Episode 48 - Gear Heist- 3 Hilarious Ways to 'Borrow' Equipment from Your PE Coach and Engage Even Your Sporty Students

 Hey, elementary music teachers. Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and stuck in the chaos of your classroom? It's time to transform the way you teach with Chaos to Calm, my upcoming course designed to revolutionize your teaching experience. Say goodbye. Bye to stress and hello to harmony as I guide you through practical strategies to reclaim balance, joy, and efficiency in your music classroom.

Sign up for my waiting list now and be the first to access special bonuses when enrollment opens. But hurry, spots are limited and the waiting list closes on Tuesday, February 20th. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your teaching to the next level to get on the list. Now go to stories that sing.net/c toc waiting list.

That's the letter C, the number two, the letter C, so that's stories that sing.net/c two C waiting list. See you there. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network. Better today, better tomorrow, and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at www. teachbetterpodcastnetwork.

com. Now let's get onto the episode. Are

you an elementary music teacher? Who's frustrated and overwhelmed. I'm Jeanette Shorey, a happy music teacher who loves teaching every day. But it wasn't long ago I was in your shoes. Join me Wednesdays to help you find happy in your music classroom.

Well, it's the middle of February and we have been struggling in the music classroom. Have we not? I mean, February is the shortest month. But the longest month behavior wise, because we really don't have any good breaks. I mean, in my district, we are actually getting this Friday as an E Day and Monday is day off because it's presidency.

day, but a lot of people don't get president's day off. So you may be dealing with that. You haven't had any sort of breaks since the long weekend over Martin Luther King weekend. And, you know, I know people who don't teach are like, Oh, you poor baby. You get all this time off. It really isn't about us. I mean, it is because we need the breaks as well, because people don't realize how much.

Brain activity is involved in just keeping students under control and then trying to find the very best ways to reach them and the very best ways to teach them. Ha, see what I did there? And so, you know, people just don't realize that, but you and I know. That kids get tired when they don't have those little breaks in their, in their month.

And teachers get tired because kids are tired and that makes them harder to control. So this week, I thought I would give you some hilarious ways to borrow some equipment from your P. E. coach or coaches, because we happen to have two coaches. Because here in Alabama, they very smartly give our kids P. E.

every day. day for 30 minutes. It is amazing. So if you don't have that, I totally recommend lobbying for it because it's so good for the kids. I mean, you probably don't have a lot of control, but you know, something to talk about with the powers that be when you have that opportunity. Because guess what?

If you don't ask for things, you don't get things. Anyway, I digress. So these are activities that you can use. You can borrow some equipment from your PE coach or coaches and engage even your sportiest students. So we've got some details to talk about here. I have three skills and a bonus that you get to work on.

And then we're going to talk about the type of equipment that you might want to use. So I like to use things like meter. steady beat and note values when I am using PE equipment. So the skills I like to work on are meter, steady beat and note values. And then along with note values, we can work on note recognition, recognizing the notes, the way that they're shaped, recognizing their names, because I don't know about you, but.

My students, even my fifth graders, when I was teaching fourth and fifth last year and, and years before that, they had a lot of struggle. I mean, you know, 30 minutes once a week is not a lot of time and for them to remember how to recognize a whole note and how many beats it gets, et cetera. I know it doesn't seem like a lot for us, but for them, I don't know, they struggle hard.

If your kids don't struggle hard on this, I need you to reach out and tell me how you're doing it. Because my kiddos always struggled hard and I really focused on I wanted them to leave, first of all, with a love of music. Second of all, I wanted them to be able to read and write. And say the note values and I wanted them to know the note names.

I wanted them to recognize what a whole note looked like, what a half note looked like. And we wouldn't even go past 16th notes. Sometimes we do triplets, but usually not. I mean, usually we would just go with basic, basic note names and note values. So if you are doing something different because. If your kiddos are remembering, then you are definitely doing something different and I need to know about it.

Maybe we can have an interview. You, you reach out to me, Jeanette at storiesthatsing. net and let me know what you're doing and I would love to interview you on this podcast. And that goes for anyone who has a really good idea. I am trying to get a podcast guest. Every month, because it's really nice, first of all, to have somebody else to talk, but also it's nice for, you know, you to, to hear from other people.

