S16: E285 Classroom Procedures to Review in the New Year
Start the new year off with a positive classroom environment!
Use these classroom procedure ideas to get you started.
The great thing about a new year and time after a longer break is that you can truly start fresh. Again. January is a great time to re-set classroom procedures, practice musical skills on day one, and set the tone for how you want your classroom to feel in 2024. I should note that each of these classroom procedures do not have to happen in the first class.
Basics: entering, exiting, sitting, raising hand, and overall classroom expectations/rules
Review those simple things - how to enter the room, how and where to sit, how to raise your hand to ask for things or share thoughts, how to exit, classroom expectations/rules, where to place technology (if bringing it)/water bottles/bathroom expectations and location of bandaids and kleenex. It is not wasted time to take time to reset and re-establish expectations. It is worth the time and energy in the beginning. The saying “Go slow to go fast” is perfect for this point in time. Take more time to start off the way you mean for it to continue. Slow down. Don’t rush through what they’ve already known and done.
Music Pieces that students already know.
Look back at something you’ve done with students from the fall that they loved. Bring out a song, poem, movement piece, or game that is familiar. Students will be getting back into the groove just like you and familiarity can put everyone at ease and add a little lightness to the first class back.
This will also give you a chance to reset expectations for active participation in music activities. What do you expect when it’s time to sing? Play? Move?
Instruments
How to set up instruments (practicing this when we’re actually playing instruments for the first time again - might not be the first day) There is no need to talk about what students will do with instruments when they get them out. It’s better to talk about it during a class where students will actually be doing it so that the practice is happening right away. It embeds in their memories much better! So wait to review instrument set-up and expectations for when students will be using the instruments.
Jobs (if you have them) - reminding students of their job or reassigning jobs
How to put away instruments
Reviewing hand positions, mallet positions, expectations for when to play or when to listen
Changes Moving Forward
This isn’t really reviewing procedures so much as establishing something new, but referring back to how things have been going (reviewing former procedures) to make a link to a change that is going to happen can be really helpful in making a pivot. For example, if you’re changing the structure of the lesson, you might explain that as you go through it with students. “In the fall we did it this way…now we’re going to do it this way.” If you want to transition students to counting with 1-2-3-4 instead of ta titi, start with the familiar and lead into the new. “We’ve been saying our rhythms this way… there’s another way that we could count instead. Let’s try it.”
Don’t feel the need to change anything if it was working. And don’t feel the need to change everything at once if you feel like nothing was working. Choose one thing to work on and shift. Only one. Make a list of the things you’d like to try differently and choose one. There isn’t a right or wrong with this. It will really depend on the individual classes, grade levels, or overall reflection of what change might make a difference. A few changes I’ve made in the middle of the year:
Changing counting system - transitioning (‘testing’ out takadimi)
Changing seating chart and way chairs were laid out (from rows into a u-shape or from a u-shape into rows)
Changing class format - adding a transition, starting with a specific opening for each class, shifting how I end class, trying to add a five minute reflection time to close class
Changing what I want students to do when they first stand behind the barred instruments (xylophones) - always a struggle to get students to not play instruments immediately.
Changed where mallets were placed and what students were to do or not do.
5. Personal teacher routines
Sometimes the procedure that needs reviewing isn’t what happens in the classroom, but what happens in the prep time, lunch routines, or personal planning time as a teacher. Give yourself some grace as you re-enter back into the teaching environment. Set up a routine for yourself in the morning as you enter, change where you eat lunch or what you eat for lunch, bring a snack for yourself, and think about what you want to do vs. what you need to do to settle in again. Think about how you want to adjust the procedures for yourself to help you be more at ease and to take care of you too.
This is the classroom procedure to review for yourself. We focus a lot on how to make the transition back to school a wonderful, seamless, and exciting time for students. I’d encourage you to do the same for yourself. Something I’m doing this year is resetting what I do when I get to school. Three things I’m doing that you might find useful too:
Giving myself a few minutes to settle in rather than immediately jumping into work. My daughter and I arrive together and head up to my office where I turn on my lamps, set things down, and have been immediately heading out to put my lunch in the fridge and almost always get right to work outside of my room rather than taking a minute to settle. I’m going to try shifting my morning routine to putting my lunch away in the fridge and then immediately returning to my office to sit down for ten minutes. Maybe five. Just a little something where I can take a few minutes to assess the day’s outline, talk with my daughter a bit, and either read the Bible Recap devotion for the day or listen to the audio recap podcast.
Using a 64oz water bottle. I’ve found that I haven’t been drinking hardly any water during the day and I want to visually see how hydrated I am. The 64oz bottle was so helpful in past years so I’m going to lug it around again.
Bringing a banana, apple, or other easy-to-eat fruit or veggies as a snack. I do this every day anyway, but want to keep it going as it was really nice to have something easily accessible.
To recap, the five classroom procedures you might review in the new year are:
Basics
Music pieces students already know
Instruments
Considering any changes: Making a change to the way you did things in the first few months of the year
Personal teacher routines