First week ramblings!

Welcome to Music! Get ready to sing, dance, and play!

That is the welcome banner that my kids see each day when walking into my music room. I also posted this picture to showcase my singular attempt at Martha Stewart crafty-ness in the form of tissue paper pom poms. I must say, they were not a complete disaster, as I previously worried they would be! Big thank you to Marie Marshall for helping me assemble them, and to my always amazing husband Brett for helping me hang them up!

I also designed a very simple clip chart to use in my classroom. The previous music teacher had a system where the students upon arrival into music would have "3 gongs" as an entire class. Throughout the course of the class, they can gain up to 5 gongs, or lose all of their gongs based on their behavior. Whoever was an excellent example throughout the class would be the designated gong player, and they would play the gong that is placed in the front of my room the amount of times that they earned as a class. To add a fun musical twist, they would try to guess as a class what dynamic marking the gong player was performing their gong hits at. 

I ended up adopting the gong behavior system to use in my classroom, but to give it a visual representation, I made the clip chart to help keep myself and the students accountable! They all come in on "good", meaning they have 3 gongs. From there, they can progress however they decide to as a class based on their behavior. I find it easier than just keeping tally marks in my class roster - it is more fun for the kids to see themselves climbing up the chart, and very impacting to see their clip descending when someone makes a poor choice.

I must say, the school year is off to an incredible start! I feel that the kids are very receptive of me as the new teacher, and all of my lessons are going off very successfully. I also must admit, I am a huge over-planner, but I find that it is less stressful to have way too much planned and not get to it and simply spill over your previous lessons into the next week, versus being stuck with 5 minutes of panic at the end of class not having anything planned! My pacing is improving already, and due to the fact that we have A,B,C,D cycles of specials, the A days are obviously a little less polished and by the time C and D come around, I feel like a pro with the pacing and the processing of my instruction... just in time to start a brand new cycle again. Such is the life of a specials teacher, though. 

I also must say, that it is an incredibly taxing job to be a first year music teacher! I had no idea how much work it entailed to basically craft a curriculum for yourself from SCRATCH (resources, lesson plans, powerpoints, and all!) Of course I am pulling from a lot of different previous experiences... but to pool them all together and assimilate them into one seamless lesson is absolutely daunting at times, and can very well consume every hour of my day if I allow it to. I am trying to budget my time better and to still allow myself sanity breaks in the evening, but sometimes I catch myself thinking about school every moment. I need to plan what I can, and give the rest to God and make sure I do indeed still have a personal life outside of school! For my own good! 

I also am very honored to be following in the footsteps of such a wonderful, well-loved teacher, but at times the comparison game can be daunting as well! The students are only familiar with her style of teaching, and for awhile, it will be a battle between how they did things before and how we are going to do things now. But I am counting my blessings that I am replacing a phenomenal teacher who was respected and well-loved enough to be missed! :) 

I am by no means complaining, just simply venting to document this specific first-year teacher feeling. I have a lot of NEW things to juggle... but I have been equipped to juggle them through my college training and life experiences, and above all else, my faith! I can do this,,, and now,,, we continue!

Classroom Preparation

This past week has been a whirlwind of classroom preparations! I have been accumulating ideas from past teachers and classrooms I have seen and from Pinterest, and this past week they all had to come to fruition.

I have to admit, I underestimated how much time it takes to create absolutely every last thing from scratch. I have to say, I was pretty adamant about not dumping a lot of my personal money into my classroom before the year began. I have heard time and time again that it is all about "progression... not perfection" and that it is easy to drop hundreds of dollars as a first year teacher on things that can easily wait a few weeks once you get your hands on your budget/PTO money. So, I have been patient in buying things (partially with no choice... being a relative newlywed, money is definitely not at my disposal yet).

I had to pretty much print, cut out, laminate, cut out again, and assemble everything myself! And it has paid off! I think it looks pretty dandy. Nowhere near perfect, but it is a work in progress to add to throughout the year. I chose a sort of ice cream theme for a few things because the former teacher had left the national standards of music written on ice cream cones across the front of the room, so I took that and made a big national standard ice cream bowl outside my classroom in the front main hallway.

To the left of this bulletin board, I created a Twitter board in honor of the new Twitter account I developed for my music classroom. I plan on writing announcements and questions on the whiteboard for students to tweet about!

Below the Twitter board, I have "Today's Scoop" where I will write a brief description or summary of the skills we will be focusing on in that given grade level. It is a way to keep people just passing by my room in the loop on what we are studying!

