Transitioning With Music

I've spent much of this afternoon trying to work out some of the details for my classroom management plan for next year. One thing that I am absolutely a FIRM believer in is using music for transitions. When I was student teaching, my mentor teacher used music for every transition and our 2nd graders transitioned smoothly every time. This is something I've done successfully in high school and elementary school and I am pretty sure it's a staple in my classroom.

I try to change up the songs every year (more for myself because I get bored with the songs after a year!) and spend some time over summer trying to find more songs to use.

Here is what I've come up with so far for next year (and the links to Youtube videos for the songs, though I would suggest downloading the mp3 files from iTunes or something if your school's internet is as slow as mine can be sometimes):

• Entering the Classroom - I personally prefer more upbeat, positive songs for when my kids enter the classroom
• Walking on Sunshine
• Best Day of My Life  
• Build Me Up, Buttercup 
• Happy
• Brave
• Short Tasks - I LOVE TV/game show themes for quick tasks (1-3 minutes) and I've found that they really energize and engage my kids. They're motivated to stay on task because they can actually hear the end as opposed to having to keep looking up at a timer.
• Mission Impossible – 1 Minute
• Happy Days - about 1 minute
• Partridge Family  - about 1 minute
• Family Feud - almost 2 minutes
• Price Is Right - 1 minute
• Super Password - 2 minutes
• Jeopardy Song - 30 seconds
• Exiting the Classroom - I like for these songs to have an inspiring message for my kids to leave with. My 4th graders last year loved Hall of Fame (it may or may not have helped that I had an actual Hall of Fame in my room...more on that later)!
• Think Good Thoughts
• Hall of Fame 
• Fireflies
• Strength, Courage, and Wisdom 
• Don't Stop Believin' 
• Here Comes The Sun
• Lovely Day 
• Roar 
• Good Life (this is the song we used in my student teaching class...LOVE!)
• Working Time - I started a separate Pandora account just for classroom music. I have a mix of soft, instrumental music and kid-friendly pop or Disney music on there. Depending on if we need a burst of energy or a a LOT of chill, I'll pick one of these stations. If you're worried about the lyrics being clean, there is a setting on Pandora to filter out explicit lyrics. You shouldn't run into that problem with any of these stations, but you can never be too sure :)
• Tween Radio
• Let It Go Radio
• The Vitamin String Quartet
• 2cellos Radio
• Classical for Studying
• Calming Rain with Piano Radio
• Lorie Line Radio
• Smooth Jazz Radio
• Black Violin Radio
• Instrumental Quarter Radio
• Disney Radio
• Kenny G Radio
• Kidz Bop Kids Radio
• The Piano Guys Radio
• India.Arie Radio 
• Pentatonix Radio

I'd suggest using the same songs for consistent procedures (things that happen daily no matter what - such as entry, exit, packing up, beginning each new subject, etc.) all year or change them only at the start of a new semester. Your goal is to make sure the kids know and recognize the song so that they get moving and know what to do the MOMENT the song starts to play. This is much easier to do if the song for consistent procedures stays the same. When you're picking a song, think about how long the kids will reasonably need to do all that you're asking them to do during that procedure. You don't want to have a song that is too long so they end up with idle time and you definitely don't want it to be too short.

With the shorter transitions (maybe they're rotating to centers or talking with a partner/group), let them know how much time they have and let them know they need to be listening for the song to end. Kids are really good at hearing when a song is starting to wind down. Another option is to use the same 1 or 2 songs for this, if you choose.

Do you use music to help your students transition? What songs do YOU like? Let me know! 

Behavior, Behavior, Behavior! (and my first FREEBIE!)

So, I kind of have an obsession with all things behavior. Maybe it's the sociologist/psychologist turned special educator in me, but I LOVE learning about behavior and behavior management strategies! It's gone to a whole new level thanks to an amazing training from The Behavior Queen, Amie Dean!

Today, I had the opportunity to attend a training that my county sponsored and the presenter was Amie Dean! She is a teacher turned behavior specialist and now assists with training people around the country to deal with challenging classroom behaviors. You can find more about her at her website, here. Follow her on Twitter, @behaviorqueen.

I went into the training hoping to get more strategies for managing my students' behaviors. I actually consider behavior management to be a strength of mine, but I had a student last year that it seemed like nothing worked with! Literally, nothing. I walked in hoping for a few strategies, but nothing could have prepared me for the wealth of information that Amie shared with us. 

