Smartboard lessons in the works

Okay, I've been making new smartboard lessons. I made a couple for some things we did at an Orff workshop in September. I'm working on some things for my Mr. Everybody unit with first graders. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to try them in my classes because my Smartboard hasn't been hung yet! It's leaning against the wall, taunting me every day. Hopefully soon I'll get a surprise when I show up to work one morning. I guess I'll be really prepared with lessons when I'm able to use it!

In other news, I had my third grade classes playing barred instruments to the "He Came with the Couch" this week. They had two ostinati going while we sang. I was able to add in guiro and vibraslap accents most of the time. In one class it sounded really good, too. I was impressed! I found myself thinking, "wow! This is almost like an Orff workshop!" it's the first time I've had a song really come together quickly and pleasantly like that. I liked it a lot, and the kids had fun, too!

I'll try to find time to get some more pictures & ideas up later this week in case anyone is interested in anything fun and festive for fall.

Smartboard Orff lesson

     A while back (last year? Maybe the year before?) I was at an Orff Mini Conference at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. There I was able to attend a session where the presenter did a bunch of Orff lessons based around children's books.  I love to read, and I love to see kids reading, so these kinds of lessons are super fun to me.  I loved learning them, and I've loved doing them with my kids.
     One book she used in a lesson was He Came with the Couch by David Slonim.  I immediately went out and bout the book, and I've done the lesson for the past two years. (I guess at clears up the mystery of when the conference was, huh?).
     This year, I had my 3rd graders doing melodic dictation of the first phrase before they picked out the rest of the phrases on glockenspiels.  The whole time I was writing notes on the board, I was thinking, "Wouldn't it be cool if I had a little icon of the guy on the couch to use in place of notes?"  So I got to work with my smartboard software, and here's what I came up with.

     The little guy at the bottom is an infinite cloner. The original slide comes up with nothing on the staff, just the lone guy at the bottom. On this page, I was showing it to a few of my friends this morning, and from what I can figure out, there's no way to delete an image using the Smart Notebook App for iPads.
   In any case, if you want to see more of this lesson, come to our session at OMEA. There's a good chance it might be part of our presentation!

Smartboards in Elementary Music Classrooms

I found out today that my friend/co-worker & I are going to be presenting a session on using Smartboards in elementary music classes during this year's TI:ME Central Regional Conference & OMEA conference! Or is it now the Ohio NAfME conference? Or would that be OAfME? Oooh, Oaf Me. That's no good. I'll stick with OMEA.

I'll let you know the details when I get the actual schedule. In the meantime, here are links to TI:ME & OMEA for anybody interested.

TI:ME

OMEA