It was another wonderful day at TMEA. I ended the day with new ideas and feeling rejuvenated to go back to my classroom on Monday.
STEAM in the Elementary Music Classroom
Cherie Herring and I presented this session showing four examples from our classroom. These examples showed individual activities to an entire, collaborative unit with the science teacher. We covered grades PreK through three. At the end of the session, Cherie made sure that the music educators were able to try a portion of a STEAM project hands-on and had the participants creating sound with such items as a balloon, a hanger, string, and a bolt. It was a fun and engaging session. To see our handout, please feel free to visit my TMEA resources on my website: http://amymburns.com/resources/
Tuneful, Beatful, Artful
On Wednesday, I presented with Dr. Missy Strong on how technology can be used with the Feierabend approach. On Friday, I was able to attend Dr. John Feierabend’s session where he geared his approach towards using movement with grades 3-5. It was an excellent session full of movement activities. When I attend Dr. Feierabend’s sessions, I always appreciate all of the research he has done on childhood music. He made the point that not everything should be called music. In other countries, music is something you make. Notation is something you read. He reminded us this as he showed us how important it is for us to teach the students to feel the music before reading it. He taught us the importance of being Tuneful, Beatful, and Artful. Some of his session highlights were posted on the Facebook Feierabend Fundamentals Page.
25 Things You Didn’t Know About the SMART Board
Cherie did a fabulous session about the SMART Board. I use mine all of the time and she showed me a couple of things that I did not know were included in the newest version (Notebook 16). The two I came away with were that items you place on the page can be cropped or masked. In the past, you had to do that separately outside of the Notebook software, or use the camera tool. Now, each object can be cropped through their menu. This is great news. The other was that there is a reset button to reset your page. I had always gone through a couple of menus. I now have the button on my toolbar.
She also showed excellent new features from “shout out”, where your students can answer questions with their devices and a simple code provided by SMART, to reminding us how great the activity builder can be for sorting and assessment.
If you are still using the free version of Notebook (Notebook 11), then you can download my free ebook, Help! I am an Elementary Music Teacher with a SMART Board! to learn how to use the software in your elementary music classroom.
Seesaw – A Digital Learning Journal
In many of my sessions, I showed Seesaw, the digital learning journal. If you did not get the chance, here is the qr code to receive a free month of the paid version, Seesaw Plus. Not sure what Seesaw is? Please email me and I will send you my webinar for elementary music educators.
https://app.seesaw.me/#/login/?continueUrl=%252Finvite&force_login=signup&role=teacher&code=qaJ7hYrqeWHIA77YMquztg1W7EVPF9-nTRDu2a-x1rFKY79l1UrsD0I3B77hXwANPHU0r56gT54Wkq0meuEV9g%3D%3D&type=REF&promoMessage=Get%201%20extra%20month%20of%20Seesaw%20Plus%20applied%20to%20your%20account%20automatically
If you attended TMEA, what were your favorite highlights?
