So I’ve been MIA for a few weeks, and I’m sorry! If you follow my Facebook page, you know that my dad died, and immediately after, my dog had surgery.  Throw in school starting, and I haven’t seen my bed nearly enough! But finally, things are settling down. So I’m back.

MStoufferMR Dad


Diary of Kodaly Aspiring Newbie

My story as transitions are working really well.  My first graders have been on a bear hunt.  According to them, it is exceptionally frustrating that we haven’t found him yet.  They are currently prepping for Ta and TiTi with a number of songs.  In addition, they’ve had one church performance, and are reviewing their comparatives.  Introducing the elusive bear (Who I don’t intend on finding until at least late October) has created an atmosphere of excitement and anticipation.  They come in each week wondering if we are going to find him!

Picture

Since I’m linking up with my awesome friend Jen at The Yellow Brick Road Blog on lesson planning resources – I’d like to talk about how I’ve been planning.  I’m a big organization fan so I’ve been trying to really get my Kodály resources in a way that does a few things:
– allows for easy travel – My office at home is my planning place. I don’t have prep time at school, and working in a few different buildings, I need things to travel easy.
– is easy to follow the next year – this should be self explanatory, but I want to make sure the lesson I write now make sense to me next year so I can plan accordingly.
– keeps as much in one place as possible – the more I do digitally, the easier it is to find.  Back up everything on a travel drive and I’m good to go.
Here’s what I’m doing:
Digital Song List – writing things out is great.  But typing them makes them easily editable, especially if you always carry something to get to them.  On a daily basis, I use a combination of my laptop, iPad and phone.  My laptop is what I use for big planning, creating, and general school work, but during the day, I access my lesson plans on my iPad via dropbox, and will sometimes jot notes to use when I start my lesson planning for the next week.  I’ve been making my song lists digital.

Digital Song List

Folk song organization – I decided I need a list of all my folk songs in one place, so I printed, copied, etc, every folk song I’ve done analysis for, punched, them and put them in this nifty arc binder.  I think this is one of the best ideas I’ve ever had.  I know you’ve heard of me talk about the arc system, as do a lot of my music teacher blogger friends (and I’m so incredibly hooked.)  Its all at my fingertips, and easy to add to it.  I think having them in one place will be amazing.  What I’d like to do next is possibly put the collection somewhere for me digitally so I can simply check it from anywhere since this is already a pretty hefty weight!

Folk Song Notebook

Folk Song Notebook

Lastly, my year plans.  I’m putting my year plans into an table.  I’ve got a page for each class, with the categories: Prep, Present, Practice, and Other Music (Things like holidays, and the musical, and when I need to have the kids ready to sing in church.) I actually have an Excel file for this as well, but the table is a nice printable that fits on one page.  I can easily glance at it from Dropbox, or print to keep at school.  I’ve never liked how Excel files print. Here’s what my Kinders are working on.

Year Plan Table

How do you do your plans?  Any fun tips for me?

 

Melissa

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