So if you have a really good idea or you're focusing on something in your classroom that I'm not talking about, but you think is valuable, please feel free to reach out to me. Anyway, let's get back on track. So the equipment that I use, the three that I'm going to tell you about are jump ropes, bouncy balls, and hop along bouncers.

And if you don't know what hop along bouncers are, I had to actually look up the name for them because I was like, I don't know what those things are called. But they're like the gigantic yoga ball looking things that have the little, you know, handle on them. And I mean. You bring those into your classroom, any one of those things, the jump ropes, the bouncy balls, or the hop along bouncers.

And you, the kids are going to lose their minds. They're going to be so excited. Every time I got my bouncy balls out when I was teaching fourth and fifth grade, and even now teaching my little ones, I get them out differently teaching little ones, but they would be so excited. So let's go through. And I'm going to talk to you about using jump ropes for those three skills.

Then we're going to talk about using bouncy balls for those three skills. And then we're going to talk about using those hop along bouncers for those three skills. And. And they're very similar in how they work. So let's start with meter. I start with meter at the very beginning of the year. That is the first skill I work on.

And that is part of what I'm going to be teaching in my new course, Chaos to Calm, is the kind of the, a very basic outline of. The way that I teach and what my method is and and like kind of my walkthrough of the year what I like to start with and why it makes sense for me and why it could make sense for you so I start with meter and of course I'm not doing that with pre k kindergarten but starting with first grade we start with meter.

And I tell them what meter is. So you're going to, first of all, tell them what meter you're working in, and you're going to review where the strong beat is, how many weak beats are after the strong beat, that the strong beat is always on beat one and the weak beats are after, and that they're going to count one as their strongest beat, and then.

The other beats as their weak or softer beat. So you do all that review and then you're going to go into a little bit of, I like to go into a little bit of a body percussion thing and we start out not playing music. I'll have like a drum and it'll be like 1, 2, 3, 1, 2. Three, one, two, three. So I like to demonstrate that way, that way I have complete control over the tempo, then you're going to go moving into whatever it happens to be.

So you always want to set up with some kind of a review, use their background knowledge before you just start. And as a younger teacher, I had a really bad habit of not doing that. And now that I do that. Oh my gosh, it makes such a difference for my kids. They, they really just know, you know, they, they know what to do.

They're like, Oh, okay, this connects from last week. And it just makes more sense to them. So when I'm starting with meter, we'll do all the traditional things where we get out. Well, maybe they're traditional. I don't know. I've got, um, like popsicle sticks and things like that, that we will use. As and and I also sometimes will use my recorder cleaners, you know, those little plastic things that the kids are always like, What is this for?

And you're always like, Oh, you're supposed to use that to clean your recorder. It's a whole thing. But and and they love to, like, But, and then, have you ever had a, a kid, like, get something stuck in the recorder because, like, I've had kids put paper towels in that little end and, I mean, it's ridiculous! Um, but, anyway, I will use those cleaners.

As conductors batons and we will talk about how to stand like a conductor and you know all that good stuff and we are going to use those as conductors batons and we start not with the full pattern in first grade, we just start with the downbeat so and and I still talk about meter, but we start with the downbeat and we talk about what happens after the downbeat.

So we go in in meter of two one. Two, one, two, and, and, you know, they just show me the, the downbeat and then we'll do meter of three, et cetera. Uh, we, we will also do movement things where like they bounce on the strong beat or they bounce on the downbeat and they tiptoe on the weak beats. We will dance with, you know, we do all kinds of movement and, you know, body percussion, all that good stuff.

So usually my meter unit lasts. It's about a month because I like to really delve in and explore it because when I was younger meter did not make any sense to me and it really took me a long time to sort of feel that meter and understand it. So I just feel like meter is really important and so I like to spend lots of time and lots of creative ways to work on meter.

So when you're working on meter with jump ropes, what I like to do is we jump on the strong beat and then they rest on the weak beats and they might like jump on the strong beat and let's say we're in meter of two, it would be jump, bop, and they like bop their heads back and forth. Jump, bop, bop, jump, bop, bop, like that.

