Erosion Blues

This past week, my students and I had a great experience as we created a makeshift recording studio in our school and recorded an original piece of music: The Erosion Blues.

It is a great example of integration, collaboration and freedom in structure.

Integration: The blues was meant to be a culminating project for our unit on Land and Water which focuses on erosion. Students were to explain a type of erosion (water, wind or ice) and use some content vocabulary to show they know the meaning of the words.

Collaboration: The music teacher taught the students the form of the 12 bar blues in music class. In fact, nearly all the students are able to play the structure on xylophones (Orff Instruments) and some were even taught it on recorder. In our recording, you only hear piano and vocals, but there may be an opportunity for the kids to lay down another track or two at their next music class!

Freedom in Structure: The 12 bar blues creates one structure in which we sung our lyrics, but there is another structure that helped focus the small groups of 3-4 students to compose the lyrics. They follow a simple AAB form which means there is a line of lyrics (A) that is repeated (A) and then a different set of lyrics (B) completes a verse. The ends of lines A and B rhyme. For example:
A - Rivers can erode rocks, mountains and canyons wear away.
A - Rivers can erode rocks, mountains and canyons wear away.
B - It still erodes, no matter what you say!

The After Effects:
I asked my students to reflect on their experiences as we drafted, practiced and recorded our blues song. Here are some of their words:
"I thought it was fun because everyone had a lot of enery and was able to share it."
"It made me feel special...made me feel musical and unique."
"It was fun because when we sang the chorus, everybody was singing."
"I want to do something like this again. The blues is fun."

My students, in general, are excited about the blues. In fact I have two girls who are actively writing their own blues lyrics. One is completed and posted here and the other girl is presently writing her own "Moving Blues" about her family's move to another house.

This lesson transitioned me from our TIC focus last month in "Creating Community" to this month's "Freedom in Structure". It was one of those experiences that fed off of my talents and those of my students: from the students volunteering to sing out loud to the boys in charge of the recording device (my netbook powered by Audacity). The smiles were big and the excitement was contagious. There was a lot of inspiring going on!

Here are all the links you may be interested in. Please check them out and leave your comments. I will share them all with my class.
LYRICS
RECORDING

Other posts in reference to this project:
Musical Experiences - Composing in the Classroom

Balancing Testing with Creativity

Effects of Quality community Building

Shared experiences are what bond a group together. Whether the group is taking a nature walk, creating art, or sharing personal reflections about music or literature, it is all part of the process we need to share with our students. I believe that these experiences can all be linked to and integrated into the curriculum you teach.

But it is also true that you don’t have to justify everything you do by attaching a standard or strand to it. In fact, just last week, my principal emailed the staff saying this would be a good time of year to take some time and revisit those community building experiences. Sharing experiences and building community can and should be done just to be done. It creates that safe learning environment you want in your room and with your students. It allows students to share their work, ideas and plans more openly with you. And building community is a skill our students will need for the rest of their lives.

One year, I had a second grade class who truly loved our daily listening time during snack. We listened, reflected and shared every day. Students talked about the music freely and after a while, even spoke about it in their free time to one another.

“I liked your idea about how Beethoven must have really felt sad and angry at the same time when he composed that piece of music,” I heard a girl say to another one day at recess. It was then that I had that “great teacher feeling”. What I was doing was working! Those students were connecting on a new level. They felt comfortable talking with one another even outside of our Active Listening time in class.

That year I also got a great compliment about my class during field day. “Your kids work really well together,” said a parent volunteer in charge of one of the stations. “They have great communication and really look around to see what and who is where.” That made me beam!

Of course this hasn’t happened every year and I probably can’t attribute all that great teamwork to actively listening to music each day. BUT I know that those times, those experiences we shared were real and they surely contributed to a sense of community.

So, as I finish this series for the month, what have I learned? Here is a list:
• Take the time to create experiences.
• Start early in the year.
• Continue throughout the year.
• Be spontaneous sometimes.
• Keep in mind the life skills that are being taught!

