Want to get your students speaking, playing, and learning on day one? Here's the perfect piece to use with your older elementary students. Learn a new speech piece that allows students to review/learn class expectations and procedures while making music.

Head to TpT to get the Welcome Back to School Resource HERE!

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We are just past the halfway point of 2024! It's a great time to review how you're goals are going. In today's episode, we'll look at three areas:

• Long term goals
• Short term goals
• Task oriented goals

You'll hear how I'm doing on a few of mine and gain a few ideas for continuing to go after yours.

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I recently attended the AMLE Institute in San Diego, CA and am excited to share some insights from my experience as well introduce you to AMLE, if you've never heard of it before! Hear an overview of the Institute and takeaways from homebase and different sessions I attended.

Head to Instagram and follow me @howtoteachmusicwithjessica! I'd love to connect with you!

LINKS

Association of Middle Level Educators (AMLE) Website

The Successful Middle School: This We Believe Book

The Successful Middle School pdf

The Science of Mastering Life's Challenges book

Untangled book

We’re continuing the series for arrangements inspired by pop music for the classroom. The Pirates of the Caribbean Theme is a great piece in 12/8 that is so much fun to play and a great opportunity for students to explore intervals of thirds in the chorus! Get your free Google Slides and full arrangement of the piece HERE! You'll be prompted to make a copy.

For other barred instrument arrangements, listen in to:

E289-Paint It Black

E290 - Look what you made me do

E291 - Down

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Learn a fun xylophone arrangement to use with your students that focuses on a verse/chorus form and movement activity with the song Down performed by Marian Hill.

Get the free Google Slides presentation at https://www.jessicagrant.org/shop/p/down-by-marian-hill-xylophone-arrangement and click on the shop.

Instagram: @howtoteachmusicwithjessica

Website: www.jessicagrant.org 

The first single from Taylor Swift's Reputation album is a fantastic way to teach musical form and provide opportunities for students to compose original melodies. Particularly with aaab form!

Listen in to hear how I have used this piece with my students to learn melodies on the xylophones and get your free resource at my shop at www.jessicagrant.org.

Website: www.jessicagrant.org

Instagram: @howtoteachmusicwithjessica

The first arrangement of our series: Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones!  I share the inspiration behind this arrangement, steps for teaching the piece to students, ideas for form, and how to expand on the original theme with rhythmic variations. The arrangement is written for xylophones.

Get the free arrangement HERE at www.jessicagrant.org.

Follow me on Instagram @howtoteachmusicwithjessica.

Using pop music in your music classroom can be so much fun! Students love learning something they know or have heard before, playing music that they listen to at home, and performing songs for an audience who also knows the music. For the next several episodes I’ll be sharing pop song arrangements that I’ve created and used with my students for xylophone ensembles, but before we get to the actual arrangements I thought I’d share some tips for how you can find and create pop song arrangements to use in your classroom. What to look for, how to determine if a song would be a good fit for an arrangement for xylophones, and things to think about as you arrange pieces.

Instagram: @howtoteachmusicwithjessica

Teachers Pay Teachers Store

Website: www.jessicagrant.org

Now that we're a few weeks into the new year, you might be feeling the Sunday Scaries…again. Here is how I’ve worked through - and continue to work through - my Sunday Scaries.

Lazy Genius Article

Headspace Article

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Website: www.jessicagrant.org 

January is a great time for a reset of classroom procedures. Here are five procedures to review that will help re-establish expectations and set a positive start for 2024 in your classroom. Pay close attention to number five - it's likely the most important one that will make a difference.

Follow me on Instagram @howtoteachmusicwithjessica or head to my website at www.jessicagrant.org to access teacher materials and join my mailing list!