So that is one way that you can use jump ropes for meter. You could also, if you've got some coordinated bigger kids, you can use the jump ropes, and you know how you'll like jump together. Um, you can have two people jump, so they jump, and it takes kind of a little bit longer of a time, so it really creates, and because you've got four feet instead of two, it creates a more firm, strong beat, so they can jump together.

Another way you can do it is you can do the. you know, the really long jump rope and you can have a couple kids in the middle and you can have people on either side of it and they can jump on the strong beat and then on the weak beats they can, you know how when you're first starting the jump rope, I know we women, if you um, I don't know about younger people, but when I was growing up we did a ton of jump roping and you would like tap the jump rope on the people that were in the middle, you'd tap it on their Ankle to give them the feel for the for the rope like just a little tap So you could go jump jump tap tap like that, you know that sort of thing so These are just some ways that you can do it.

Now if you've got littles Obviously little kids are not going to be able to use the jump rope very well You may find some like my Taylor my my when my Taylor was a little guy. He could jump rope in kindergarten Devin mmm I don't know how well he jumps rope now, because, no, that's not true. He's 30, so he totally can jump rope now.

But when he was a little guy, it took him a long time to, to know how to jump rope. So everybody works at their own level of coordination, right? We know that as teachers. So I would say, put those jump ropes out in front of them and have them jump over the rope and they can even take turns like You could make it a little game where?

They they have to like watch each other and you know figure out. Oh that like for example You could do like For jump ropes, they're, they're horizontal or, or shall I say perpendicular to the line of kids and they can jump and then, um, like tip toe to the next spot, then the next group, jump, tip, toe, jump.

So, you know, or jump, tip, tip, jump, tip, tip, tip, whatever meter you're working on. So those are just some ways that you can use jump ropes to. Practice meter because that's what we're doing. We're practicing feeling it. We're practicing We're practicing kind of playing it with our feet, so to speak. What about bouncy balls?

Now, first of all, if you haven't heard me talk about bouncy balls before, notice that I am saying something before the word balls. Because if you don't, You're gonna get kids. I had a first grader the other day. She said balls. And I was like, no, I said bouncy balls. Thank you. I mean, really like third grade.

Um, but so you want to call them. You can do like the kick balls. You can do basketballs. Anything that bounces. I definitely recommend something that doesn't bounce super high. Like you wouldn't want to use tennis balls with your, you know, second, third, fourth graders, maybe with your fifth graders, depending on how coordinated they are, but working on meter with bouncy balls.

So using bouncy balls. Here are some ways you can use bouncy balls with meter. You can bounce the ball, obviously. On the strong beat so that would work like bounce rest rest bounce rest rest and what I like them to do is they bounce and you want to obviously choose music that's not too fast because otherwise it's too hard for them I try to You can actually, I don't know if you know this, but if you go into the settings on YouTube, you can actually slow down the music a little bit.

They don't love that, but um, so I would try not to do that, but if you need to, you can if you're trying to use a certain song. But so that's one way they bounce on the strong beat and on the weak beats, they tap the ball. So it goes like bounce, tap, bounce, tap. So that's one way they can do it. Another way they can do it is they can bounce it to each other.

So you have a partner and it goes bounce and then the other person has to catch it on. So let's say they're doing, um, meter of four. Bounce two, three, four. So the other person has to catch it on two and taps on three and four. I will tell you that this does not work for younger than third grade and third grade.

It's still a little tricky for at least my third graders. So that is another way you can do it. Another way you could do it is you could pass a ball around the circle. So you pass. Pass, tap, tap. Or you can be all sitting in a circle, and if you don't think your kids are coordinated or they're little, and you know they're not going to be coordinated enough to bounce the ball, like, and catch it, they could, they could do like a tap on the floor.

And then two taps on the ball. So those are some ways that they can use the bouncy balls to work on meter. Next, we have those hop along bouncers. That is going to be the same thing. They're going to sit on that bouncer and they are going to bounce, rest, rest, bounce, rest, rest. And I like them to tap on the bouncers as they're going.

So it's kind of very similar to the bouncy balls. It's just a different thing to use. Steady beat. This one should be really easy to figure out, but I'm going to go through it anyway. I love to use, um, because this way we can practice our chanting to steady beat, our singing to steady beat. I like to use some of those, um, you know, like Miss Mary Mac, Mac, Mac, all dressed in black, black, black with silver buttons, buttons, buttons all down her back.