It's All About Experiences

Community building in the educational profession is important for teachers, students, administration, staff, parents and the whole community. This month, I have enjoyed reflecting about how I try to build community in my classroom with my students. In the future months, the topic of community will certainly be further explored.

What I have discovered and rediscovered is that the biggest part of building community is in creating experiences with your students. When I stop and take time and really DO something with my class, the benefits are nearly immediate. We smile together, laugh together, realize things together but mostly we share – share a common experience with one another. It’s a beautiful thing…

Just yesterday, I was able to share a great experience with my class as we continued to write our Erosion Blues. There I was playing the piano as groups of students came by and started singing the lyrics they had written. As I looked up, I saw the rest of my class singing along, tapping their feet, moving and dancing - PURE JOY! Wow! That will be a memory for all of us.

I know a second grade teacher who is not afraid to bring her students outside during the school day. No worries about not sticking closely to the plan for the day, because she knows how much her students will get out of an outside experience. This is not a teacher who one would call aloof, her feet are firmly set and she is very serious about education. The thing is that she is certain that her students will benefit from a common experience and from that experience she shapes ways for her students to learn. They learn about nature and about the value of getting inspired by something. Oftentimes their experiences are what prompt them to write - to really write from the heart and gut.

When we have a true experience, then we can really learn more about ourselves and others. And that’s one thing that can really help build community!

Balancing Testing with Creativity

Our MCAS test begins today. Three days of testing in ELA (English Language Arts). Today, students are asked to write a personal narrative and the other two days, students will be given all other means of ELA testing: reading selections, multiple choice, essay response (open response), grammar, conventions, etc.

I do agree with these types of tests. That is, I do agree that students need to be proficient in these skills. However, the approach and the stress on these scores, I do not, but that’s another blog, another day. These tests are a reality for me and teachers across the country and it is during this time that we need to get into high gear as teachers and help our students balance themselves and their minds with some time for fresh air and creativity.

This is also a great time to build community in my classroom. Not only are we “in this together” as we prepare for and take the test, but the activities I choose to do when not testing this week can be crucial to community building.

One activity I will be doing is having students move before testing, during breaks and after testing. And by moving I mean having the students do a combination of aerobics, sports drills, dance and Tae Bo moves I’ve learned along the way. This is fun for me too! I get to do everything from “high knees” to plies in the classroom with my students. It gets our blood pumping and helps us to refocus. (BTW – a tip I’ve learned is to have students move their limbs across their bodies for the best “brain wake up”.)

In the afternoons this week, I will also be working with my class to compose some music! We will be writing the Erosion Blues as a culminating project for our unit on land and water. Integrating with our music teacher has helped prepare the kids for this composition experience.

We already began yesterday morning by taking time to listen to some blues music together, discovering how blues lyrics are written (A,A,B) and starting to write our lyrics to fit the form. The kids are excited about this, especially at the idea that we will (hopefully) have a completed song to record by the end of the week…maybe even with instruments!

Taking this time throughout the week to work on things collaboratively will help us to balance out the severity of the test and more importantly, will help us to bond as we create something new together.

For more about the blues project, visit Composing in the Classroom.

Reflections on Beat Night – Poetic Experiences

This past Thursday a group of teachers took their third field trip organized by The Inspired Classroom. We attended Beat Night at the Press Room in Portsmouth, NH. What fun! It was a great night of relaxin', groovin' and inspirin'.

The evening began with an hour of featured poets reciting their original poems. There they stood, poets of all ages and backgrounds sharing their experiences with us - unhinged, unrated, truthful and full of life. They spoke of love and pain, emotion and faith. And all this was recited to the backdrop of live, improvisational music. The poets asked for a certain feel and the musicians started to play, laying out the landscape on which the lyrics of the poems rested.

The second hour was open mic and those who felt it, signed up to recite a poem with or without the band. I, knowing I would regret it if I didn’t, decided to put my name down before I lost my nerve. Ayanna Gallant, the hostess of the night (and guest blogger on TIC) introduced the readers one by one and they got up to read.

