Exceptional Music in Special Education

Summary

Highlights

• Beth Makkism shares her journey of integrating special education into music teaching. 🎵
• Emphasizes the role of collaboration among educators, assistants, and specialists. 🤝
• Discusses the use of visuals and adaptive instruments to meet diverse student needs. 🎯
• Introduces interactive resources that make learning more engaging for special ed students. 📚
• Encourages creating structured lesson plans to ensure consistency and clarity. 📋

Key Takeaways

• Collaboration with special education teams is crucial for effective music teaching. 🎶
• Visual aids and consistent routines enhance learning and engagement. 🖼️
• Adaptive instruments and assistive technologies support diverse learning needs. 🛠️
• Interactive resources, like Quaver, make music classes more engaging and inclusive. 📱
• Focus on building relationships and understanding each student’s unique needs. 👥

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Welcome The chapter begins with the introduction music and a warm welcome to the audience by Manchester Uraj, who expresses pleasure in seeing familiar faces on the webinar. He introduces Beth Makkism, highlighting her extensive teaching experience spanning over twelve years.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Beth's Background and Experience Beth is the membership chair of the Greater Chicago ORCH Chapter and a general music teacher in the Plainfield District, Illinois. She holds a master's degree from Manuka College and is an official ORFF certified educator, having completed all three levels at VanderCook. Beth has conducted workshops focused on creating general music curriculum for special education and self-contained students, and on incorporating the ORFF method.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Starting in Special Education The chapter titled 'Starting in Special Education' opens with a welcome to Beth, whose master's project has made a significant impact in the field of special education. The chapter highlights Beth's journey and her contributions, expressing gratefulness for her willingness to share her expertise. The introduction sets a positive and collaborative tone as the audience is eager to learn from her experiences.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Collaboration and Teamwork The chapter titled 'Collaboration and Teamwork' begins with the speaker expressing hope that the material will be useful to the audience. The speaker apologizes in advance for potential background noise due to their two-year-old child having dinner, though reassures the audience that the child is being looked after by the speaker's husband. The session is ready to commence, and attendees are prompted to refer to the provided notes. The speaker encourages questions throughout the workshop or even a few days later if needed.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Understanding Special Education Students The chapter titled 'Understanding Special Education Students' introduces the topic with a personal note from the speaker, encouraging communication via email for any clarifications or questions. The speaker mentions that their email address can be found on the provided handout and in the presentation itself, indicating an open line of communication for further engagement. The speaker briefly touches upon the background of the presentation, noting it originated as a master's project. Although the transcript does not delve into the substantive content of understanding special education students, it sets up the context for the discussion and indicates the personal investment and foundational basis of the project. Overall, the introduction chapter emphasizes accessibility and opens a dialogue, inviting questions and further interactions, while hinting at the rigorous academic nature of the following content.
• 03:00 - 03:30: Developing Effective Interventions The chapter 'Developing Effective Interventions' begins with the author sharing their experience of being hired in a district and being assigned to teach two self-contained special education classes, along with K-5 classes, without much initial guidance. This challenging situation sparked the author's research and development of effective interventions. The author empathizes with those who feel uncertain in similar situations and aims to provide helpful strategies through the chapter.
• 03:30 - 04:30: IEP Meetings and Documentation The chapter discusses the challenges teachers face when handling special education students, emphasizing that this struggle is common among educators. The key focus is on collaboration; it is crucial for teachers to know who they can collaborate with and talk to in order to effectively meet the needs of students in special education.
• 04:30 - 06:00: Using Visuals and Assistive Technology The chapter discusses the importance of including various specialists in a team aimed at supporting students with special needs. The team members typically include a special education teacher, teaching assistants, a social worker, a speech pathologist, an occupational therapist, and a behavior analyst. Additionally, a physical therapist and a representative from the administration are usually part of the team. Importantly, the student and their parents are central to this team. The focus remains on ensuring comprehensive support for the student by utilizing visuals and assistive technology within this multi-disciplinary team framework.
• 06:00 - 07:30: Strategies for Teaching Special Education Students The chapter focuses on strategies for teaching special education students. It emphasizes the importance of getting to know each student personally. Creating a profile for each student can help understand their needs better, such as toileting skills and other individual characteristics. Collaboration and communication with other stakeholders are also important in effectively teaching students in special education.
• 07:30 - 09:00: Structuring Classroom and Activities This chapter discusses the importance of understanding student motivators and behaviors in the classroom. It suggests having a quick reference guide, like a tips or tricks sheet, to help educators adapt strategies effectively when working with children. The chapter emphasizes that such tools are especially valuable at the beginning of the school year, providing a strong starting point for teachers as they engage with students and learn more about them through interaction.
• 09:00 - 10:30: Quaver Music Program Features The chapter discusses the collaboration between teachers to create a list of interventions for managing negative behaviors in the classroom. It includes examples of how students might be required to complete a specific task after displaying negative behaviors, such as hitting or biting, before they can return to their previous activities.
• 10:30 - 12:00: Favorite Songs and Resources The chapter titled 'Favorite Songs and Resources' discusses strategies for integrating interventions and management techniques from a general classroom into a self-contained classroom setting. It emphasizes the importance of consistency for students who are already used to certain practices. The narrator shares that they gained significant insights about students by attending their IEP (Individualized Education Program) meetings, especially when teaching in a self-contained program where students are not part of the general classroom environment.
• 12:00 - 13:30: Adaptive Instruments and Tools In this chapter, the author discusses the experience of being part of an Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting, especially from the perspective of art, music, or physical education teachers who might serve as general education representatives. The author highlights the importance of attending these meetings to better understand the process and meet the students' parents. This involvement is crucial for educators to be fully aware of their students' needs and the educational plans set forth for them.
