Here's my room set up for a beginner class. Since I am a sub, most of the stuff in the room was up before I arrived. But as I usually do, I added some of my own ideas.
As I have said before, I had to decide what were the most important things I wanted my students to learn in the few weeks that I was teaching them. 1 of those things was rhythm reading, so we were sightreading rhythms every day (clapping and counting, then playing on concert F). We started out in the book using simple rhythms that were repetitive, then graduated to rhythms that I would make up and write on the board every day. On written tests, I would offer extra credit to students that made up their own articulation/counting exercise, and they were always excited to see their compositions on the board in class. By the end of the 10 weeks, the students were able to easily sightread rhythms with straight sixteenths and could count sixteenth/eighth combinations by working through them.
Scales were also important to me, even though we only got through the 1 octave scales. Most of these students can play all of their scales, but to earn stickers on the poster (which led to a variety of other prizes) students had to play the scales from memory at 80 bpm. I'm pleased with the number that were able to do it, as well as the number that tried and can at least play the scale now even if they can't do it from memory or quite that fast.
Around Spring Break I started that paper chain counting down the days...I really do like teaching, but I like sleeping in, too!
This cart is simply the greatest teaching supply I have ever bought in my whole 3 month career. I noticed quickly that I was losing a lot of time just getting supplies into the room, or forgetting papers, or thinking of an idea while in the room but not having anything with me to actually do it, so I did some research and found this cart.
On the shelf I kept my lesson book and notebook of lesson plans. I got tired of looking at the backs of my students heads while they watched the clock, so I took it down and put a watch around the top of the cart.
In the hanging folders, I kept assignments to pass out to classes as well as these notebooks. Since I wanted to be able to occasionally work with small groups of students, I needed something to keep the others from eating each other, so I came up with these notebooks. Every few days I would add a couple more worksheets and they are due at the end of the semester for a major grade. Also with this cart, they never have to leave the classroom. Saving trees!
In the drawers I kept a class set of markers, stickers, magnets, flashcards and other basics for the variety of music games I made up.
These students got to experience practice cards for the first time when I arrived. That really made them adore me...so I tried to make it fun. The class with the highest % of practice cards that earned a 100 gets a party this friday. It kind of worked...if nothing else, there was a cross curriculum lesson on how basing this contest on % meant that Honors Band being the biggest class didn't make this contest unfair.
Proof to my students that I don't make them do anything I don't do myself. A few of them got into this and would check it every day to see if I practiced.
So there you go. My first classroom. Hopefully I'll be able to put up pictures in the fall of a whole new room!