One poet was a former student of mine who gave an emotional poem about a tragic childhood experience. And in the end of the poem we heard her be at peace. It was beautiful and poetic, it sucked me in to her experience and emotional past. Tears welled up in my eyes as I thought how poetry must have been a healing agent for her and how fortunate for me to have been able to witness this beautiful young lady share this part of her with all of us.

A couple of poets later, it was my turn. Once introduced, I got up to the mic, asking the band leader, Larry Simon to play something rhythmic and sultry with lots of drums. He instructed the rest of the band and the music started to play…

It was like magic how my words melted together with the music. We complimented each other with each nuance of melody and lyric. The words poured out my mouth like satin and I was entranced in the moment created by the sounds all around me.

It was a great experience and I’m glad it was captured on video, or at least you can hear the audio.
Later, as I listened to the performance and remembered the experience, it got me thinking.

Why don’t we do things like this more often? Be creative, share our experiences and build community through these art forms in true, raw, and meaningful ways? For me, reading my poem was pure enjoyment, a thrill, but for others it can be a way to get a message out, to tell a story or act as therapy for their soul.

Why don't we ask students to do this more - write from their experiences, from the gut!?

Another teacher near us had some of his high school students there. Two were being featured that night. HE allows for this in his classroom. He inspires his students to write gutsy poetry that means something real for them in their lives.

We need to do more of this for our children and for ourselves. I am thankful for these field trips. They have helped me to stay inspired in my own teaching so that I can inspire my students!

Next month is jazz and poetry month. What a great excuse to use to try out some poetry writing with my students.

Musical Experiences – Composing in the Classroom

In the spirit of Music in Our Schools month, I would like to reflect some more on how music can build community, this time through composition. With MCAS (Massachusetts’s high stakes test) next week, I think it is necessary to give my students a balance of testing with play. We WILL go outside and run around more than usual, but I also have something fun, creative and collaborative planned – composing some blues!

Well, yes, I could ask them to write the “testing blues”, but that would be the wrong way to focus their energy! Instead, we will write the Erosion Blues as a culminating activity to our unit on Land and Water.

COLLABORATION – My fourth graders will already have a basic understanding of the blues from what they learn in their music class. They learn and play the 12 bar blues. In fact when I wrote this form on the board yesterday, they clearly remembered it and were ready for a refresher. This kind of integrated project is one that I always strive to implement – one that is true to the integrity of the art form and to the curriculum I am teaching. It also provides a time for real collaboration between myself and the music teacher. She has given them a basis of knowledge in the structure of the blues and I’m going to bring other content to the table. Together, the students will synthesize two important areas of study.

CREATIVITY WITHIN A STRUCTURE – The blues has a relatively easy form for writing lyrics: AAB. For each verse there are three lines of lyrics. The first line is (A), then (A) repeats itself, and the last line is different (B). Once students know this basic form, they can really get creative. I will assign a group of students a specific topic in erosion (water erosion, ice erosion, wind erosion, other vocab terms to use) and let them compose.

COMMUNITY – This type of project, where students create together will surely add to the sense of community. With each verse, students will be collaborating as they show what they know about erosion. The part I am looking forward to is hearing how it will all come out in the end. Each group will perform their verse, creating one unified song through the structure of the blues. And for some added greatness, some students will be able to play the 12 bar blues on Orff instruments from the music room.

This musical experience of composing a piece of music is something I’ve been looking forward to doing with my students. (This year I have a particularly musical class.) It is my hope that I’ll be able to post a performance online. More to come!

Musical Experiences – Playing in the Classroom

Music is a powerful tool to use in your teaching. It gives students a chance to be creative, to play and find structure – all at once! Best yet, is that it will help you to build community with your students.

It’s all about experiences – building experiences, sharing experiences, reflecting on them and learning from them. With music, you can create these experiences by playing, creating and listening to music.