• 13:30 - 15:30: Children's Literature in Music Education This chapter focuses on the integration of children's literature in music education. It highlights the importance of collaboration among educators and parents, particularly in understanding and implementing individualized education plans (IEP) for students. The chapter mentions the practice of summarizing key aspects of an IEP, such as accommodations, modifications, and behavior intervention plans (BIP) to ensure all educational stakeholders are aligned. The concept of a 'quick take' by special education teachers is introduced, emphasizing streamlined and accessible sharing of pertinent student information.
• 15:30 - 17:00: Developing a Curriculum and Assessment The chapter emphasizes the importance of the notes section in an Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting, highlighting its value for capturing key conversations and concerns. Parents and students often voice their concerns during these meetings, which can be invaluable for informing teaching practices. Educators are encouraged to refer back to these notes to enhance their curriculum and assessment strategies, particularly in a music classroom setting.
• 17:00 - 18:30: Supporting Inclusion in General Education The chapter focuses on supporting inclusion within general education settings, specifically for behavior goals, speech goals, and the use of assistive technology. It emphasizes opening communication channels for students, which can involve collaboration with a behavior analyst to manage specific behaviors, such as those exhibited in music class. For instance, students who frequently elope might do so to engage with musical instruments they see, and understanding these behaviors is crucial for fostering an inclusive educational environment.
• 18:30 - 20:30: Effective Communication and Teamwork The chapter titled 'Effective Communication and Teamwork' emphasizes the importance of using different strategies for enhancing communication and productivity in the classroom. One key strategy shared is the use of visuals, such as a visual schedule. This approach helps students know the agenda for the day, promoting a structured and predictable learning environment. The chapter underscores collaboration with support professionals like speech pathologists who can assist in creating these tools.
• 20:30 - 22:30: Concluding Remarks and Resources The chapter discusses the use of visual aids in the music classroom, such as a velcro schedule that helps students understand the day's activities. Upon entering the room, students are greeted with this strip, indicating it's time for music. The presence of a teacher's picture on the schedule identifies the music instructor, Mrs. Maxim, adding a personal touch. The system also incorporates student choice, allowing them to select songs and possibly earn break time, creating an engaging and interactive music learning environment.

Exceptional Music in Special Education Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] hello everyone and welcome welcome welcome welcome good evening i'm manchester uraj and it's so nice to see some very familiar faces on this webinar it is such a pleasure today to introduce my friend beth makkism and beth has been teaching for a dozen years and she is also
• 00:30 - 01:00 the membership chair of the greater chicago orch chapter she teaches general music at the in the plainfield district in illinois and she earned her master's from manuka college she's an official work certified educator completing all three levels at vande cook so beth has presented workshops on creating general music curriculum for special ed and self-contained students and incorporating the orf method
• 01:00 - 01:30 into special ed classrooms so um it is such a pleasure to welcome her because this was all her master's project when she did this and she's just taken it off from here and we are so grateful and thankful that you're here to share your knowledge and experience with us beth so thank you every thank you so much welcome beth and welcome everyone well thank you manju um it's so fun just to see you guys and get to present a little bit of info
• 01:30 - 02:00 hopefully you will find it useful um i am gonna warn you i have a two-year-old who's having dinner right now upstairs so if you hear some screaming happening that's him but my husband's got him so sorry in advance um so we're gonna go ahead and get started um the notes are in if you um have any questions uh throughout the workshop or maybe even like a couple days later you're like
• 02:00 - 02:30 thinking about something we went over um you can always go ahead and email me i will get back to you as soon as i can so um my email address is on the handout and it's also in the presentation so again you can contact me whenever you know i'll get back to you so um couple things just to kind of talk to you guys about is that um like manju said i started this is my master's project and the reason i picked it for my master's project
• 02:30 - 03:00 is when i first got hired in my district they were like okay you have two self-contained special ed classes also that you get to teach plus k5 ready go and i was like i have no idea what i'm doing so this whole project and kind of all my research came out of kind of getting thrown into it so if you feel that way right now which is why you're here hopefully some of the things that i'll go through today will hopefully help you so don't feel alone i think this is one of the biggest things that pre-service
• 03:00 - 03:30 teachers kind of lack when they come out of a program and into uh education is teaching this population so well don't feel um alone i think everybody kind of struggles with this so the biggest thing that i can talk about first is collaboration really um you want to make sure you know what the people who you can work with and talk to to best meet the needs of on our special education students so
• 03:30 - 04:00 some people who may be on that team are obviously the special education teacher um any of the teaching assistants that are also in the classroom on the social worker speech pathologist the ot behavior um analysis sorry analysis analyst i can't say the word tonight um physical therapist usually an administration is on um that team as well and then obviously the parents and the student right we don't want to forget the student because that's who we're really
• 04:00 - 04:30 concerned about right so those are kind of the people that you may want to reach out to or talk to or collaborate um when you are teaching um special education population students um the biggest thing and i think this just goes for teaching in general is get to know your students right so one example is you might want to create kind of just like a little profile of every student that you have in that class so here's just an example of one of my students um just fifth grade their toileting skills their level of
• 04:30 - 05:00 independence and then if there are any behaviors or maybe any motivators the things that they work for right so just kind of having that tips or tricks sheet like um available for you quickly will be super helpful um and again the more you work with the kids obviously you'll get to know them too but this is just kind of a good way to jump off is a good starting point um kind of at the beginning of the year right so another thing you may want to do is
• 05:00 - 05:30 talk to the classroom teacher and kind of come up with a list of interventions so for example in the classroom if they do a negative behavior they may have something that they have to do before they can go back to what they were doing before so for like example you can see student a if they have a negative behavior such as like hitting or biting or something they need to do a task right and then they can go back to whatever activity they were doing um so knowing kind of those interventions that are used in the
