It's the little things...

I just spent about 15 minutes making a set of diagrams that I hope will solve one of my most annoying general music problems.  All they are is a layout of the bars for my Orff instruments. One has blank bars, one has all the bars labeled for C major, one is labeled for G major, one is labeled for F major, and the last is set up for C major pentatonic.

I don't know about you, but time lost explaining which bars go where is one of the most annoying aspects of my job.  Never mind that we talk about the musical alphabet.  Never mind that the bars are obviously sized to go in order largest to smallest.  Never mind that the layout of the bars is logical and visually obvious.

Asking students to use their powers of observation and problem-solve is sometimes just too much.

And I sigh heavily.

I don't know why it has taken me so long to think of providing a clear visual of each particular Orff bar set up that we use.



Thankfully, they are in my TeacherspayTeachers store now and ready to use.

 

Tada!

My first thought is the obvious - post this on the Interactive Whiteboard when having students change the bar configuration.  No surprise there.  My second thought is to use them to discuss scales and key signatures.  Also no surprise.  Third, these might come in handy for a class that is too big to have everyone on an instrument.  The third grade at my school is definitely the largest, and to get them all on an instrument would be a challenge (except we're almost exclusively doing recorders now). Having kids use their fingers to find the bars on a printout of the instrument is almost as good as playing if it comes to that.

Another thought is to have students fill in the blank bars as an assessment.  Can they remember what every bar is?  Can they label just the bars that are needed in a one-octave C Major scale?  Can they remember what bars to remove to do a C Major Pentatonic scale?  Can they remember what bar changes to make a G or F Major Scale, and what note/bar becomes do?  There are quite a few assessment possibilities here.  I plan on using many of them, particularly with my fourth and fifth grade students.

The most amazing thing about these diagrams?  They're such a little thing - such an insignificant effort - but I think they will make a big difference in my classroom.  At least I hope they will help alleviate one of the most annoying things that happens in my room.

Hopefully you'll find these useful!  Good luck, and we're in the home stretch of the school year!

Why I don't agree with standardized testing as THE TOOL for evaluation.

Today was a first for me.

Not that I did anything different in my morning routine, or that I did anything out of the ordinary when I got to my classroom.  The first was much more subtle and surprising.

I agreed with a news article from Texas regarding education.

What?  Is that possible?  How can it be?

No, really.  I have never before read an article about education out of Texas without feeling like it held a deeply flawed view, or perhaps was promoting some sort of twisted version of how school should be.

But today I read an article about Pearson and their stranglehold on the current educational climate in the US.  Not only that, but how they have gone out of their way to discredit those who find fault with their standardized testing products.  In particular, the article is about the efforts of Dr. Walter Stroup, and his testimony before the Texas State Legislature.

Here's the link to the article: http://www.texasobserver.org/walter-stroup-standardized-testing-pearson/.

If you'd like the summary, essentially it goes like this:  Pearson's tests are highly accurate, but not at measuring student learning or student growth.  Instead, the tests are highly accurate at measuring a student's ability to take a test.  And for this finding, Pearson has largely discredited a tenured UT professor and seems to be doing what they can to end his career.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, in that the current educational climate reflects a belief that what schools need is more testing, not more instruction of higher caliber.  I teach in a school system that had to conduct a system-wide infrastructure test that lasted roughly two weeks in January just to see if the computer resources in the county could handle the load from state testing.  In short, it worked, but just barely.  Students were kicked out of test sessions because of computer issues left and right.  Teachers had to scramble to keep things running.  Essentially the system only worked if enough people could frantically keep the plates spinning to avoid everything crashing down on them.

This took two weeks.  State testing will last another 3-4 weeks starting next month.  This means that the collective time spent just administering this test is growing.  To top it all off, this doesn't even touch the issue that many of the standards are flawed, or developmentally inappropriate, or just outright unrealistic.  Tell me why Kindergarteners are expected to know what had previously been taught in 1st grade.  Tell me why the term "Rigor" has come to mean "Difficult for the sake of difficulty."  Tell me at what point do teachers get to teach what they are supposed to teach.

In many ways, I count myself lucky.  I teach elementary music, which means that I do not have a standardized test to administer for my subject area.  In previous years this has led to an entirely ridiculous notion that in order to be taken seriously the arts must come up with some kind of test for ourselves.  Thankfully this year we have been allowed to use performance assessments based on rubrics and student performance of actual age-appropriate skills.

Hallelujah.

Is it too much to ask that educators be allowed to make educational policy?  And is it too much to ask that educators make that policy based on what is BEST for our students?  Best as in a truly appropriate educational decision is one that helps students learn, think, and grow?  I, for one, do not care what kind of money is in it for testing companies like Pearson.  Instead, I care for my students.  I care for my fellow educators.  I care for the families that see their children stressed out by high stakes testing at the ripe old age of eight.  Why should an eight year old child have to worry about performance on a standardized test?  How about instead they worry about learning the best approach to solving a math problem, or the type of reading they like best, or what instruments they want to learn to play, or how best to paint or draw, or what physical fitness really means.  How about they learn what happened at important moments in history, or where in Europe they can find Austria, or what kind of chemical mixture might cause an interesting reaction?