Back, back, back, those kinds of things, or you can actually, I will link in the show notes to some jump rope songs because there are lots of them. If you haven't ever done that with your class, they absolutely love it. You can start out walking to the steady beat if you've got littler ones, and then they can jump over the jump ropes to the steady beat.

If you've got bigger ones, you can still start out walking to the steady beat, marching. If you don't want to just walk, like walk, wiggle, walk, march, stomp. I mean, you know, just use your imagination any way they can walk as long as they're walking to the steady beat and then they can start jumping to the steady beat.

Using the jump ropes, bouncy balls, same kind of thing. So obviously you want to choose music that's a little bit slower. And I love to choose pop music for this. Or if you're let's say you're working on like my first graders right now are working on a musical called Swamped. So we may bounce our bouncy balls.

To the swamped music so that they get a chance to really listen to it carefully. So, um, that's a really good way to work on your music skills while you're teaching them some of those songs that they need to know for whatever you're working on for your concert, so that you don't totally degrade your curriculum.

So, bouncy balls, they're just gonna bounce to the beat or they're gonna sit on the floor and they're gonna, um, tap the ball to the beat. You can have them tap like. Um, tap left, tap middle, tap right, tap left, tap middle, you know, you can, you can vary it any way you want to vary it as long as they're tapping, bouncing to the steady beat.

And then with the hop along bouncers, they're going to do the same thing. They are going to, you know, they're just going to bounce to the steady beat. Now, you have to remember to be firm. About both keeping the meter and keeping the steady heartbeat because if they're just fooling around and, you know, like sometimes you'll have those big kids and even the littler kids that are like, they're trying to spin the ball on their finger or, you know, they're trying to be fancy.

I'll always be like, okay, sporty kids, we are not looking for your best PE moves. Your best bouncy ball moves, your best basketball moves. We are looking for you to show us what fabulous musicians you are. And this is going to show us, so you want to make sure. And if you see people not doing that, you're going to stop.

And you're going to be like, now I never point people out because sometimes, I mean, you're going to know if they're doing it on purpose or they just truly can't keep the steady heartbeat. A really good way to assess whether they're keeping it or not, um, or the meter whatever it happens to be You're going to know right away.

And if you see some kiddos that are just messing around you're going to stop and you're going to be like Okay, I see people who are fooling around And if that's going to happen, this is your only warning next time you're sitting out and so I stopped the whole class and I don't call anybody out. But the next time it happens, I just walk over and I say, please go sit out and then I'll give the other person a new partner or whatever I have to do.

So. You know, so you want to be really, I mean, if we're working on a skill and again, this is something that as a newer teacher, as a younger teacher, I did not do, I was not super firm and super consistent and they took advantage of me. I mean, they walked all over me. So, it is not hard to control most, not all, most of your students if you stay consistent.

Cause I, with. everything. Don't feel like you're being mean. You're not being mean. You are trying to keep control in your classroom. And what I will say to them is boys and girls. I am looking for fabulous musicians and fabulous musicians always try their best. They never, never fool around when they are playing music.

They are always trying their best. They have a really good time playing the music, but that's because they're such good musicians. So I really try to give them lofty goals to, to, you know, reach and, We will always be like, I'll stop and I'll be like, I'm so sorry, but some of us are not acting like fabulous musicians.

Some of us are making nasty noise. And then my kids will be like, eww, nasty noise, because they know. Um, so that is a really good way to, to deal with. That. So that is meter and steady beat using jump ropes, bouncy balls and hop along bouncers. The next thing we're going to talk about is note values and along with note values, note recognition.

Now. I have a lesson plan for you and this lesson plan will kind of give you more details on how to do this type of lesson and it is free. All you need to do to grab it is go to storiesthatsingh. net forward slash Lesson plan sampler. If you are already part of my email community, the happy highlights, then you have this lesson already.

If you need it again, reach out to me, geneticstoriesthatsing. net. Otherwise, if you are not part of my email community yet. Go and grab that lesson plan. It comes with two storybook lessons and this one is a bouncy ball lesson that talks about note values and note names and It's really a good one. So here's what I like to do With jump ropes and note values.