• 05:30 - 06:00 general classroom will really help you in your room too okay so just kind of thinking about ways that you can carry over that um the interventions and management into your room too will be helpful for you because the student's already used to it so just kind of um a couple things to think about there um one way that i really learned a lot about students was going to their iep meetings um if you are teaching like a self-contained program where the students are only in their
• 06:00 - 06:30 special ed classroom for the majority of the day lots of times art music or pe teachers may be asked to be the general education rep in the iep meeting so um i asked to go when i was starting my master's project because i never really knew like what happened in an iep meeting i get this big stack of papers at the beginning of the year right but okay great like what actually happens though so um asking to go is a really um nice thing to do because usually you'll get to meet the parents too and i think
• 06:30 - 07:00 that's a huge um collaborative effort too is meeting parents um obviously read the student's iep now if you've ever looked at an iep they're pretty lengthy my district luckily our special ed teachers do something called a quick take where they really just list like any accommodations or modifications and then maybe if they have um a bip which is the behavior intervention plan that'll also be listed in there so if your district does that great if
• 07:00 - 07:30 not those would kind of be the main things to watch out for and then also the notes section at the end of an iep depending on who is taking notes in the iep meeting can be really helpful too a lot of parent concerns and student concerns are put in there so you can kind of go back and look through the notes section too because that'll be like direct conversations that happened in the meeting um a lot of things that you can take and put into your music classroom would be like
• 07:30 - 08:00 the behavioral goals um speech goals and any assistive technology that the student might use because again that's opening up a way for them to communicate with you in your class um and then again the talking to a behavior analyst oh i got it this time we'll help you with any behaviors that may happen specifically in music class um if you have a student who is eloping a lot and maybe getting up and moving because they want to go play an instrument they see in your room
• 08:00 - 08:30 or something um they can kind of come up with some different strategies or things to try out for you and the student to make it a little bit more productive when they're in your classroom so another big thing that i have found really helpful is using visuals in your classroom um luckily my speech pathologist made me a visual schedule that i have kind of hanging up in my classroom so when the kids come in they know exactly what we're gonna do that day so basically the first thing it'll say is
• 08:30 - 09:00 time for music and i have velcro on the back of it and it'll just stay on the velcro strip and then as we go through that schedule i take it off so right when they come in my room they know it's time for music and i know it's kind of blurry but there's a picture of me on there too so they know like mrs maxim is the music teacher um and then you might have just a couple of things like they get student choice so they would choose a song um they'll know like it's time for singing songs maybe they earn a break time at some
• 09:00 - 09:30 point during class then it's time for instruments maybe it's time for movement and scarves and then having like a closing song that is consistent at the end will also help students kind of know um where you are in your routine for class so just a couple other visuals um that you could also include might be like lining up and goodbye too so that way the students can see like okay we're at this point of class but i only have to do two more things and then i get to go right so being able to kind of
• 09:30 - 10:00 see where you are in the schedule um another thing that you may want to try using is a choice board so this um kind of going back to that student choice section for them kind of being able to choose the song for the day right if you have a student who maybe music isn't their favorite thing um and it's not really a motivator for them giving them that choice and like leadership option would be huge so these are just some of the songs that maybe we play in class consistently that
• 10:00 - 10:30 they already know and you could present them with the choice board and then they would um select the song they pull it off the velcro and hand it to you and that way they're communicating on what song they want um a stop go sign has also been super helpful for me because you're pairing that auditory cue of the teacher saying stop or go with the visual and then also anytime you can incorporate like pictures or stuffed animals puppets right that's huge
• 10:30 - 11:00 um a couple other things that i really didn't know before i got into um working with this population was the different assistive technology that's out there that students may use so the first one is called a pex or a picture exchange system and there's usually a strip at the bottom that'll be a sentence strip so it'll say like i want or i need and then all of the students choices will be on the top of it so you can see like um
• 11:00 - 11:30 some of them i think this one says i want and then it might have a picture with like someone drinking a cup of water so maybe this student wants a break and they want water so in order for that to happen they have to pull off what they want and put it on the sentence strip and then present it to the teacher or adult or who's ever helping so if you have a student with this i would talk to the speech pathologist and see if you could maybe get some visuals for music in there so if the students are doing a song with egg shakers or something that
• 11:30 - 12:00 day they can pick the color of their egg shaker or they can pick the color of their scarf right or their instrument so being able to again kind of give them that power and control over their choices right another system that may be used is an ipad and a lot of my students use the i communicate app and again it's just an app where the student touches the button and then the voice will actually say um what they want or
• 12:00 - 12:30 what they need um and then also another kind of modification that can be used with it is a divider grid so if students maybe um don't have the best fine motor skills this kind of helps them when they're touching it to be able to touch exactly what they want so just kind of quick run down on those things um moving on just kind of some different strategies that i've kind of found helpful is always starting with the same song or activity every week which i know we as teachers
• 12:30 - 13:00 will probably get super bored with it but for these students i noticed a huge difference and participation when they came in my room because they knew right at the beginning of the song we were gonna do our welcome to music song every week and they jumped right in at the beginning um it was funny one time i had a substitute i wasn't there and the kids were so upset that the sub didn't play but like the whole thing so just always being consistent and starting with the same song and also ending with the same song that