Who cares about standardized tests?

The companies that write them.

And the politicians who enforce them.

Hopefully those politicians can be shown the way of true education and meaningful learning and assessment before it's too late.

In the meantime, anybody want to make some music?

TeachersPayTeachers Sale Extended!

Good snowy morning!

Ok, I'll admit it, I am NOT thrilled about the snow that is currently falling outside.  Partly because I need clear part of my roof to avoid making the leak worse that I discovered during the last snow melt.  But mostly because we were just getting back to having everyone back into the routines of school.  Things were finally getting back to normal, projects were underway, learning was happening.... And now... more snow.

Sigh.

But there is a bright side to today.  TeachersPayTeachers has extended their Teachers Are Heroes sale another day.  They are offering up to 28% off sitewide for an extra day!

Thankfully, teachers are the kind of hero that doesn't wear tights.  Well, mostly.

For me, that means that you can snag absolutely everything in my store for 28% off using the discount code HEROES at checkout.  Want to save almost $3 on music education resources?  Try the Great Big Boomwhacker and Orff Collection!  Looking for some beginning band arrangments?  How about Chameleon or Kookaburra?  You could also go straight to my storefront and browse the items that are on sale for less than a dollar! 

So hopefully this TpT sale will help keep you warm on a snowy Winter's day.  And fingers are crossed that the snow stops soon and melts this afternoon and we're back on track tomorrow. (A teacher can hope, right?)

Teachers Pay Teachers Sale!

Greetings!  I just wanted to make sure anyone and everyone knows about the upcoming TeachersPayTeachers sale - Teachers are Heroes!

On Wednesday, February 25th, everything sitewide is going to be 10% off using promo code HEROES, and many stores will be an additional discount up to 20%.  My store is going to be 20% every item, so by combining the two discounts you can save 28% on anything I have listed.  This is a great opportunity if you're looking at possibly purchasing any of my Boomwhacker resources or beginning band or orchestra arrangements.  Those are the most expensive items in my store, so this is a great chance to scoop them up at a discount.  Here are direct links to each item:

Boomwhackers Introduction Powerpoint

Mary Had a Little Lamb Boomwhacker

Boomwhacker Song Collection #1

Boomwhacker Song Collection #1 with Heart Beats

Boomwhacker Song Collection #1 with Notation

Boomwhacker Song Collection #2 (Pentatonic Songs)

Great Big Boomwhacker Collection

Orff Instrument Bar Labels with Boomwhacker Colors

Big Rock Candy Mountain for Violin

Chameleon for Elementary Band

Kookaburra for Elementary Band


Alternately, you can click the link below to go directly to my storefront:

Have a great week, everyone!

Composition! Or, The Colors, Man, The Colors!

Greetings, internet!

I really am trying to be better about regularly posting, but it is a struggle.  It's funny how working three jobs gets in the way of writing blog posts.  And by funny I mean causes ridiculous amounts of angst.  I was reminded recently of just how much I'm not at home when I looked around the house and counted the number of projects that still need finishing.  I spent most of my Sunday afternoon cleaning up our rabbit cage because it had gotten nasty, a direct result of me not being home enough to keep up with it.

But I digress.

I assume you're here for a post about music education, right?  After all, this is The Mobile Music Mansion, not Mr. Earley's Dysfunctional Rabbit Farm.

AWEEEEEEOWEEOOWEOMUMBAWAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY......

So here we go.

I have gotten back into using a resource that I had created last year - the Boomwhackers Song Collections.  There are currently two available on my Teachers Pay Teachers store

(Collection 1 and Collection 2), and I am working on some new ones.  If you haven't clicked over to see what those activities are about, I'll give you a brief rundown.  Essentially I started using squares and rectangles that were color coded to match the Boomwhacker colors as a means of introducing notation to my youngest students.  I am not a fan of using the little pictograph representations of notes, since I've never seen music notated with smiling bees or anthropomorphic suns and hearts and stars.  Instead, I wanted to use something that would make a logical sequence of reading left to right, grouping by beat, and applying what is read to the instruments at hand.  This works great with Boomwhackers, and even better when scaffolded into Orff instruments.  All of my barred instruments have color coded labels to match the Boomwhackers as well, and students can make a logical transition to playing those instruments after a little time spent practicing on the Boomwhackers.  This can then lead to using traditional notation with colored note heads, and then purely traditional notation.  I am still in the development stages of this plan, so there is a long way to go with implementing this and seeing/measuring the results, but I have high hopes.

