You Can Learn a lot from A Slinky

Every month I give my students a little gift that reminds them of the value we study for the month. For example, in December we focus on determination and I give the students chomping teeth to illustrate tenacity.

This month, our focus is on patience and, quite honestly I wasn't sure what to get them. I came across some toy Slinkies that I had bought a few weeks back and figured I could use them even though I wasn't sure how to tie it in with patience.

First, I decided to make them wait for it. I didn't give it to them until later in the month, and then I thought it would make a cute gift to give on their first day of MCAS, our high stakes test.

I put one slinky on each desk as I prepared the room for the day. The kids were so excited to see them! "Slinky!" they exclaimed as they ripped them out of the plastic. It wasn't long before they discovered that these (cheap) toys didn't work right away... you had to pry them apart to make them slink. Another bonus for having them during our patience month!

Before I asked the students to put the Slinkies in their desks, we talked a little bit about the plastic toys and I worked in additional links to patience.

"These Slinkies are here to remind us to be patient during this testing process. Be patient with me as I read instructions, be patient with others around you and most importantly, be patient with yourselves as you work and write. We are in no rush!"

Then it was time to get up and stretch before we began. We all stood, many students with their Slinkies, and stretched. After sitting back down, I reviewed with the students how to stretch at their seats and when they feel overwhelmed to do a small stretch break before getting back to work.

As I looked around the room, I saw so many kids stretching their Slinkies. So I said, "Be like your Slinky today. Stretch when you need to, and then put yourself back together and smile."

Many of them stretched their Slinky, compressed it and smiled at the smiley face printed on the toy. It was cute and it made me smile.

"See, you can learn a lot from a Slinky," I said, "Now put them in your desk where you know they will be and let's begin!"

PLaiC - Process, Play and Balance

PLaiC is now a new venture for me. It is a Professional Learning Community centered around Arts Integration. What a wonderful example of community. In this case it was a community of teachers getting together to talk freely about their profession and their passion for seeing true arts integration in their teaching.

There were a couple of themes we seemed to keep returning to: Process, Play and Balance.

In PROCESS, we discussed the importance of stressing the process by which we accomplish things and not just the product. I am reminded of how this does not happen in things such as “on-demand” writing like in much high stakes testing. When my students are asked to write a narrative they must do it in a matter of hours independently. There is no inspiration except for a worded prompt, no time to chat about your ideas before planning a story and no time to walk away from your draft before expecting to edit and revise it. What a shame! The writing process is taken out of the equation.

In art, process is important. When I was in grad school we learned to “Trust the Process” as McNiff’s title states. How pertinent it is to work through things, reflect, and revise in order to come out with quality work.

For more, see this collection of articles about “The Process”.

PLAY also came up quite a bit. Unfortunately, it was the lack of play that was mostly discussed. When that time is not there, the places in our brains that thrive on discovery, experimentation and play start to lose their vitality.

I am sad at the fact that as students get older, the less time they have to play. They need it. We need it. We need that time to create new things, work with new materials and discover new ways of doing things.

In terms of BALANCE, we all seemed to agree that we need balance in all things, including curriculum. It’s like the whole language/phonics based language debate – there needs to be balance. So is true in our teaching and integration of the arts. Our students need the basics (the 3 Rs), but they also need the creative. Our job is to teach with that balance, but we need the autonomy in our classrooms to be able to provide that for our students.

For more on balance, see the article “T.R.I.C.ing Kids”

I am so glad that I am now meeting and collaborating with other teachers in my district that share my views on the importance of the arts. There are more out there and it is my hope that this group will grow in the years to come. For now, this community is just what I need to continue my work as a professional.

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!