• 13:00 - 13:30 way again kind of sticking to that routine is big um using simple language so first we're going to do egg shakers then we'll get to do scarves so if you have a student who really loves scarves that's their favorite thing they may want scarves right away and again maybe using a visual to explain that and verbally saying it will be helpful for that student to understand first we're going to do this then you get your um reward right then you get your scarf um a couple other things which i found
• 13:30 - 14:00 really hard as just an adult too is giving students wait time after you give them a direction because we're so used to and especially this year right with like technology is like hit a button and it happens um giving students that time to process your question and then for them to come up with their answer and then for them to communicate that to you that's multiple steps that they have to do plus if the student has any sensory
• 14:00 - 14:30 issues they're also trying to get that information from you and filter out smells and sounds and light and maybe the temperature in the room right things that we don't really think about um if we're neurotypical so kind of going through that um giving students that wait time and it may be to the point where like you tell a student to clap their hands and three or four songs or activities later they will clap their hands but again
• 14:30 - 15:00 giving them that wait time is huge um and then the last one is just eliminating any distractions in your room that kind of goes along with students trying to filter out access stimuli if you have all your orf instruments set up in the corner of your room that's what they're going to want right so maybe blocking them off with the mat or maybe moving them to another part of the room or the students can't see it during their class may help you with some behaviors too a couple different ways that i've tried
• 15:00 - 15:30 structuring um my class is kind of team teaching with other people um i'm lucky enough in my building to have a really good art and pe team that really helps me out and vice versa so what we did was we actually team taught art and music together and then sometimes we would do music in pe as well so the students would go to the art room and i would bring my stuff on a card and go in there and we would do different centers and like one center would be art
• 15:30 - 16:00 one center would be music and then one was like a break time um where they got preferred activities like maybe a computer where they got to watch um move it videos or maybe a favorite book was in the bin or some different fidgets or preferred activities um i really found this helpful because for some students my classes are 35 minutes long and for some students that is way way way too long so breaking it down into that 15 minutes and just doing a couple activities was really helpful
• 16:00 - 16:30 and then it was also nice just to see the students in another setting when it was time for art is sometimes if i um wasn't doing a center that day i would actually just do art with the students for 15 minutes and then the art teacher would do music with the students for the next 15 minutes um so it was nice to see some of the students in an art setting i had one student that refused to do anything in music so i chose to kind of do a lot of hand over hand with him for his art projects
• 16:30 - 17:00 and then by the end of that year he was participating in music because we had developed that relationship together so same thing with music there might be students that are doing music but not necessarily art so kind of being able to see the kids in another setting and work with them that way um can be super useful uh so here's just kind of a picture of how we had the art room set up like i talked about earlier um the centers one center might be the teaching assistants running it so you may have to have like a meeting with them
• 17:00 - 17:30 and explain like okay i'm gonna give you this bin of instruments this is how you play them set a timer let the kids play the instruments right and then maybe rotate or um the go noodle videos um move it videos or like i showed you the choice board before maybe you just give um the teaching assistants a computer with songs already loaded on it and the students just get to pick whatever song they want and they can listen to it um center two like i said might be music three might be art and then center four would be like the break
• 17:30 - 18:00 um we were really strict about using timers because as soon as that timer went off the students knew okay next thing is coming um and a lot of my special education teachers in their classroom use timers like throughout the day all the time so the kids were really really used to it and again trying to keep things consistent between classrooms is really helpful too and then one other thing is just make sure if you are going to try centers i guess it depends on the kids but it was easier for the teachers to rotate
• 18:00 - 18:30 than having three or four kids um get up from the table and move to another table especially if you have some students who might try to elope or drop to the floor it was a lot easier for the teachers to rotate than the students um so that's just a couple different ways you can set your classroom up or how you're going to structure your classes um so now let's talk about some resources and kind of do some fun stuff uh so quaver is a resource i'm sure lots of us have maybe heard of it tried it out
• 18:30 - 19:00 um so just a couple of things that i wanted to go over that have really worked for my students and kind of giving them choices and giving them options to kind of compose actually because i think that was one of the biggest things that i felt like i wasn't doing with my special education my self-contained students was kind of letting them create their own stuff right so one of the things that quaver has is a body percussion dance so this will take a second to load there
• 19:00 - 19:30 we go so the different actions are kind of listed on the side and i made um like a choice board card uh collection with all these on there and then i would hold it up the students would pull it off and then i would put it up on the board um and select what they wanted and then we could try the dance together so does anybody want to um to pick one we could try a couple together i don't know if anyone feels brave today wants to come up with a dance even though i'm sure we all did
• 19:30 - 20:00 that today during school i love the cheek thing with my students awesome so we're click and drag the cheeks cuz you can see it on the screen too yes exactly anybody else want to be brave how about some uh pathanies pathany's oh always a good standard right good all right um i'll pick tab head and then maybe we do snapping too okay
• 20:00 - 20:30 so that's just like one example and then you can play one of the tracks with it and then the kids would get to perform what they wrote with it so they're doing that yeah yeah right so just an option you can do that um uh quaver does have it in meters of four and three too so you could always um change it up if the kids um might do better with one over the other
• 20:30 - 21:00 another um activity that we really liked in my school was um this is kind of like a i think it's in their warm-ups just for like choir but my students loved this because it gave them a chance to like move and stretch and stuff like that so um just to save some time i'll just do this really quick so let's say we do this and again it is kind of tricky with just it being words so on the choice board i actually have
• 21:00 - 21:30 pictures of like me doing the different things and the words so the students are picking the action um if they're not able to read it with the verbal so then we go ahead we pick our tempo we click begin and then the kids will do it
