Teaching Middle School General Music - Danielle Larrick

 
 

Today I’m thrilled to be sharing this conversation with my friend, Danielle Larrick about teaching middle school and upper elementary general music.

These grades can sometimes feel challenging to teach - our approach will look, feel, and sound very different from other grades we work with on a weekly basis. Students’ interests have shifted from their younger years, their social worlds are changing, and finding activities that match their motivation level can feel like a discouraging search.

Simultaneously, this age group is enthusiastic about ensemble collaboration, and their growing collection of musical skills and consciously-known concepts opens exciting music curriculum doors.

In this conversation Danielle skillfully walks us through ways to approach upper elementary and middle school general music. We talk about how to establish trust, what types of activities work well, and we even explore a drag-and-drop idea you can try right away to refresh your teaching.

In This Conversation:

  • 01:58 - It’s Danielle!

  • 02:30 - Danielle’s journey to middle school

  • 05:47 - What do middle schoolers need?

  • 09:01 - Establishing trust

  • 16:12 - Keeping it simple - Activities that work

  • 22:48 - Giving Options for Musical Challenges

  • 26:30 - Everyone is a Musician

  • 28:56 - Student Motivation & Activities

  • 35:09 - Danielle’s Teaching Situation

  • 36:08 - Music Workshops: Rhythm, Melody, Harmony

  • 40:45 - Structures for Classroom Management During Projects

  • 46:00 - Structuring the Chaos

  • 48:38 - A Rhythm Activity to Try Tomorrow!

  • 58:53 - Engagement and Independence

  • 02:01:29 - The Confident Music Educator

  • 02:06:10 - Quick Questions: What was a recent win in your classroom?

  • 02:07:21 - Quick Questions: What is the next teaching project you’re excited about?

  • 02:08:01 - Quick Questions: What makes you such a good middle school teacher?

About Danielle

For over a decade, Danielle has served as a musician-educator in both urban and suburban settings. She believes in the value of middle school music as a means of identity, expression, and connection. She focuses on designing practical, innovative, and engaging music curricula for middle school students. Motivated by the ever-changing trends in education, Danielle continues to write, present, and create. She is the author of “Middle School General Music: A Guide to Navigating the Unknown”(F-flat Books). In addition, she is the co-founder of The Confident Music Educator , a platform designed to support music educators of musicians in grades 5-8. She currently resides in Lancaster, PA with her husband, son, and Boston Terrier.

Email: musicalmiddles@gmail.com

Instagram: @musicalmiddles

My Teaching Schedule is Way Way Off

Listen on

Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify

Season 1 | Episode 59

Show Notes

Let’s take a deep breath and make a plan.

 
 

The Schedule is Off:

  • We have a hurricane moving through 

  • This flu season is supposed to be bonkers 

  • We have holiday breaks coming up 

  • We have performances we’re prepping 

  • We have everything happening all at once, and it feels so sad and frustrating to plan everything in a spreadsheet, then watch it all become irrelevant, and we’re scrambling to find something to do because all of the sudden every plan we made has completely gone out the window.

What is True?

  • Often, when I feel overwhelmed, it seems like everything is falling apart all at once. 

  • Look at your grades you’re teaching. Very likely, your situation will be something like -  Kindergarten is on track. 1st grade is basically on track but feels off track because the classes talk so much. 2nd grade I don’t even know what’s happening. 3rd grade is on track. 4th was on track but we were getting ready for a concert and now I’m not sure where we are. 5th grade is hanging on by a thread, I don’t even know. 

  • Thought: Everything is broken, I’m dropping every single plate I’m trying to spin 

  • When we get it on paper, we see that three classes are wandering around in space from a curricular perspective, and three classes are on track. 

Centering Reality

  • One possible approach: I’m either the smooth, no stress teacher of the year with everything calm and color coded, or I’m frazzled and burnt out and ready to quit my job and everything is chaos. And if I feel frazzled with one grade, it means everything is frazzled.

  • Another possible approach: There are tweaks I want to make in 2nd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade to feel more calm in my teaching.

  • The reason this is important is that it changes the problem we’re trying to address. We’re not inventing an entirely new curriculum from scratch for the entire program that needs to last the rest of our year. We’re course correcting three grades 

  • So when we notice all-or-nothing thinking creeping in, it’s helpful to name it. 

  • It’s also helpful to name that when a grade is on course and you feel calm, it isn’t a reflection of your value as a human. When a grade is crashing around in space you feel like each class is herding cats, it isn’t a reflection of your value as a human. 

  • The purpose of the music class is not to get to half notes by January in 2nd grade.

Deep Breath & Brain Dump:

  • With the grade that feels frazzled and aimless, get out a sheet of paper or a curriculum outline, and write down what you have done. What were the musical interactions students had? Write down what you did teach.

  • Ideally this is a list of concepts with corresponding songs and games and activities and projects 

  • Sometimes though, it’s just the songs and games and activities, without being connected with a thread of concepts. That’s ok too!

  • Wherever you are, write it down.

Curriculum Outline:

  • Music teachers think vertically because most of us see the same population multiple years in a row. As students move through our program, what does the development of knowledge and skills look like?

  • This is a broad overview of the entire program, across all grade levels. What will we teach?

  • The format of this document can be anything - but consider grouping by musical elements rather than things like musical genres or how to play instruments or periods in music history. When we plan this way, the emphasis is on foundational musical elements that can be applied to pop music or recorder or listening experiences. Students can transfer their understanding across many different pathways of musicing.

  • This is the program-at-a-glance, and we can have a different list of concepts, we can have them in a different order, and we can go through them at different paces than other people. The point is not that everyone teaches half notes in 2nd grade in January. The point is that there is a logical and artistic flow of musical concepts and skills, so that students can build knowledge sequentially and move from the known to the unknown.

  • If you’re interested in hearing more:

  • Look at where we’ve been - what have we taught, what have students learned, what musical interactions have we had - and move to the next step.

Make a Plan:

Scheduling Breathing Room

  • We know the fall has disruptions. This will happen in the spring too! We can expect scheduling disruptions and concerts and sickness every year.

  • What if, every semester, you had a planned two weeks of “my brain is on fire, we need to get back on track.” You turn on a movie and do coloring sheets, or you do something on ipads that doesn’t need supervision, etc. 

  • It’s like you’re hiring a sub, but you’re the sub 

    • Or maybe - whoah - you actually hire a sub for the day and you go work at a coffee shop, then come back 

  • While students are doing the activity, you’re doing whatever you need to do. You’re organizing the room, you’re taking a breath, you’re going back to repertoire that gets you excited to teach, and you’re making a plan for how to land the plane for the next six weeks. 

  • This is one of the things I’m really happy about inside The Planning Binder - I’ve carved out time every few months for “breathing room.” It’s just empty space in an otherwise very active scope and sequence where we do a fun one-off project.

The Enemy of Understanding is Coverage

  • Howard Gardner

  • Even if you expected to be in a specific place by December, and while that can feel discouraging, I want to caution against an idea that it’s bad to go backwards and build a foundation.

  • Coverage of a document is not the goal. The document needs to be reflective of the real human musicians in the classroom. The document is there to serve a progression of understandings and skills over time.