As others have been mentioning the keys to keeping giant music classes under control is planning and routine. During class you need to just be able to continually move ahead with relevant material. If you hit a road block with your lesson plan you need to be ready to pick up with something that is not a waste of time for you and the students. Also, when it comes to classroom management, having every student in the room know your expectations and the ramifications if they are not followed will allow you to move on from disciplining back to the students' learning more easily.
Last year I was involved in organizing a music festival. This experience showed me that routine and planning will apply even when outside of the classroom. The older teachers who knew the drill and had sufficiently prepared the students for how to behave and where to be when were able to quickly and efficiently move 100+ students from the bus, to warm-up, to onstage. Less experienced teachers had, well, chaos on their hands.
Its all about the planning and the routine.
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As Catherine mentioned, it's all about the planning and the routine.
ReplyDeleteSo much time can be gained by having a well-planned routine for the classroom, especially when setting up equipment is involved (PE, Music, Art all included).
Last year I observed 5 different high school music classrooms, all extremely different.
One of the most memorable was a Band 10 class. As the students came in, they knew what to do. Students were coming from all different areas of the school, so they trickled in slowly and began to set up their instruments. The students had a seating plan, and they knew to pick up particular books on the way into the classroom. When the majority of the students were set up, the teacher stood on the podium and raised his baton. He did not say a word, he only demonstrated through actions that he was ready to begin. The students immediately became silent and raised their instruments, ready to play.
In this case, the teacher treated the students as mature players, and had a great routine in place that saved him time, and saved him from having to talk over the chaos that occurs in many other music classes. I think it's important to set up these routines to maximize potential learning time.