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3 Reasons Why You Need Your Students’ IEP/504 BEFORE the First Day of School

If you are new to teaching, in your first few years, you may not know that specialist, like us, are required to follow a student’s IEP or 504. If you’re in college and just learning about special education, you may not know what an IEP or a 504 is and at the end of this blog I will provide you with some resources to help you become familiar with these documents. For now, I will discuss 3 reasons why you need you students’ IEPs/504s before the first day of school

  1. It’s the Law

A teacher must be aware of a student’s IEP to ensure they are providing proper accommodations from day 1. General education teachers, assistants, and special area (music, PE, art) teachers. Some think specialists do not need to know a student’s diagnosis, academic and behavior levels, accommodations, modifications, related services, and goals, but I disagree. We need more than modifications, accommodations, and behavior plans especially if we are required to come up with our own mods and accommodations to the curriculum. Talk with your special education coordinator to see what can be shared and still maintain a students’ privacy.

2. Preferential Seating and Routines

What is preferential seating? Preferential seating is placing a students’ seat where they will be the most successful in the classroom, not always in the front and not always in the back and not always with the group. If you have a student with a visual impairment, you’ll need to know where they will be most successful in your room and that’s the same for a student with a hearing impairment. Inattentive, wiggly students may benefit from sitting away from the group or even in a special type of seat. Often the wiggly students and students with Autism and ADHD benefit from routine and you will want to establish this from week one. You will want to teach expectations about their seating and seating arrangements so that you can begin to gather appropriate data and keep notes if their seat is a successful place in the room.

3. Triggers

Students with ADHD, emotional disorders, autism, or other mood disorders may struggle with transitions. Leaving their classroom and arriving in your classroom is a big transition and the smaller transitions we have in our classrooms are triggering to some. Transitions, new students, a new teacher, the loud noises from music, any of these may trigger a meltdown or tantrum that could have been avoided. If you have a student in the midst of a meltdown and do not know how to de-escalate, or do not know the difference between a meltdown or tantrum, here are some tips to help you. Imagine if you already knew that the student would need additional support because you had their IEP/504 in advance, you could have these supports in place. You could use accommodations or try to anticipate and prevent a meltdown by minimizing triggers, providing sensory considerations (especially for sound) and establishing routines early.

Additional Tips:

*Seek out updates after annual ARDs                         
*Shred all old IEPs

Resources

*Learn to read an IEP here

*Find help for preferential seating here

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3 Positive Primers for Elementary Music Classrooms

What are positive primers? A positive primer is anything that primes the brain to accelerate processing and the opposite is a negative primer or slowing the brain down. If I give you something to ready your brain for the response I’m looking for, I’ve primed your brain or accelerated its thought processes toward the memory I would like recalled. If I give you a positive primer and accelerate happiness, I can stimulate higher brain functioning. Today I would like to provide you with 3 positive primers for use in the elementary music classroom.

1. Greet Your Students at the Door

Your students need to see the exchange of power from classroom teacher to music teacher. In my classroom, I ask the teachers for attendance, mainly for student safety, but I like to know who is absent, in the nurse, at the counselor or what have you. It opens other conversations with classroom teachers such as “Johnny is in the counselor right now” becomes “Is Johnny alright, is there anything going on that I need to know about to help support Johnny while he’s in my classroom?”

While the children are entering the door, greet them with words or a safe, gentle touch. You may be the only grown up that gives that baby a hug that day, a handshake, a fist bump, whatever works for you, but greet your students as they walk in. Make it part of your routine, establish it very early on, and make sure the classroom teachers understand that this is part of your routine, and you are not going to make any changes to that, even if they are in a rush.

2. Transitions

Transitions happen so often in the music room and what better time to build relationships with our students. You can make them musical, silent, or a time to have a quick chat with your kids. You can absolutely use transitions as a brain break if your students are a little squirrelly. When you choose your brain breaks, make sure you are reading the room. Go Noodle is great, but make sure you are choosing the correct activity to meet your students’ needs. There are brain breaks that are escalating and will build positive energy and emotions into your lesson. If your students aren’t feeling it that day, and they are a bit low energy, you can try clapping games, yoga pretzels, racing games, movement activities, just have a dance party! Maybe your students are hyped up and have been cooped up on a rainy day and you need to bring them down, you can try a de-escalating break like mirror movements, quiet music, breathing exercises, and other calm movements to build in calm emotions, contentment, serenity, safety and focus for your students.

3. Independent/Whole Group Time

During whole group lessons, encourage your students to be mindful of their accomplishments and successful moments. Have your students perform for one another and share about what went well during the performance or what could be changed to improve their performance. Give them a script to try to follow or a sentence stem, such as, I enjoyed _____ during your performance because you did _____ and _____ well. Or I think _____ went well however it could be better if you changed _______. This will encourage positive dialogue, priming the students to make musical decision when creating music, and to accept criticism in a positive light.