I am also excited to have printed off and laboriously laminated my very own word wall!! This is something I took from my wonderful cooperating teacher Sarah Hassler. It is a way for children to see movement vocabulary right in front of them during movement exploration and improvisation so they have that safety net of never feeling at a loss for what to do. I divided my locomotor words up on either side of the non-locomotor words, dividing them according to one side being smooth locomotor and the other being sharp locomotor! :)

On the left side of this word wall is my main whiteboard. On the other side of the whiteboard, I have my class norms posted, as well as a place with room for exit slips. I call it my "What STUCK with you today?" section, and the students will place sticky notes with their thoughts on what they did successfully or need improvement on for the next time.

So that is basically what I have done in my classroom. I also made some adorable tissue paper pom poms to hang from my ceiling because they are incredibly high. I didn't get a chance to take a picture of them today, but they are awesome, and I made 6 of them in the primary colors of the rainbow (ROYGBV) to match the class rules/norms! I will post a pic soon.

Tomorrow begins my first teacher work day! Then, August 1 is the first student day! I am so excited and nervous, but I know that I am where I am supposed to be, and I am eager for God to use me this year! We shall see what this week has in store, I will see you on the other side! :)

Noble Crossing Music Twitter page!

Yesterday, I attended a retreat at my new school!

It was a wonderfully planned event, lasting from 10 am to 4 pm, where various speakers informed us all about different educational hot topics! I am incredibly excited for my first year of school to begin now that I have that retreat under my belt.

The most interesting session for me was the Twitter session. I have had a personal Twitter page for probably close to 3 years now, but it has contained nothing more than daily or weekly snippets of my everyday comings and goings... It was never too deep. I learned yesterday how Twitter can be an incredible tool for professional and educational use!

I have since created the Noble Crossing Music Twitter feed to utilize in my classroom, specifically for my older, more tech-savvy students. I will keep people up to date on what is happening in class, when important events or programs are coming up, reminders for my choir, and quite possibly even utilize it as a way to assess my students!

I was thinking of using different hashtags to assess various topics. I have the idea of creating a small Twitter section of my outdoor bulletin board and changing the hashtag to something like #takadimi or possibly use the names of various folk dances behind the hashtag (#caimarusa , etc...)

We shall see what becomes of the feed throughout this year, but I am posting a link in this post, so feel free to check it out and see what ideas I and my students come up with!

https://twitter.com/NCEMusic

Lesson Plan Template

I have always been looking forward to the day when I could completely design my own lesson plan template (nerd alert,,, right?!)

I have drawn on many different inspirations for this design, much of which is the wonderful Sarah Hassler, but I have also incorporated a section for the National Standards and coded it with the Indiana State Standards for music, to keep myself accountable. I also included a materials section to ensure that I can quickly glance at the bottom of my lesson plan and know for certain that I have everything laid out and at my fingertips for that period and don't have any "oh no" moments, which only allow for the children more time to evolve into squirrels right before my eyes!

Many classroom management problems simply stem from a lack of preparation in making the transitions as seamless as possible, so I am trying to look out for myself and my students so we can all do our absolute best!

Let me know what you think of my lesson plan, and please do share any tips or advice you may have!

First post!

Hello, blogosphere! 

This is my blog devoted to all things music! First, I should introduce myself a tad, for posterity's sake, even if no one else reads this but myself and the occasional family member. 

I am Courtney Hollenbeck and I live in Indiana with my wonderful husband, Brett, and we are mounting on a few exciting landmarks: our first anniversary is coming up on July 28th, Brett recently began his new management trainee job with Cintas, and I am mounting on my first year as an elementary music teacher!

I am beyond the moon excited to begin this exciting new journey and to see what challenges and joys are in store for me this year. I often don't do enough reflecting beyond what goes on inside of my own busy brain, so I thought starting a music teacher blog would be a good way for me to ruminate on my many musings!

This month will be a busy one of lesson planning and prepping my classroom for the first day of school, which is August 1st! Noblesville Schools is on a balanced calendar, hence the early start date, but I am eager to see how this year pans out with the longer fall, Christmas, and spring breaks!

Tune it to see what "musical musings" are happening in my little music classroom, and feel free to leave advice, steal ideas that I have most likely stolen from master teachers/Pinterest, and leave me encouraging words throughout this crazy, first year of teaching!

Thanks! 
CH