This blog, I would like to focus on how I encourage my fourth grade students to play music in the classroom. Playing music might include singing, playing instruments, chanting and doing finger plays. We are all naturally drawn to play music. Sometimes there may be nervousness to it or an anxiety to it, but there is a desire. Some ways you I try to include playing into my teaching are:

Start each day with a Patriotic song
Sing your way through the day
Sing transitions from one activity to the next
Play or sing some eye openers or motivators to gives students breaks in their day
Take out the instruments and play with your students
Have students play using body percussion: clapping, slapping, stomping, etc.

To build community through playing music, I love to bring out the percussion instruments and play in a drum circle! [caption id="attachment_298" align="center" width="300" caption="Some of my former 2nd grade students play percussion instruments together!"][/caption] The first time I did this this year, my students’ eyes widened. After discussing instrument protocol and other necessary things, instruments were in students hands and we started playing. I started with an ostinato and soon students found their own voice through the instruments. The shy girl shook her egg, and the boisterous boy clanged his cymbals, the normally soft spoken little lady was giggling as she swirled her maracas. It was a beautiful thing! And I had given them a change to be individualistic, creative and collaborative all at once.

Sure we made a lot of noise (we actually went into a different part of the school to do this) and sure a teacher walked by, peeked in and, noticing I wasn’t the music teacher, gave me a perplexed look (to which I shouted, “Come join us! I know you want to!”), but we weren’t just having fun – we were building community!

I would like to say that I have kept my promise to myself that I would do this every week, but that is not the case, sadly. BUT I try. We have done it maybe once a month. Even so, it has helped us as a class to focus on ourselves for a period of time, to PLAY, to get our creative juices flowing and to connect with one another. It is truly a wonderful thing!!

Next blog - Musical Experiences - Creating Music!

Community Built Through Music

March is Music in Our Schools month. So let’s focus a couple of blogs on it! It is not an accident that we chose “community” as the focus for this month either, because music is a very powerful community builder!

Years ago, I came across this wonderful quote:

“No art form creates community as quickly as music.” ~Bobbie McFerrin

I whole heartedly agree. I’ve seen it happen so many times with people of all ages. I’ve been part of the community and played a role in helping to lead a community into creation.

A few years ago, I entered into a master’s degree program in Arts and Learning, where the cohort had already completed two courses. So, I was the newbie. Fortunately for me, the cohort’s next class was in music. Regardless, I was nervous about walking into a situation where others were already acquainted with one another. BUT then we were given instruments and asked to introduce ourselves to one another by playing in turn around the circle. I sang out through my drum and when I was done, all those once strange faces looked back at me with wide grins and an air of acceptance.

A little later we were all invited to play as a drum/percussion circle and after the ostinato began we all joined in: playing to the rhythm, finding our instrument’s place in the piece, getting our groove on and playing as one. And then the most magical thing happened. After quite some time, we all just finished – together. I don’t know what it was, or what causes this to happen, but we, as ONE without communicating with anything else but our instruments and expressions, knew the piece was over and finished it off. It had been our first time working and playing as a group; our first shared experience. From that moment on, I knew I was part of one amazing community – built through music!

Another example of this is from my very recent past – this past Saturday when I was conducting a workshop entitled “Building Creativity, Character and Community Through Music.” We discussed various ways to do this including listening. I took these ladies through the process of having an Active Listening experience using Chopin’s Prelude in A Major, Opus 28 No.7. That 48 seconds of beauty so inspired this group of teachers! They came up with the most wonderful images, stories and poems that they shared. It was in this sharing that we built an immediate community. As we listened, we shared a common experience, and as we shared our interpretations and the poetry inspired by the piece, we built bonds that would otherwise not be explored in a short 3 hour education workshop. (Check out their wonderful poetry here!)

I’d like to think I create these types of opportunities for my students in my classroom too. We listen to music, create music and play music together! Yes, I get them to make some noise and I even get a couple of odd glances from time to time. But I am fortunate to work in a place where community building and arts integration is smiled upon more often than not. This is such an important part of our students’ education, and I wouldn’t dream of leaving it out of my teaching.