Some day I hope to have matching mallets for each instrument

I'm starting to think that maybe I need to spend some more time with Kindergarten and first grade earlier on in the school year to develop the sense of steady beat and tracking the beat while listening.  This is something that my students frequently struggle with, and is at least partly (stereotype warning!) a result of having middle-class Caucasian students forming the bulk of the student body.  These are kids who don't grow up experiencing music as something that they do, but instead as something that exists beyond them, perhaps on a shelf only to be taken out on days they have music class.  I want to move my students to a place where music is part of their everyday life and expression, something that they do without thinking, without hesitating, and without fear of whether it is "good enough."  (I think of this as the "American Idol Phenomenon" - what if we grew up thinking that we weren't good enough because some celebrity judge said we weren't any good?  What  complex to create in young people. But that is another rant for another time,)

Simon says that was the worst improvised ostinato he's ever heard paired with Mary Had a Little Lamb.  You should just stop.

The more students are experiencing music in a hands-on, applied, real sense, the more it becomes a part of who they are.  My goal is to foster that as much as I can in as many students as I can.  It kills me to hear students talk about music like it's some mystery.  Music is all around us, music is a part of what makes us human.

If I can use a bunch of colored rectangles and squares to help reinforce that integral musical part of all of us, I am 100% in.

So then what's next?

Well, in my view that would be composition.  But gone are the days when I would just hand out staff paper to my oldest students and have them write meaningless combinations of notes.  I have been working with students creating ostinatos, which has been nice, but let's go several steps further.  What if students were creating something that had meaning to them, as well as its own musical meaning?  By all means, let's do it!

So I give you color coded composition.  Also, alliteration.  :)

What I am trying now is to have students use construction paper cut to the same relative sizes as the squares and rectangles in the Boomwhacker Song Collections.  I spent a little time working out the measurements I could use, then cut them out of red, orange, yellow, dark green, and purple paper, thus making a C pentatonic scale.  At first I am planning to introduce the concept by giving students a few pieces to work with and having them see what they can come up with.  No rules - anarchy in the music room!  We will arrange the pieces and then perform them for the class, discussing what we hear.  Then, I plan to given a worksheet/template to each student giving some guidelines - mostly beat groupings (hello, time signatures!), but also reinforcing Do as the tonic note.

With my youngest students, it will just be practice to get used to the idea of organizing notes by how they sound, reinforcing Do, and getting to use the Boomwhackers and Orff instruments to create music.

For my second graders, I hope to have them really apply their knowledge of staff notation and transfer what they have done by color onto the treble staff, thus creating true compositions that they can give to anyone and have it played.

Long term, I hope to never again have a student look at a piece of music then look at me and say "I can't read this."

Fingers are crossed.

I'll keep you posted!

Merry Happy ChristmaHanuKwanzicaa! And a Teachers Pay Teachers sale. Hooray!

Last night I had the second of my two December concerts.  I say December because they are not generally holiday concerts as I do them, though I have been known to do the odd Chrstimas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa performance.  This was my 2nd and 3rd grade performance.  The kids did great, though things got a bit hairy a few times, as they are wont to do.  The best part was my third grade student with Autism, who had a fantastic time.  He spent a fair amount of time dancing around while we sang, but stayed within the realm of what was fine with me, and clearly enjoyed his experience very much.  That really made my night, seeing the joy on his face.

The downside of the night was definitely the parent who cornered me and wanted to know (because her son asked, or so she said - way to use your kid as an excuse) why we sang a Hanukkah song and no Christmas songs.  I explained to her (just as I had announced to the audience during the performance) that with yesterday being the beginning of Hanukkah (or maybe the 2nd day, I had conflicting dates on that one), it seemed very fitting to perform a Hanukkah song.  In addition, I talked about the cultural piece of the music curriculum and the other holidays that I incorporated into this time of year to give the students a broader view of holiday practices from around the world.  She didn't seem impressed, and pretty much implied that it made her angry.  It took a lot of self-control to not tell her where she could go with her Christmas-centric view of a December performance.  Now, don't get me wrong, I celebrate Christmas, and like to view it as intended, with it being a celebration of the birth of Christ, a focus on family time, and being together and enjoying the company of both family and friends.  I do not, however, for one moment believe that a concert in December has to be Christmas related.  Beyond that, I also reject the expectation that I do a concert based on a parent's view of what music I should do.  But that's another topic altogether.

So I am extremely thankful that my two December concerts are finished, I am pleased with how well the kids performed, and I am very much looking forward to Winter Break.  Those happen to be two of my three favorite words in all of the English language (the third being Summer).


Now the other purpose of this post - a sale!  I am going to be throwing a sale in my TeachersPayTeachers store from now until Christmas.  If you are a music teacher and want to buy yourself a little something, or know a music teacher who could use a little something, or are just interested in a little music education sort of activity, everything in my store is 20% off!  My store can be found at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Nathan-Earley.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and a Happy New Year!

