What Older Students Don’t Want to do Their First Day of Class
What comes to mind when you think about the ‘Welcome Back to School’ staff meeting on day one of teacher inservice? How do you feel about that meeting? What usually happens in that meeting? A cringy ice breaker. Procedures and expectations. Lots of lectures. The annual bloodborne pathogen video that hasn’t been updated in 30 years. More lectures. Meeting upon meeting upon meeting. Is it necessary? Sure! Does it all relate to what we do as music teachers? Rarely. But we need to know the plan for the year, goals for us as a staff, areas of focus, and to go over all the need-to-know information. The same can be said for that first day of class with our students.
There is always important information that we must give our students. That doesn’t change; our delivery, creative planning and deliberate attention to detail can help us share the important information while also creating opportunities for music making on day one. Likely the things that older students don’t want to do on their first day of class are the same things that we don’t want to do on our first day of inservice. Let’s look three of things students don’t want to do on the first day and how we can facilitate musical experiences from the start.
What Older Students Don’t Want to do Their First Day of Class
Listen to Lectures.
How can we present the need-to-know information in bite size chunks with concise bullet points? Is there a way to teach expectations and procedures without talking about them ad nauseam? There definitely is.
Mix musical activities between sharing of expectations and procedures. Try to talk for no more than 5 minutes at a time. We talk much more than we ever realize. I’m guilty of this. I want my students to understand what is expected so I drill home one point for 5 minutes when it only needs to be said in 1-2 minutes. Instead practice doing what you say you’re going to do.
Explain expectations for how to enter the room, where to sit, how to sit, and your expectations for listening when you talk. When students are actively learning I can show follow through in reacting to what is going on or in reinforcing the expectation. Follow up immediately with asking students to listen to a song and ask them to listen for something specific such as how many times do they hear a specific word? What is happening in the song? How many claps occur? Students are practicing the expectation you just talked about and you are showing what happens when they follow (or don’t follow) the expectation.
Do the same thing after explaining expectations in other areas. Things like “Mallets stay on the table until I ask you to pick them up” or “if you have something to say, you need to raise your hand. I won’t answer anyone who is blurting out.” Share the expectations in digestible pieces. Practice the expectations as you teach something musical. Provide feedback along the way and let students know that not only do you have expectations, but you’ll follow through on those expectations. Practice the expectations for longer than you talk about them.
Sit an entire class period.
45 minutes of sitting in one place? No thank you. I get restless in meetings because I’m so used to moving throughout the day as a teacher. How can we provide an opportunity for students to move at least one time during the first class?
Movement allows our brains to readjust and refocus when we do need to sit and listen. It gives our brains a break and our bodies love it. A few ideas for adding movement into class on day one:
Review a line dance, folk dance, or movement game that they learned last year
Response activities: you play a steady beat on the drum and students march the beat around the room. Briefly demonstrate how this should look: show how to move in self-space, making your own pathway, listening for directions and musical changes. Adjust what students should do based on what they hear. This could go many ways:
When you hear two eighth notes, change the direction that you’re walking. Play quarter notes for a while as they march, add in one beat of eighth notes and return back to playing quarter notes.
When you hear the notes change from quarter to eighth, stop marching and clap instead. Then alternate between playing quarter and eighth notes (quarter notes for 8 beats, eighth notes for 12 beats, quarter notes for 10 beats, …)
Ask students to march the steady beat while you play a rhythm on the drum. Observe if they’re able to maintain a steady beat while hearing a rhythm pattern being played. When the rhythm stops, ask them to listen to directions. You’ll give students a question to answer with one or two students near them. This allows students to talk, interact with others, and share about their summer, their favorite thing about school, or other random topics. Repeat this a few times.
Talk about music without making music.
You want students to get excited about music right away. The best way I have found to do this is to begin teaching musical content on day one.
There’s nothing worse than to hear about all of the great things that are going to happen in music class only to find that you don’t get to make music at all on day one. If we want the buy in from our older students we need them to experience music right away. This could mean that students learn one or two vocal warm-ups, a speech piece that immediately becomes a body percussion piece, how to hold mallets and play the C-major scale using quarter notes and eighth notes, or even a simple melody or bass line through singing or playing.
Sprinkle musical experiences between layers of expectations and procedures. You’ll find it more joyful and so will they! Something like this:
Enter the room. Explain how to enter, where to place digital devices, where to sit, and how to sit.
Sing a song
Share the most important expectations or rules.
Movement activity
Organize folders, binders, and digital learning management systems (LMS like Google Classroom or Schoology)
Learn a speech piece. Pat the rhythm on your lap as you speak.
Sign up for instrument jobs to get out tubano drums.
Explain how to pass out and set up the drums (How are drums carried? What order do they get set up (high to low)? What do students do once the drums are out? When do they know to play them? What happens if they play when they’re not supposed to?)
Review the speech piece. Pat rhythms on lap. Show tone position and play speech piece using tone position. If you don’t have one drum per student, show students how to rotate and try to make sure that every student has an opportunity to play at least once, if possible.
Teach how to put drums away. Ask students to share what they learned today.
Teach how to line up to leave or explain how to leave class if they don’t line up.