I like to use the quarter notes and the double eighth notes mostly. But you can also use half notes and whole notes. And basically what we do is we do a jump on the first one. And then they have to spend the rest of the time swinging to the next one. So it's, it's not like a jump rope, jump rope. It's more like, so if they're doing one.

Two, that would be more of a jump rope. So they jump on beat one and they have to have the jump rope back around by beat two. So that's a half note, right? If they're doing a quarter note, usually what I'll do is we'll do like slow quarter notes and we'll go one. One, two, three, four, and they are jumping on each one, or you can have them put the jump rope in front of them and bounce over the rope on each one.

So one, two, three, four, ta, ta, ta. When you are using double eighth notes, what I like to do there is we will take the jump rope and. I'll have the jump rope with a partner and each person will be holding a handle and we do our TT's like TT, TT, TT, TT, our double eighth notes, and we will, we will like wiggle it, so we wiggle it high, we wiggle it low, we start out wiggling to my drum beat, and then later, I put on some music.

So that is how that works. That's with jump ropes. With bouncy balls, it's kind of similar. So if you're going to do a whole note, you bounce on the first beat and you catch and tap on the other three beats, right? Um, or if you're gonna do like, um, we're gonna. When we toss a bouncy ball across to another partner, we toss on the first beat and they have to back up enough so that they don't catch it until beat four, or you can have them roll it on beat one and it's one, two, three, and they catch on beat four.

When you're using half notes, same kind of thing. When you're using quarter notes, they have to either bounce toss, So, 1, 2, bounce, toss, bounce, toss, so bounce 2, bounce 4, bounce 2, bounce 4, or they can toss back and forth, bounce, uh, 1, toss, toss, toss, toss, 1, 2, 3, 4 on the quarter notes. On the double eighth notes, they are going to pass it back and forth in their own hands because there is no way to do that with a partner that's safe.

Or, you could have them like sit, you know how you'll have them sit sometimes where they're like, they have their legs spread out and they're touching toes like spread out? Legs. I hope that makes sense. Like they're in a triangle kind of, and, um, then they can just pass it back and forth that way on the quarter notes, the double eighth notes.

Um, so they're passing back and forth from one partner to another. something of this does not make sense, please feel free to reach out to me and ask me for help. Hop along bouncers, same kind of thing. You bounce on beat one, you don't bounce again until beat four. I like to try to do something a little faster here, and we'll try to bounce like high.

Usually you can't use a whole note for this, but for half notes, you can go one, two, and then so they bounce and they try not to land until back on beat one. And then of course quarter notes, they're bouncing on each beat, double eighth notes, um, I like them to bounce their bottom. So it's like T T T T, they bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce.

So that is what I do. with that. Now, how does this work to help them recognize the notes? Well, I'm going to hold up a note and they have to go. How many beat boys and girls? How many beats is this for beats? All right, let's show me. One and then I'll give them a, you know, a count one, two, three, four. And then we start.

Taaaa, or whatever it happens to be, whatever syllables you use, that is how you do it. And you're going to use flash flash cards. So you're going to, you know, get some flashcards. I will link to some good flashcards or, you know, you may want to use some digital ones. I don't know. I like to use the physical ones cause that makes it easier for me to flip back and forth.

Um, you could also use this for rhythm, kind of think along the same way, but I'm not going to go into any detail on that today because that is something we'll cover in chaos to calm because one of the other things that I'll be covering in that course is how you can use All the fun things to, and I talk a lot about fun things and how I use them, but we are taking a very deep dive in this and you'll have an opportunity to ask me questions and we'll work together on it and develop some lesson plans.

And you know, it's, it's going to be a really amazing comprehensive course. So definitely. Be sure to go to the waiting list and remember that is stories that sing dot net forward slash C to C waiting list. So let's go back and do a quick review So we worked on we worked on meter steady beat note values and note recognition note reading all that good stuff using jump ropes using bouncy balls and using hop along bouncers, which again are those giant, like, yoga balls with the handles that the kids bounce on.

If you got some great tips and tidbits that are going to help you become a happy music teacher, I would be so thankful if you'd leave me a review. Thanks so much for your time. Well, that's all I have for you today. But before I go, let me remind you, keep learning, keep growing, and keep being Fabulous You.