My Five Favorite Pins This Month

I am joining Aileen Miracle's "My Five Favorite Pins This Month" linky party. Here are five of my favorite links with a focus on Middle School.

I teach all three middle grades.  There are HUGE differences between 6th and 8th grade children.
The Sixth Graders need major structure to help them be successful in the classroom.  Without it, the hands go up and you spend most of your time fielding questions rather than teaching.
Here is a link to give you more ideas on how to improve structure in your classroom using numbers:

Bright Idea link!

I don't know about you, but I didn't like losing an hour of sleep on Saturday night when the clocks mover forward.  Boo!  I think this is the perfect post for this week since we started Daylight Savings time this week:

Dumb ideas

Teachable moments!  We all know how important they are.  When we make learning relevant to daily life, children are more likely to truly learn.  Here is a timely blog post for this week for middle school math teachers regarding Pi Day.

Link to Pi Day post

I'm a music teacher, but it seems like this week I am stumbling across math posts!  Anyway....I also found this interesting idea for middle school math teachers on the blog called "Caught in the Middle".

Algebra Tiles link

Behavior management is one of the biggest issues for young middle school teachers.  I struggled for years and years to find the balance between being too stern and not stern enough...rewards vs. consequences. It takes time to establish our own style so that we can effectively teach our material to the children.  Here is a great link to a Behavior Management System for Middle School Teachers:

Behavior Management for Middle School Teachers

This week, I took 300 students to our adjudicated Choral music festival.  I divided them into 4 singing groups.  Each group sang two songs, and then they proceeded into the dreaded Sight Singing room to figure out a song they've never seen in 5 minutes and sing it for a judge.   Big task!  Well...it went beautifully, and all four groups (beginning to advanced) sailed through and got Superior ratings.  They have no idea how difficult this task is because I work on it with them 10 minutes daily from the first day of school!  They are fluent in a language I didn't even begin learning until my freshman year in music school!

Last August, I decided to start posting my Sight Singing program for Middle School Choral Music teachers online to share.  This week, I will complete the process!  I am super-excited.  I have spent hours and hours on it, and I am hopeful that lots of teachers will benefit from the Sight Singing lessons I've placed on TPT and from the YouTube teaching examples and tips I've been posting all school year!

This weekend, I am going to celebrate!

Have a great week!







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