Next blog – Ways to integrate music community building in your teaching. Due out Thursday, 3/11.

Community Built Through the Arts

One very effective way to build community in the classroom is through the arts. You may be an arts teacher or a general ed teacher, a special ed teacher, a musician, an arist or not. It doesn’t matter! If you have a group of students in your room then using the arts to build that safe learning environment can be a powerful tool.

Think about it. If you move with your students, create artwork with them, play or listen to music with them then you are sharing experiences that are special and bonding. As you do and make art together more and more, students will become more trusting of you and their peers and, in turn share more of themselves personally and academically.

When a group, no matter how small or large, creates something and reflects on it, they begin to share pieces of themselves. That process is powerful and if done over time, can be bonding as well. You may start with something as simple as sharing and reflecting on the process students went through to complete a visual art project in science. Or you may decide to listen to music together as you prepare for you day. Yes, your artful community attempts can be connected directly to the curriculum, but they don’t always have to be!

Here is a visual art community activity you might try:

Objective: to create a piece of community art as a group of learners where each person is both valued for their individuality and as part of the whole.

Materials:

Large piece of paper, about 12 feet long.

Tons of coloring materials including crayons, markers, cray-pas, and colored pencils

Procedure:

• Lay out the large piece of paper on the floor or long table.
• Have students kneel or stand around it and place their two hands on the part of the paper that is in front of them. This is their space to use.
• With a black marker, have students draw a border around the large piece of paper in turn. Students draw a piece of the border on the paper that is in front of them and pass the marker to the next person to continue the border until the whole large paper has one continuous boarder.
• Note – Everyone’s border will be a different design. It does not need to be a straight line. They might do waves or jagged points, etc.
• Tell students that they will now color in their section of the paper how ever they desire using any of the materials you have provided. Their sections will over lap a bit and should “blend” into those of the peers around them. They must color inside the border.
• Once everyone is done, step back and admire your work!

Prompts to give:

• What do you notice about this artwork we have made?
• Talk about the movement/color/shapes in the piece.
• What makes it unique?
• Each person, in turn, give one word (or phrase) about this artwork/the process/the experience.
• Move to another place around our artwork and look at it from a different perspective.
• What else do you notice?

Start to discuss COMMUNITY:

• We are all part of a community.
• We all bring ourselves to this class and each one of us is unique just as each of our pieces in this large piece of art is unique.
• We all fit together.
• Sometimes you need to walk to a different place and look at things from another person’s perspective.
• We will hang this artwork up to remember what we did today and remember that we are a community that works together in this classroom.

There are ways to connect this activity to your curriculum (math, ELA) and you can even take this activity further by discussing it more and adding to it. But I’m going to save that for another blog…

Next blog – Community Built Through Music! due out Tues 3/9

Creating a Safe Learning Environment

Why is it important to create a sense of community in your classroom? Easy – it helps with everything, all year. When students feel like they are part of a community, they are more apt to participate in activities, contribute to discussions and work hard. They take pride in what they do, because they feel as if what they do matters. Taking the time to build community helps to create a safe learning environment for both you and your students.

Whether you see your students all day, every day or once a week, this can be a challenge, but it’s possible (and important!). I know teachers that use teambuilding activities at the beginning of the year to help create community. Others assign projects where groups of students poll the class and post the results. Regardless of how, it shouldn’t be overlooked.

What kinds of things do you do to build community in your room?

What are the effects of that work you do?

Please share by commenting below.

Next blog – due out Sat. 3/6 – Building Community Through the Arts (will include an activity to try!)

A Sense of Community

The sense of community can be an essential piece to a successful classroom. Nearly all teachers strive to create community in their classrooms in the first weeks of school and try to keep that feel throughout the year. But how?

