easily be adapted for third or fifth. Here ar…

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February 04, 2016

6 strategies for remembering 600+ names

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Recently, I wrote a blog post with 10 things they don't tell you about teaching elementary music , and realized I should have added one more thing to the list: that you'll have to remember hundreds of names. Certainly, no one told me that I'd have to remember so many names! One of the great things about being a music teacher is teaching so many students...but that means there are a lot of names to memorize! I often have a hard time remembering a person's name after meeting them at a party, but yet, I CAN remember 650 or so student names. So how do I do it? Here's my list of…

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January 28, 2016

10 things they don't tell you about being an elementary music teacher

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Over the 17 years I have taught elementary music, I have learned so much about my profession, about the students, about music, and about education. Today, I'm blogging about the things I didn't learn from a workshop, from a book, or from a blog post, but instead just from experience! #1: You will lose your voice...and if you're not careful, you can damage it forever. My first year of teaching, I lost my voice EVERY single weekend. It shocked me how much I had to use my voice as a music teacher: singing, giving directions, managing my class. I wasn't expecting to barely be able t…

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January 24, 2016

Guest Post: The Envelope Game for Beginning Band

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I'm excited to have a guest blogger today! Tamarie Sayger will be writing about a game to help incorporate the  Kodály philosophy into the band classroom. You can read more about her at the end of this post; thanks to Tamarie for sharing her expertise! As someone who has been lucky enough to teach elementary music as well as secondary band, I love finding ways to incorporate Kodály philosophy into instrumental instruction.  Kodály training taught me how valuable different aspects of music education, other than just performance, are for children.  This article explains how I would use The Env…

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