Sigma Alpha Iota

MUSIC MEDLEY Welcome to A 'C.L.A.S.S.Y' Music Room By Diane Barton, Fort Wayne Alumnae Chapter W ould you like to teach in a music classroom with positive power and an enriched environment? Welcome to my music classroom, immersed in the C.L.A.S.S. philosophy! Connecting Learning Assures Successful Students, C.L.A.S.S., is an educational model for school communities. I currently teach music in a C.L.A.S.S. school, Hickory Center Elementary in the Northwest Allen County Schools system. The C.L.A.S.S. model was adopted by the Principal and Staff of Hickory Center and drives the positive way children learn in the school. C.L.A.S.S. began as the brainchild of educator Barbara Pedersen, and along with Jeff Pedersen and a faculty of extraordinary educators, she continues to bring brain-based learning to educators to prepare them to teach a standardsbased curriculum that connects students to the world. C.L.A.S.S. weaves climate, community, and curriculum together and forms a common ground throughout my school. Common expectations for students are clearly understood in all classrooms at Hickory Center. C.L.A.S.S. expectations for students include character development, social development, and academic development. The C.L.A.S.S. Life Essentials form part of the umbrella arching over a C.L.A.S.S. classroom. They are posted in every classroom of the school, and when students come to the music room they know that I will have the same expectations as their classroom teacher. The Life Essentials include: • Life Goals: "Do the Right Thing and Treat People Right" is part of the positive behavior procedures that are common to all areas of Hickory Center. • Lifelines: My colleagues and I have chosen the following Lifelines for our 2011-2012 school year - Responsibility, Respect, Friendship, Forgiveness, Teamwork, Cooperation, Generosity, Gratitude, Self-Control, Common Sense, Patience, Effort, Perseverance, Wellness, Sense of Humor, Initiative, and Integrity. They will be our monthly focus, sometimes more than one per month, and the staff has a common vocabulary when leading students to make good choices for their behavior in school, and hopefully in other areas of their life. What I feel is so important about them is that they are the kind of character expectations that children can An important piece ... includes setting up a classroom atmosphere with an absence of threat, and procedures in place to allow students to feel free to create, sing, dance, and play. carry into their careers and lifetimes. • Research – The Brain and Learning: Educators should be expert on knowing how to successfully plan lessons that best engage the brain in learning. C.L.A.S.S. motivates teachers to grow professionally by presenting us with current brain research and collaborative and active learning techniques for brain compatible teaching. An important piece to this also includes setting up a classroom atmosphere with an absence of threat, and procedures in place to allow students to feel free to create, sing, dance, and play. My classroom is organized with a Hallway Greeting, Welcome Message, Agendas for all grade levels, and the Life Goals and Lifelines. • Say It, Play It, Relay It, Weigh It: This C.L.A.S.S. Life Essential is the organization of beginning, enhancing and culminating a lesson. In the music classroom I follow this pattern to allow my students time to process learning. My music classroom environment is enhanced through the application of the Life Essentials. Students enter my classroom and read the Hallway Greeting and Welcome Message. Literacy and music literacy are developed in these pieces. The C.L.A.S.S. philosophy has impacted my teaching of music in a very positive way! Students in my classroom begin the school year helping to write procedures to make the room run smoothly and efficiently. We write entering and exiting the room procedures, circle behavior procedures, dance procedures, music instrument procedures for playing and care, print music and textbook procedures, SmartBoard procedures ... you name it, we have a procedure for it! My students process information in full groups and smaller groups called Learning Clubs. If there are ever any behavior problems, we go through the process of checking our procedure that matches the problem. This allows for narrowing a problem to a single student instead of interrupting an entire class. C.L.A.S.S. Community Circles help build relationships, as making music is naturally a relationship-building endeavor. I begin every class with a musical Community Circle to transition students into warming up their "music smarts". This is the Say It part of C.L.A.S.S. organizing and a place where I use a song or story to hook students to be excited about the topic of learning. Key topics are part of the agenda posted in the music room, so a degree of trust is set for students to know what our learning will include during class. The Play It part of my lesson is where my students spend most of their music class time. During this time they are working in small and large collaborative groups facilitated by the teacher, and in learning stations in small groups. I allow time to process information in large and small groups through a variety of processing strategies, and by something as simple as asking students to share with their "elbow buddies". Relay It allows time for children to show what they know, and I accomplish this by moving through the classroom as they create, dance, sing, play and share their music. Sometimes Weigh It crosses into this part of the organizing pattern and leads the teacher to assess the learning and what might need more practice through various instructional strategies. The Weigh It creates the design for future learning. C.L.A.S.S. encourages a culture of teaching and learning that is meaningful and engages students in their learning. It has changed the culture of Hickory Center Elementary and created a staff team who believe in the positive power of the C.L.A.S.S. philosophy. Music learning is stronger in my music room because of C.L.A.S.S. and the culture of respect for being a music maker! I would advise music educators to adopt this philosophy that has been so successful at Hickory Center Elementary. Beta Mu initiate Dorothy Kittaka is a cofounder, past president, and consultant for FAME (Foundation for Art and Music in Education) in Fort Wayne, IN, where seven arts programs annually have reached over 3,000,000 children and adults in the past 23 years. We are grateful to Linda White for her service on the Music Education Committee for two years. As she moves into new life opportunities, we welcome Diane Barton. An initiate of Iota Chi Chapter at Ball State University, she is an active member of the Fort Wayne Alumnae Chapter. An award-winning music educator, she will be an asset to the SAI Music Education Committee. sai-national.org SUMMER 2011 PAN PIPES 3

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