Product Review - Sherman's Bass Rosin

Wow, back so soon?  It's almost like a regular blog or something!

Today is a product review day - maybe some day if I get truly organized I can have a regular product review day of the week.  Wacky Wednesdays?  Weekly Wednesdays of Wonder?  Wow.  I'll have to work on that.  If anyone has a better suggestion I am all ears.

Enough with the word play, on to the review!  Today we're talking about Sherman's Bass Rosin.

This is something I bought just out of a need (more like desperation, really) as I had zero rosin for my school's double bass.  This became especially important when I had a student who was interested in playing said double bass - the first time since the instrument came to the school that someone other than me would be using it.

All of my experience with bass rosin prior to purchasing the Sherman's was with Pop's Bass Rosin - the stuff that comes in the little red plastic tub with the attached lid; you open it up and there is the rosin cake sitting in a little paper cup.

This stuff.  Notice the paper medicine cup.

I always had the feeling that this was someone's solution to dealing with the mess of making rosin who cared more about their post-production cleanup than the actual end user's experience.  The paper cup is good in theory, but as you use the rosin you have to peel the sides down, which inevitably (for me, anyway) led to sticky fingers, the awful sensation of the bow scraping the paper, and a lot more mess than I felt was truly necessary.  And heaven help you if you ever leave the rosin somewhere warm.  Good luck prying it out of that cup.  It's like trying to chip off an ice block without the aid of melting.

Enter the Sherman's rosin.

This stuff.  In case you forgot.

It comes in a regular wooden tray just like any other student rosin - almost like bass players are considered to be the same as the violinists, violists, and cellists!  I know, crazy town.  The nice thing about these trays is that they allow for true shadow bowing while you rosin.  This is how I have students practice their bow technique - hold the rosin about where your bridge would be and bow, whether you're bowing a song or just back and forth.  The idea is to reinforce the muscle memory on straight bowing, which is so wonderfully facilitated by the sides of the wooden (sometimes plastic) trays.  The downside to the trays is also one of their strengths.  The ends of the tray are open, so there is nothing holding the edges of the rosin back.  This means that if you have a student who drops their rosin like one of mine did last week, it will not only chip and crack, but also start to fall out.  So perhaps this isn't the best solution from a durability standpoint.

As far as performance of the actual rosin, I have not noticed any difference between the Sherman's and the Pop's rosin.  I will be completely honest in that I have not really paid attention to the sound quality of the rosin in particular, but I have not noticed students having more or less issues using either rosin.  At the very least I can say it does not cause any more issues that the Pop's rosin.

And now my favorite part of my Sherman's Bass Rosin experience: the price.  Sherman's rosin costs $3.95 over at Johnson String Instrument (they also sell through Amazon), while the Pop's rosin is listed at $8.95.  Now, I am all for paying extra for higher quality when necessary, but if you're in a situation like mine where students have far more important things to worry about than their particular grade of rosin, I'll take a major cost savings where possible.  Like I tell my students - get to where you can play all of your notes and rhythms 100% correct 100% of the time and we'll worry about the tiny details then.  Now that is not to say that I wouldn't attribute any kind of benefit to improving the quality of your rosin.  Quite the opposite.  If it helps you play better I am all for it.  The thing is, I'm tired of hearing students talk about their playing difficulties like there is some magical accessory out there that will make up for their lack of consistent practice.

"No, really, Mr. Earley, if I get this $200 rosin that was pressed from old growth Douglas Fir trees in virgin forest land in the Pacific Northwest I'll totally be able to play everything perfectly.  My fifteen minutes of practice a week might even be able to be reduced to ten!"

Not me.  I am not an Asian woman.  Just to be clear.

Right.  More like if you practiced five minutes a week it would be a 500% improvement over the current time spent with the instrument.

But that's the cynical music teacher in me that gets tired of being "fibbed" to on a weekly basis.

And I digress.



So my overall impression and recommendation?

Sherman's Bass Rosin is an excellent value for the money, especially for a student who doesn't have issues with dropping things.  I would love to have a student who progressed far enough that I could hear a limitation of this rosin, but I teach 3-5 strings.  Maybe if it was high school I'd have someone at that point, but not at the elementary level.

Also, as a side note - I am giving very serious thought to an experiment.  I'd like to see if I could re-melt the rosin to get rid of the cracks from it being dropped.  I watched a video of a guy making rosin, and have heard of folks who make their own regularly, so it looks to me like it's a question of getting to the right temperature, holding it long enough, then allowing the rosin to cool properly.

If any of you read a news story about a music teacher from Maryland getting killed by his girlfriend for messing up her oven, you'll know that's me.

Also not me.  But the beard is at least heading in the right direction.

But more on that later.