When a student performs independently, whether is a small solo singing or they’re brave to share their compositions, praise them! Prime the experience with positive affirmations and a growth mindset and you’ll discover students are suddenly excited to perform and play music!

However you get your students ready to learn, positive primers are a great way to increase student engagement, stimulate brain functioning and get your students loving music class!

Sing, Say, Dance, Play, Care

Analisa

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3 Tips for Effective Classroom Management That Are NOT “Building Relationships”

I’ve been teaching for 16 years now and the only tip I ever hear for effective classroom management is “build relationships”. Every time I hear that I must fight the urge to roll my eyes. It’s not the I don’t believe in building relationships, I do, but I’m also a realist and know that I teach over 500 students, and it is impossible to build a strong relationship with each and every student. I need advice that I can implement quickly, efficiently, and effectively. So here I offer three tips for effective classroom management that does not include building relationships.

1. Be Authentic

In elementary it is often easy to become condescending in your tone. Keep your tone authentic, they’re tiny humans not dogs. Use an authentic tone of voice even when speaking to kindergarteners. Kinder kids do not need the baby coo-ing, singsong, sickly sweet voice if that is not who you are. When you’re fake, the kids know. They know if you’re uncomfortable with your vocal tone, choice of words, and things like that and they will absolutely take advantage of that insecurity. If you are not a naturally silly person, that’s okay, you do not have to be. You do not have to adopt an entirely different personality. Think about the movie Kindergarten Cop, the lead character played to his strengths and the kids responded to that authenticity, that happens in real life, too.  

2. Be Consistent

As specialists, we also inherit the classroom management flaws of our classroom teachers. It is important that we set boundaries with our students and be consistent in our routines and expectations to overcome some of those issues. Being consistent in your discipline and your content delivery will greatly impact the flow of your classroom. Do not give empty threats to the kids to get them to comply. If you say you’re going to do something, then do it. The worse feeling is when kids do not trust you or your word because you lack follow through. Own up to your mistakes and apologize if you make one.

Become a predictable, broken record, when delivering expectations and consequences.

Be consistent with your routines when handing out instruments, materials, playing games, making a circle, all the things! On my campus we use CHAMPS, which is a PBIS approach to behavior management. Not only does this build consistency in your classroom expectations, but it also allows the students to become independent learners.

When you try to change a routine, give it time. If you are constantly changing routines because something isn’t working, it never gets a fair shake. Try the routine for at least a month or two, it takes 21 days to change a habit, so give it time.

3. Be Respectful

Kids will give back the energy they are receiving. They pick up on your vibe. They will give back respect, if they receive it, even THAT kid. Behavior is communication, if students are misbehaving, the energy is off. This is what people mean by building relationships, be respectful all the time. Give kids a time to tell their silly stories, let the chatter box talk your ear off occasionally, you may be the only person that will listen to them.

Watch your tone of voice when you’re upset. It’s hard for me, too, to keep a neutral tone. Sometimes I say things that are sassy, I must check myself and apologize, which goes back to being authentic and consistent. It happens, you’re human. I repeat myself multiple times, that’s when the tone shifts, and I must remind myself to stay in check, keep my tone authentic and give reminders to stay on task, focus, or whatever expectations is my goal.

When a kid feels confronted or backed into a corner, they will of course respond and often they will respond in an inappropriate way. Children do not regulate thoughts and emotions the same way we do. They act first, think second, and this is where we get impulsive behaviors from. It is our job as the adult to keep our tone and behaviors neutral and respectful.

A word about power and control. Do not engage in a battle of power with a student. You know you’re the one in control and power in the room, do not lose that focus, what you want is a student to feel safe, valued, and ready to learn. If there is a student in crisis, remind yourself that your number one job is their safety and learn to let things go. Defiance is usually part of a bigger problem than we can solve in a forty-five-minute class. Document your attempts at redirection, get administrative and parental support and remember to keep them safe, value their feelings, and eventually they will be ready to learn. I’ve had to remove students in crisis from my room before and felt guilty about it, but ultimately my job is to keep the other students safe, as well. Do the best you can, but keep your tone neutral and try, try, try, to keep your cool. I know, it is hard.

I hope these three tips are helpful for you and that you also feel validated in whatever approach to classroom management you choose. Building relationships is such a catch all phrase, but I don’t believe it solves the problems of system classroom management problems. If you consistently have classroom management problems, then maybe try one of these tips and see if they effect change.

Sing! Say! Dance! Play! Care!

Analisa