Gearing Up For the Holidays!

Cougars are on the move!  I am so proud of our Jazz Band members who performed in Charlotte November 17th at Bank of America downtown.  Classroom Central has called us back to perform 3 times for their annual fundraisers and this was their Birthday Gala!  The jazz band looked and sounded great in the Urban Garden portion of the tower.  Raven O. sang vocals while Dantarious C, Joseph A, Mikhalis H, and Tyron M played the the horn lines and drums.  Excellent work Cougars.  The kids are really on the move!

There is a lot going on as we near the end of the semester and we need the help of all of our parents to keep students focused on learning as we near the winter break.  Students have 2 primary assignments that are due before break.  Part of our new Common Core Curriculum is a piece called Cultural Relevance where students must make connections between music and other areas.  One way students are making that connection is every student will be making a poem, which must be at least 3 lines long, that expresses their personal view of this season.  This assignment is due on Monday, December 17th.  The poem should include a title, student's first and last name, class period, and it must be typed, but it does not have to be printed.  Students can send it via email.  The second big assignment is the Living Room Concert.  Students will put on a concert in their home.  The particulars are in the project info sheet click the link for the sheet.  Students must make a program for their concert and must play 5 songs.  The Living Room Concert Project is due on December 18th.

I know everyone is excited about the Winter Spectacular, Thursday, December 13th 6pm at York Chester.  It is going to be a great show and will showcase an array of the talent that we have in our performing arts department at York Chester Middle School.  I expect to see all of your smiling faces and all of your wonderful families as we celebrate this wonderful season together!  I could not do what I do at York Chester without your support and constant help.  Make sure your student is practicing each night to make their performance great! Students will wear their own black dress pants, black dress shoes, black socks, and the black Cougar Band Polo.  if your student does not have a shirt, make sure your order one from me.  GO COUGARS!

So many Choices

This first 9 weeks has been a great growing experience for me. I have found some great uses for technology in the band classroom from setting up a recording station for tests on one of the desktops in my room to using my classroom iPads to remediate some students in my class while accelerating others or using the iPads to take tests where we use Flubaroo to grade them. I found uses for technology that make class instruction more effective and enjoyable for my students. I am also using the technology in my class for student reflection and creating products.

Through this experience, I have found my favorite app, Doceri. It is a powerful app with a lot of uses. I have used it to create instructional videos about songs that we are performing. The Cultural Relevance piece of the Common Core standards gives me an avenue to share with students the background, historical context, and relevance to the lives of of my students needed to make a connection to the music. With the app's interface you can write on screen while it records your voice. There are several very useful backgrounds that can be used and pictures can be inserted. I have experienced many of these features from other apps, but the things that puts Doceri over the top is the desktop download. When Doceri is placed on your desktop you can sync the two and then you have control of your desktop from your iPad. Not like a mouse...you can actually see what is on your desktop on your iPad and you have a touch screen desktop right in your hands. Doceri has proven invaluable in my classroom instruction.

The most difficult thing I have dealt in this process is all of the choices. Sometimes it is so overwhelming trying to decide what exactly which tool to use for the task and why use one tool over another. Through this process I feel that I have become a better educator, because I am really thinking more about what i want my students to learn, how to get them there, and then I look at the results and try to do it even better the next time...whew!

I feel very fortunate to be a part of this process and just like the kids, I get excited and doing things in new and more engaging ways.