I’ve talked to many teachers about this topic and we all seem to agree that students not only need to feel like they belong to a community in their classrooms, but in their schools and in their town communities as well. (Not to mention teachers need to feel a belonging to a community.) Community can be a very large topic and this month we will focus on ways we teachers create community within our own classrooms. In months to come, we will look at other ways “community” plays a part in our profession.

Team building activities, ice breakers and other games are ways in which we can start to build community with our students. But, other ways to build a trusting community is through shared experiences within your own curriculum. The arts can play a large role in this too. I can’t wait to blog about this topic and I encourage you to add comments, ideas and insights.

New Website Almost Ready

I am so excited about the new website I am building through WordPress. YAY! It's almost ready to launch and the only thing that will hold it back a few days/weeks will be connecting it to our actual domain name of www.theinspiredclassroom.com. If you want a sneaky peak, here is where the new website is right now:
http://d1112149.dotsterhost.com
I would love to hear what you think so far and if you have any suggestions for improvements.
After the initial getting used to WP, I have been enjoying, nay, becoming addicted to adding plugins and widgets to improve on the user-friendly-ness of the site.

Some great new features:

• The BEST part is that it's all on one site: information and resources as well as the blog/magazine and ability to create community.
• Anyone can comment on posts without having to sign in. I hope this will encourage people to write a comment and/or add to a discussion without feeling like they have to think of and use a new username/password.
• You can click on a TAG to gain access to a topic of interest.
• You can search the whole site by entering a key word or phrase.
• I can set up users and authors to add content to the site. SO - if you are interested in becoming a guest blogger, I can set you up to do that and you can post anything you would like!

I hope this new website is more conducive to your needs and our need to have a PLC online.
Please let me know if we can do anything to help you in the future with the wonderful teaching you do every day!

Elizabeth

TIC - A New Beginning

This may ramble a little - just need to get some thoughts out...

For a leadership class I am currently enrolled in, I am to assess the environment I hope to change. Right now, I am in the middle of doing some reading and developing a survey. This is not easy. I feel like I have one chance to do this initial assessment well. Survey Monkey is the avenue I think I will take in terms of the platform for the assessment. I'm hoping that is the most user friendly for my colleagues. The questions are in arts integration and I plan to survey ALL teachers: classroom, arts, special ed and specialists.

My ultimate goal has been and continues to be focused on the teachers - what they need to develop their craft and feel comfortable in the arts as they teach. The long term goal is to reach out to teachers and to implement some sort of teacher-friendly program/professional development opportunities to do this. Something that is accessible, meaningful and, most importantly practical to the teachers.

I know that so many teachers see the value in arts education and integration, but the pressures being put on us is immense and it is hard to stray away from the basics. However, I believe that there is a way. There are places in our country who have seen such success in arts integration. It is my hope to shed light on this and to help empower teachers who want to integrate TO integrate.

I've been taking small, what I thought were unrelated steps, but the momentum has kicked in in the past few months. With the beginning of The Inspired Classroom's online social network http://the-inspired-classroom.socialgo.com , many teachers have found a place to chat on various arts infused topics in education as well as find a community of like-minded educators.

We also started TEACHER FIELD TRIPS where teacher get together to do various cultural and arts infused activities. (The first one, going dancing, was such FUN!)

I continue to present at conferences and teach workshops in arts and music integration. This is a topic that teachers are into and once they hear the possibilities, they are convinced that there is a place for it in their classrooms!

There are many other possibilities with this too: Professional Learning Communities centered around arts integration, additional publications, community involvement and outreach, the use of artists in residence.

This is truly beginning to take shape and become something more than I anticipated 10 years ago when I started to write down the first sentences of what became my book on my once new computer.

My final note before I finish - "WE" I need a we in this now. I cannot do this alone. I am quickly realizing that the potential to this work is much greater than I am and in order to continue I need the ideas, support and community that other educators and interested persons can bring to the table.

And so, this fall has brought on a new beginning to Yeogirl Press and The Inspired Classroom. It is exciting, stimulating, overwhelming and nerve racking all at once. I guess that's a good sign of what is to come!