• 21:30 - 22:00 [Music] okay so just to give you guys an idea that's another one that's been pretty helpful um the next one i'm going to show you this is like a huge fan favorite in my class this is really similar to incrediblex if anybody has done anything with that um this one's a little bit more i think kid friendly because all the characters they don't have like no shirts on it's like a whole thing so um going through for percussion
• 22:00 - 22:30 it will open up and it gives the kids the choices of different animals which apparently that doesn't want to load so let's try this one more times um the different animals will pop up and again i have like the choice board with the pictures and so the kids will get to pick them and drag them to the little turtle shells so does anybody wanna pick one or pick a couple
• 22:30 - 23:00 i will so the snake awesome rabbit and the rabbit great um let's do squirrel anybody else want to pick the last one or i can beaver awesome all right and there is an option to add another four beats as well you can do eight total um and then of course you got to pick your tempo right and then we just click on the frog to do [Music]
• 23:00 - 23:30 play and you can um silence them too so like kind of make it a rest so we like the kids love that because the animals are sleeping so that's always a fun choice too um so that's just a couple of things on quaver um some other resources that i found really helpful for just like finger plays or keeping a steady beat or working on any of that stuff um a collection of childhood favorites by
• 23:30 - 24:00 suzie tallman is great um it's got a very repetitive steady beat and underlying uh baseline that's super super repetitive and it's super easy to follow so um one i can play for you right now is just her uh little peter rabbit so little peter rabbit had a fly up on his [Music]
• 24:00 - 24:30 ear so that's just a quick little um example from that she's got um i think there's about 20 songs on that album so another if you're from like the chicago area jim gill is a really local musician i think he's out of oak park um he's got a lot of really fun finger plays that my students like um and he does some stuff with like classical music
• 24:30 - 25:00 incorporating different movements and things into it too so that's kind of fun um music play everybody probably is familiar with denise gagne but if you're not um some songs that my kids really liking just kind of some of the goals um elephants have wrinkles is great for fine motor keeping a steady beat sequencing is really good because the elephant has wrinkles like on their fingers and then they have wrinkles on their nose and then they have wrinkles on their fingers
• 25:00 - 25:30 and their nose and their head and their tail or whatever so the kids are sequencing those different activities um she also has one green jelly bean this one is really fun the kids are jumping and getting wiggles out and they also have to um do some body part identification because it's like they ate the jelly bean and their tummy hurts so we're touching our tummy um and then the clamp clap stamp shake song this is kind of the one that i do for ending class every time no matter
• 25:30 - 26:00 what um so i'll go ahead and play that one for you guys you can hear it you can clap your hands you can clap your hands when the day is done and you want some fun you can clap your hands you can stab your feet so then they do stamp your feet and then they do uh shake your head and then at the end it's you can say blah blah blah and the kids just get to make a fun sound and kind of fill in um those beats so that's um a couple of
• 26:00 - 26:30 things from the movement songs children love that i found really helpful in my room um just some other kind of random resources um beanbag activities um this one is great i have a lot of students who in their iep um wait time was actually one of their goals or taking turns was one of their goals so um the one game of who's got the bean bag is really helpful because they're passing a bean bag around the circle and then the song will give them
• 26:30 - 27:00 different directions so it's like they're passing they're passing their passing oh stop and then there's a part where they're like you have the bean bag what's your name and so the students either say their name or they can use their assistive technology to say their name that way um right now obviously i've been teaching remotely all year so i've had kids do this just at home on zoom with maybe balled up socks and they're just passing the bean bag back and forth and keeping the study beat that way so this year
• 27:00 - 27:30 that's kind of what we've done um but just you guys can hear that one [Music] [Music] and then it does get into the directions later on um another one that's fun to do with
• 27:30 - 28:00 um scarves is the parade of colors so what i usually do is i'll give every student a different color scarf and i've had some students that um have pretty low mobility too so it doesn't necessarily have to be a parade everybody can just stand in their spot or sit in their spot and then when their color is called maybe they wiggle their scarf okay so there's lots of possibilities you can do um with that song too so just so you can
• 28:00 - 28:30 kind of hear this [Music] make way for the parade of colors they are marching all around there is purple and pink red and green yellow orange blue and brown make way for the parade of colors
• 28:30 - 29:00 so then again the students are working on identifying colors they're working on trying to move to a steady beat um a lot of starting and stopping too so i may use my stop go sign with this one too to motion like okay it's yellow's turn or okay now stop it's red's turn so doing things like that um a couple other ones from music k8 that my students really like the wiggle worm one is great with scarves too because we um can go through and um i'll play it
• 29:00 - 29:30 for you really quick but there's a definite like wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle and then there's a stop and freeze so it's good again for that following directions [Music]
• 29:30 - 30:00 so i would always pair on the stand with a statue i held up my stop sign too and one time we had a student who was pretty much non-verbal and usually used a communication device and one time in class all of a sudden she decided she was like stop and it was like one of the first times anyone had heard her talk and we were all just like bawling like it was crazy so and again that was after using that song probably for like 40 times in music class so it was
• 30:00 - 30:30 awesome to kind of see that development in that student too um so wiggle worm's a good one uh shaky egg is another one that's fun with egg shakers and again it's very shake shake shake shake shake shake shake shake stop so again that following directions um is pretty helpful not only for your room but also just enforcing that listening skills and again knowing start and stop may be a goal for some students too um so next thing was
• 30:30 - 31:00 my district was lucky enough to get a grant to try piloting some different adaptive instruments for our students in our self-contained program um because a lot of our students have like i said pretty low mobility or might have a rough time with like fine motor skills if you think of playing like traditional instruments like a hand drum or an egg shaker they might not be able to grip it um so a lot of these adaptive instruments that you kind of see in this middle picture they have something called a switch that