What I liked most about her was her realness. Amie was hilarious and shared stories of both her successes AND her failures. Even though she gave us a TON of strategies, she stressed the importance of finding what worked for us and tweaking things to make it work. She was realistic about the implementation of the strategies, which was good for me because I tend to attempt to take on everything, only to end up discouraged and overwhelmed in the end. 

There are many strategies that I'll blog about later once I have visuals of how I plan to use them in my classroom, but my FAVORITE one of the day was the Yes Card! The Yes Card is a self-monitoring tool meant to be a Tier 2 intervention. Self-monitoring? Behavior intervention?? Sign. Me. Up. 

I'm ALL ABOUT some self monitoring for a few reasons. 1) It increases student accountability and awareness of their behavior. 2) It makes my life easier. Much easier. Seriously, everybody wins when students self-monitor. 

Anywho, back to the Yes Card. Here is how you use it: 

• Step 1: You'll want to identify a SPECIFIC target behavior. For this example, let's say we're targeting blurting out in class. 
• Step 2: Do some observation to identify a baseline. Take 20-30 minutes and observe how long the student can go WITHOUT blurting out. Find the average amount of time and that is how long of an interval your intervention will start with. For example, if the student averages 6 minutes, start them off in 5 minute intervals because you KNOW they can be successful with that. 
• Step 3: Give the student the Yes Card sheet and determine what reward they will work for. The kicker to this that will reduce your whining from other students about how you're rewarding only the one student who is likely to be your "bad" student is that the student is working on a reward for THE ENTIRE CLASS! Genius! (Click on the image for a FREE download of a sheet I created similar to Amie's!)

• Step 4: Set a timer for the baseline time. If the student can go that length of time without engaging in the behavior, they put a check in the box. Otherwise, they leave the box blank, reset the timer, and try again. You're going to want to model how to use this with the student before setting them loose. 
• Step 5: When the student has filled in all boxes, praise them and ask if they want to remain anonymous or not when you tell the class they've earned a reward. 
• Step 6: Start with a new trial with the same length of time. When they fill THAT card, increase by 5 minutes and do 2 more trials. Repeat this process until the student has gone 20 minutes. When they have done the 20 minute trials TWICE, you can consider your intervention successful! 

That's all there is to it! 

Please let me know if you have any questions and I'm happy to answer them! Also, let me know if you use this strategy in your class! 

Fabulous 5th Grade

Well...It looks like I'll be teaching 5th grade self-contained (and one segment of co-taught) SPED next year. 

Now, I HATE change, y'all! It just ruffles my feathers and makes me super anxious (yes, I really AM a special ed teacher...PROMISE!) My initial response was fear, anxiety, and a whole LOT of self-doubt. For all of my teaching career, I've started off the year in either a new school AND new grade or just a new grade. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but my biggest wish is just for consistency. 

A few chats with some members of my admin team helped me to understand their decision to place me there and I am now feeling capable, hopeful, and even excited! I get to loop up with my babies and my 4th grade team leader will be the team leader for 5th grade (and honestly, I can't keep my head on straight without her). I've got some of the support and consistency that I want even with the change. 

And so the Pinteresting begins for new decor ideas, new lesson ideas, and new classroom management ideas to spend the summer getting ready to make next year the best year ever!

Blog Numero Uno

Let's be honest...I don't really know how to blog. I am, however, a firm believer in faking it until you make it, so let's all just pretend that I'm an expert at this until I actually am ;)

Who am I? I'm a 4th year, almost 5th year special education teacher at an elementary school in the suburbs of Atlanta, GA (also born and bred in the suburbs of Atlanta).

My first EVER teaching photo. Aging like fine wine, though :) 

Why Teach? Total Honesty: I started teaching mostly because I've always loved working with children and partially because I had NO clue what to do with my life after college (I'm still not entirely sure what you do with a double major in sociology and psychology, FYI.). I had an opportunity to move to Louisville, Kentucky to become a special education teacher through a program called Teach Kentucky (for more info, visit teachkentucky.com), so I packed up my car and went. I pursued my MAT, worked at middle and high schools in rural-ish districts just outside of Louisville and absolutely FELL IN LOVE with teaching <3.

Accurate. Particularly the bit about the empty wallet. 

What's life like outside of teaching? When I'm not teaching, I love reading young adult fiction (more specifically, dystopian novels), Pinteresting, sweating it out in Zumba classes,  singing loudly to Disney movies, playing with my dog, or following a recipe in an attempt to be a fancy chef :)

Maxie, the cutest dog EVER!

Why Blog? I want this blog to be a hodgepodge of teacher tips, freebies (because who doesn't LOVE free stuff???), and honest reflections on my daily life as a teacher.