Music Signs and Bulletin Boards

MUSICAL ALPHABET

I enjoy using items that relate to the core curriculum, so when I stumbled upon this alphabet of music terms, I just HAD to use it! Even though I am on a cart, I colored and laminated each page and I tape one to my cart every week. I decided to take a page from the Sesame Street book and I find 5 minutes in my lesson to say, "This week is brought to you by the letter ___!" Then, I ask for students' prior knowledge on the music term on this letter and I provide a second visual or audio example.

To get the Musical Alphabet Signs, CLICK HERE!

FAMILIES OF THE ORCHESTRA

I found these posters at the local teacher supply store in my first year of teaching and I LOVE THEM! I use these posters with all grade levels as an introduction to the families of the orchestra and the instruments in them. The kids can relate to the instruments in families by the way their sound is created and the fact that they all live in the same "house". This poster set even comes with a poster of the entire orchestra in their seats and a "neighborhood" with all of the families and their houses!

To buy these posters, CLICK HERE!

RECORDER KARATE STUDENT WALL

During my student teaching, my cooperating teacher introduced me to Recorder Karate (you can learn about and buy this system HERE), which I fell in love with and have used for the past few years! My cooperating teacher created her own student progress wall by hanging a thick ribbon on the board, one for each level (white, yellow, orange, ect) and writing each student's names on a clothes pin. She would then let the students clip their name to the highest level belt that they have earned. When I started teaching in my school, I had too many kids for the ribbons to stay on the wall with the weight of all the clothes pins. So I went to Hobby Lobby (conveniently located one block from my school) and got a pack of paper plates for each color ($1.00 for pack of 50 plates). I have one color for every class so it takes up a lot of the wall. 

(pic of recorder wall)

Instead of writing names on clothes pins, I copied the image of the girl and boy recorder players and write the name of the student on that and scotch tape it to the clothes pin, so I can reuse them year after year!

MUSIC NATIONAL STANDARDS!!

I have seen this idea on almost every music teacher website and Pinterest board for the past year or so! As soon as I have a classroom, this is one of the first bulletin boards I am going to put up! There are free printables of all the scoops HERE and you could always cut and print your own scoops to go on the dish. I am also planning on creating a cherry with the name of my school on it (to show the WE are the "cherry on top")!