• 31:00 - 31:30 gets plugged into it and it basically kind of looks like if you remember bop it from like a million years ago it's got the button from boppit on there and so all the student has to do is touch the button and then the instrument would play so like you can see this one has um there's like a little snare drum on there a triangle and a maraca so the student touches the button and then that instrument plays so these are just some adaptive instruments um
• 31:30 - 32:00 the website is enabling devices if you guys want to check that one out and then west music does sell these awesome uh nailets that i found really useful for a lot of my students who may come um with a general education class for music um and the one thing i did kind of have to add to mine was like a textured uh tape so that they could hold on to it and grip it a little bit better because they um did have some fine finding motor issues
• 32:00 - 32:30 but again it has kind of like a t-grip which is a lot easier to hold right than the traditional so that's just one thing to kind of check out um west music also has some adaptive keyed recorders that are nice for my students that come uh with our general education class because it's um easier to push down the key right than trying to cover um holes all the way and then sweet pipes also has some adaptive recorders where you can take um the instrument actually apart and you
• 32:30 - 33:00 can add different parts and then actually close off the um tone holes so maybe if your um class is playing bag but maybe you have a student who you're making a modification to it and you only want them to play g you can put that part on the recorder and then they'll only be playing g so that's again you can check that out on um sweet pipes too and i think west music has that too um so just kind of some things to think
• 33:00 - 33:30 about there um another thing that i've been using and it's a ton i've been using it this year especially because like i said i've been pretty much remote the whole year um is a lot of children's literature that has been like my saving grace this year um so one uh book that we use a lot in my classroom is sheep in a jeep by nancy shaw and margot apple does the um illustrations um and they're beautiful like i love her i mean look at the motion of the
• 33:30 - 34:00 sheep pull in the shape it's great um so the other nice thing about this is it's actually um it comes with a audio cd and people are reading it so what i kind of did was we added in egg shakers to this song and every time the um tone would chime for the person to turn the page i used that as kind of like an auditory visual and
• 34:00 - 34:30 sound and then i paired it with the stop and go sign for my visual and the kids knew then it was time to play their egg shaker so if you have maybe an egg shaker next to you or i don't know a box of pasta whatever you want to go grab it we can try this so here's like the beginning listen for this sound here's the sound and you'll know it's time to turn the page if you'd like to listen to the story without the page turn signals please select track two
• 34:30 - 35:00 beep beep sheep and then i do it in a jeep on a hill that's steep
• 35:00 - 35:30 so you kind of get the idea um this is a really fun adorable book because the jeep ended up crashing the jeep at the end and then they have then they sell it for cheap it's really funny so check it out that one's cute um one time i was in class and i had like the cd totally didn't work and i was like what am i gonna do so you can also use a bicorn um i gave it
• 35:30 - 36:00 to one of the teaching assistants and they were in charge of playing it and then i did the stop-and-go but it works so even if you can't find the audio cd you could throw the bike horn in there and use it kind of the same way um so that is one of them um another book that i found really helpful with kind of like melody work and any um just like different pitch and changing up and down and high and low is hungry harry um if any of you have taken off level one at the undercook uh cynthia uses this book um a lot
• 36:00 - 36:30 for different recorder things and i think she did a special session when i took it with her so i did include her melody that she wrote that she does with this book um in the notes so if you want to trade that but basically harry is a little frog and he's super hungry and his mom says i'm not cooking you dinner so get out of the house go find your own food and he tries to go eat all these other animals and you can't catch any of them so the way that i use it in my classroom um
• 36:30 - 37:00 i have my little frog and we just go through the book maybe the first time and i just sing the song and i would just trace the melody so um here we go so we've got the very hungry frog was looking for a snack if you happen to be a dragonfly you'd better watch your back right and so then we're just tracing the melody with the frog so maybe after doing this for a couple weeks you might start to notice some students might follow you with maybe their hands
• 37:00 - 37:30 right or even just like a finger tracing the melody so then if it's appropriate maybe you start giving the frog to students and let them try it so again just some different ways you can do that um another one and i actually discovered this book um because my son loves it and that i was like oh we're doing this in school so this is bath time for chickies um and the chickies are super naughty they don't want to take a bath you get the idea um so there's a lot of
• 37:30 - 38:00 things that they get into a mess they try to eat cupcakes they um jump in the mud with the pigs and everything so a couple different things you can do with this book um there's lots of good vocal exploration in here um they get into like a bottle of perfume and so it's like yeah yeah so you can add different things like that and again just seeing if the students can vocalize some of those sounds right that and for me that totally counts as melody and singing because they're vocalizing and if that's
• 38:00 - 38:30 what they can do great um other things i've done with this book is maybe trying some different sensory things with it um and again double check with your special ed teachers because some students might have some sensitivities with things but i've used like silly string and like blowing bubbles and maybe if you have like a handheld personal fan they do like get all dry and fluffy and clean you can just kind of wave the fan in front of the kids so just again kind of bringing the story
• 38:30 - 39:00 to life for them um the bubbles were a huge hit too um but again check with the teacher because you may have some students um if they have very sensitive skin or kind of some allergy issues using those different things may be a no-no so obviously check first um another book that's been great for again kind of students kind of getting to compose and also for vocal exploration is road work by sally sutton and brian lovelock does the pictures um
• 39:00 - 39:30 so there's lots of uh steady beat options in here with the text so you've got plan the road plan the road market on the map hammer in the marking pegs again using different sounds with the book might be the way you introduce it just for the first couple weeks and then eventually um maybe giving the students like body percussion cards with stamp pat clap or maybe you just limit it to two if that's where the students are and
• 39:30 - 40:00 then they get to make their own pattern and they try keeping the study be that way and it might be the first week you just give them stamp and then maybe the second week you add a stamp and a clap so kind of going really deep into one certain material multiple times and kind of pulling out all those little gems that you can is huge because that repetition is really good um another one is little blue truck um but there's like a whole series of these now there's a halloween one there's a
• 40:00 - 40:30 spring one and there's a christmas one that has a light up twinkle lights at the end of it um so a couple of things i've done with this one again lots of vocal exploration like the toad is croaking a little blue truck goes beep beep beep a lot all the different farm animals the horse the cow the pig the chickens so again just getting students to maybe vocalize or even i have one student who's pretty much non-verbal but he has animal sounds on his ipad
• 40:30 - 41:00 so one day we took this book and we had the animals and we were just making different vocal patterns so like maybe you had horse horse cow and it was and he actually had horse and cow on his speaking device and he was clicking ney neymou on his speaking device and his mom was like look he's doing it and like held it up and everything on zoom so it was great um so again lots of opportunities with this one the cool thing about um if you get the
• 41:00 - 41:30 board book one there is like a downloadable party kit i guess for like a birthday party but they have like really big eight and a half by 11 um animal visuals for all the animals in the book so um you can print those out laminate on and then have the kids maybe hold them up too when the animals are mentioned i've done that a couple of times um some other books uh 10 9 8 by molly bang is great um just for kind of that sequencing and counting
• 41:30 - 42:00 and study beat um plus it's just a really cute like bedtime story it's great but if you ever do like a concert and you need a theme um so i like it too because it counts down because a lot of the kids are so used to going one two three four and this is sequencing backwards so it goes like 10 small toes all washed and warm so we might touch our toes and count and go like 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 three two one and then maybe we
• 42:00 - 42:30 count up two and then it's a lot of things that the kids can relate to and maybe are working on in their vocabulary so like stuffed animals their toys right um windows they get to count the eight windows um and just really cute book the pictures in here are great too um another series that i found really helpful if you do consider doing like centers and you need books um to put in there
• 42:30 - 43:00 maybe just for their like free time or break time uh indestructibles is a book series that was developed by a mom um and it's mostly it is for babies and toddlers but if you have any students that maybe mouth a lot of objects or have destructive behaviors um these books are like a hundred percent indestructible like you can't rip it and my son is chewed on like all of them and they're all something tags so um the other great thing about them is they have a lot of just like
• 43:00 - 43:30 quick little song tales so like they have itsy bitsy spider twinkle little star like tons of just little songs that you can do quickly or the kids might even just be able to kind of sing through it with the teaching assistants another one that's really fun is busy city from indestructibles because it's just pictures but then the people or the animals are doing little vocalizations so like there's a girl on a skateboard and it says like swoosh so maybe just kind of practicing those little vocalizations
• 43:30 - 44:00 and then there's like people driving or on the train so it's like and all kinds of different sounds that they can make along with um the book so that's kind of low down on children's literature i know i'm going really fast but um again if you have any questions about any of these books or maybe if you come up with an idea for it like let me know because i'm all for it um so the other part um like manju said
• 44:00 - 44:30 this was like my master's project at vander cook um so basically coming up with resources and planning lessons and coming up with ways to structure class um was part of it but really my main thing was writing a curriculum and then assessing it as well for on self-contained special education so if you kind of end up in the same boat i was where it's like okay here ready go um here's just kind of maybe a quick way you could do it in like a weekend
• 44:30 - 45:00 i guess um i tried to keep it as simple as possible i picked maybe four things to really focus on um for my students a lot of study beat and rhythm is kind of interchangeable just because that's where they were um and again brian burnett always talks about like if the rhythm keeps repeating then it kind of becomes the study beat if you're always doing
• 45:00 - 45:30 right so a lot of that i kind of group together um other things that you might pick are like melody vocalization and maybe instrument skills so the students being able to start playing the instrument and stop playing the instrument when given a visual or oral cue right um then i also chose some non-musical goals to include in my curriculum that maybe could assist or help the students in meeting their iep goals too i did not track any of that data
• 45:30 - 46:00 in my room like the um teaching assistants or the teacher might in theirs but i figured why not give them a little bit extra practice when they're in my room right um and then basically for each lesson i had a goal for that student and when i was picking those goals i really tried to focus on things that maybe i knew the student was really good at and then maybe things that um they were struggling with or i knew that they could improve on too i kind of picked um so just an
• 46:00 - 46:30 example um like if we look at hungry harry really quick there's the standards the source what the musical goal is and then also just listing out the additional goals and maybe things that were in their iep um and then here was like the goals for each student so um just to kind of have it be anonymous i labeled every student with a letter um and i didn't use student names but you can see like student a is going to use the full lesson plan
• 46:30 - 47:00 they'll participate they might need one or two prompts and they can perform the study beat independently so that's what their goal was for that um study b lesson that we did that day but then if you look at like student j the adaptive lesson plan they're gonna follow they may participate with three to four props and they may need hand over hand assistance to keep the study so again just kind of thinking where are the kids where can we get them by the end of the lesson or even the unit or you know by the end of the year in
• 47:00 - 47:30 certain concepts um so here's maybe how i would set up a sample lesson so again i usually do an intro song maybe some kind of study beat vocal exploration instruments maybe throw a book in there and then do a closing song and again i always keep my intro one and my closing song the same so they know where they're going um throughout class they know when it starts to know when it ends and then also maybe using those that visual schedule again i might have like
• 47:30 - 48:00 a little picture of bath time for chickies so they know we're doing that right before the end um so real quick because i know we're starting to run out of time here um if you have students that come to your general education classes but are typically in the self-contained class um some things you can maybe try out uh color coding pitches especially for recorder i have found is super helpful and even for some of my um general education students that maybe have an iep i've
• 48:00 - 48:30 used this too and it's it's great um maybe even modifying the instrument parts um or making it on just simple rhythms right instead of making um the student focus on pitch and rhythm maybe they just start out with the rhythm the first couple weeks and then we try adding pitch in um giving them less choices and again using the adaptive instruments like a mallet and then one thing just because i was confused about this too when i first started
• 48:30 - 49:00 kind of diving into all of this accommodations are changes to how the student learns so maybe giving them more wait time um maybe using a visual and the rlq together right um versus modifications which is changing what the student learns okay so just kind of keeping that straight um because i used to mix those up all the time so just a little tip for that um again communicate with your special education team
• 49:00 - 49:30 if it's not working i've had some students that come to the modified music class and then they also come with their general education class because they felt for general education maybe they were super overwhelmed and it was way too many kids because a lot of these kids are used to being in a classroom at least in my building with i mean i have some that are like five kids and that's it and then you throw them in a class of like 30 it's like whoa whoa whoa whoa so maybe
• 49:30 - 50:00 communicating trying out different things anything communication wise will be huge to help you um when students are included in your general education class um maybe think about changing your goals or your outcomes for the student maybe they only come to music for 15 minutes instead of the full 35. um and then another thing that's pretty big is don't assume that students that are included in the general education class will struggle um i had the i had two twin
• 50:00 - 50:30 brothers and they were both on the autism spectrum and they were verbal but not very um and they came into my class in first grade and were able to match pitch and sing with these like beautiful little singing voices in first grade where i had some kids that were general education students that couldn't match pitch until you know like we all have that happened so um just not coming in with preconceived i guess
• 50:30 - 51:00 ideas that these kids are going to struggle is a big one um and then again focusing on what they can do so um if you have a student who's very friendly then pair them with a partner right or maybe make it their job to pass out supplies and that's like their moment to shine in music class right so just kind of thinking of um things that they can do and really focusing on those strengths um another thing that i think is really big is preparing the general education
• 51:00 - 51:30 kids that we're going to have some new friends that you may not see in your classroom with your classroom teacher but when you come to music they are going to be here with us um and for my lower uh grades like k2 i've used um these books before that i see things differently and the big umbrella to kind of just use it as like an intro maybe um like the first or second week of school before some kids may be joining our class um and then for my older students we do a lot of peer buddy programs
• 51:30 - 52:00 because my building is kind of um the house for our self-contained special ed for my district um so we actually have a lot of our kids in our honors classes our lunch buddies and recess buddies with a lot of our self-contained special ed kits so they are great helpers in the classroom too um one thing to kind of think a lot about is because i felt pretty defeated after my first year of doing this and i was just like this is so hard i don't know what i'm doing so just kind of knowing it's a
• 52:00 - 52:30 process and one thing that i found really helpful was videotaping class and i know that's like oh who wants to do that but it really the camera does not lie so if you're like oh i did not give that kid enough wait time like that was not good or sometimes what i would catch is like if we were doing a center and i would be with another group all of a sudden the kid who wouldn't clap their hands at all during music class is clapping along with the music that
• 52:30 - 53:00 joined any so you do catch like the kids maybe participating just not when you were teaching them um so videotaping was really helpful um and then another thing that i did and this was actually not my choosing it was just in my schedule was i actually would go and help the kids eat lunch in the lunchroom and go to recess i had recess duty with them too and that was like eye opening because i could see kind of how they functioned what they
• 53:00 - 53:30 worked for um the different teaching assistants that they got along with and maybe the teaching assistants that they didn't get along with very well so just kind of if you can ever maybe skip your plan i know that's hard and nobody wants to do it but maybe pop in the room and see like how does this student work are there things they work for if they're really struggling in your room um and just kind of seeing them in a different environment will help another thing to maybe consider is doing a concert um we a pre-covered world explosion we
• 53:30 - 54:00 used to do a thanksgiving feast every year at my school um with our self-contained special ed classes and you can see we have like a popcorn turkey my principal's carving the turkey is like a whole big thing right so the kids would do um a couple songs for their parents first so i'll go ahead and just play you guys like a little snippet of that sorry we're having trouble playing this video of course you are because we almost got to the end of this thing and i haven't had any issues so here we go
• 54:00 - 54:30 here let's see hopefully it'll load now and maybe just timed out if it doesn't oh maybe here we go [Laughter] [Music] so just to kind of show you guys um how that can work and
• 54:30 - 55:00 that was huge for my parents like i had parents coming up to me in tears because they never thought their kid would get to do a concert so again um it's just a really nice way to include the kids and give them those opportunities that we give our other students too um so here are some resources if you want to kind of delve into this a little bit more and i actually think alice hamill might be teaching a music and special ed class they have dander cook this summer and she has a ton of great resources out there
• 55:00 - 55:30 so you may want to check that out if you're into that um and there's also a link on there to my grad school project if you want to read through the whole thing and also there was another vandercook grad who did kind of the same project that i did but she did it for middle school students so maybe if you are you have upper grades to like six through eight you might want to check hers out too so i know we literally have like one minute left but i think manju was going to kind of keep
• 55:30 - 56:00 the chat and questions and maybe i can send an email with answers i'm not sure how we want to do this but thank you for coming thank you so much beth and this is so amazing because we are exactly at the seven o'clock hour this is beautiful so thank you for this wealth of information and i think you probably are going to get a lot of questions via email but i think all your stuff that you have
• 56:00 - 56:30 in this presentation is um incorporated in your notes so all the links are in bet's presentation so those of you who sent me um questions about the links etc and everything is in the notes and if you want to shoot with an email she's just amazing well she is a membership chair for rgc osa which means she's really good about communicating on in a timely manner in a very timely manner so um i will um say thank you beth so much this has
• 56:30 - 57:00 been such a great wealth of information thank you for being so generous in spending your time with us today and sharing