Friends, this bizarre school year really is keeping us on our toes. Many of you have been online for nearly a year now; others have been ping-ponging between in-person and distance learning; and like me, some have been in-person for most of this school year. With the posts I’ve seen on social media lately about districts returning to in-person instruction soon, I wanted to share the items that have helped me the most for in applying social distancing to music class. If you have any more ideas to add, please leave a comment at the end of this post.
*This post contains a few affiliate links, which means that if you purchase from these links, I may make a few cents at no additional cost to you.*
Poly Spots
If you don’t have a class set of these now, it’s time to get them. Usually I’d suggest borrowing them from your PE teacher, but they are probably going to want to hang onto them this year. Poly Spots are great because you can use them on hard floors or carpet for social distancing your students. Place the spots to show where each student can move their body, get in line, or simply stay six feet apart. Another great use for Poly Spots is as a drum pad. I’ve used them on top of buckets for dampening sound during bucket drumming, and I’ve used them on the floor as a drumming surface. Just add sticks! And because they’re made of rubber, they’re quick for clean-up. If you’re not familiar with Poly Spots, click here to see the ones I use.
Quality Hand Lotion
Washing and sanitizing your hands so many times in a day, your hands quickly become dry and cracked. Not only are you washing your hands, but you also have to sanitize everything in your room several times a day. Honestly, it adds up fast. Save yourself the pain and discomfort by keeping a quality hand lotion near your sanitizer. For me, I’ve found that this level of sanitizing requires something heavy duty. I swear by Working Hands by O’Keeffe’s. It’s not scented, and it works phenomenally with my very sensitive skin without needing to put on too much. I’ve used Working Hands and its foot counterpart Healthy Feet for several years now, and nothing repairs my cracked skin faster. I usually get the circular container so that it stays securely closed, but it’s also available in a tube if you prefer.
Document Camera
Before 2020, I rarely used my document camera. Honestly, I barely knew how to work it, let alone what I could use it for. #typebteacher But once we returned to in-person learning, social distancing made story times more complicated. Because of how far back students had to be, they couldn’t see any of the pictures. Well, I took my millennial self over to my document camera, and problem solved. I kept the book under the camera, and the students could see the pictures nice and large on the Smart Board. If you don’t have a document camera, another solution for this problem would be to record yourself reading the book up close, and play the video with your projector.
However, I’ve since used the document camera for much more. With ukuleles, I showed the students how to finger chords without needing to get too close. When showing an activity sheet or how to use manipulatives, I could stay at my desk, but students could still see. When we learned the cup game, the kids could follow along much more easily with that overhead type of view. Bottom line: if you have access to tech tools, take a little time to figure out how to use them; it’s worth it. Now, if you don’t have a document camera, I’ve heard great things about the Hue HD Pro. At $89, it may be something you can purchase with your budget, through PTO, or DonorsChoose. Smaller tech purchases with big impacts usually get funded very fast on DonorsChoose.
Plastic Instruments
Egg shakers. Boomwhackers. These are instruments my kids used to play a couple of times a year. Now they are go-to’s for instrument time, because sanitizing them is easy peasy. There are also plastic rhythm sticks, which I would love to get my hands on. Wooden instruments are much harder to sanitize. If your school/district is like mine, they provide you with a spray bottle of cleaner and those *wonderfully absorbent* school paper towels. These don’t cut it for cleaning a bunch of splintered rhythm sticks. Instead I purchase Clorox Wipes so that I can quickly wipe down the wooden instruments. So if you are able to use plastic instruments, do it! So. Much. Easier.
Mallets
This next social distancing teacher hack comes from my district’s brilliant content area lead teacher. If you miss being able to use your Smart Board in an interactive way, all you need are some mallets. Luckily I found that my school already had several of these with foam heads. I keep a container of these mallets near my Smart Board, and hand one to a student when it is their turn to select or move something on the board. They hold onto it, and press the foam head to the board as they would with their finger. If I want them to write on the board, I can simply remove one of the Smart Board markers from its docking station, and the board then treats the mallet like a marker. Once their turn is up, they place their mallet in one of the baskets for used instruments, so that I can sanitize them again. The kids love that they can still come up to the board, and the littles feel like they’re using magic wands.
Microphone
Before this year, I rarely needed voice amplification in my teaching. But masks + being farther apart = hard to hear. Our hard of hearing students struggle enough with this pandemic, having to listen to muffled voices from farther away, and not being able to read lips because of the masks. Between that issue and the extra strain on my voice, I invested in a headset microphone. This Giecy rechargeable bluetooth microphone is what I use. The headset stays comfortably on my head, and I place the battery pack in a pocket of my teacher apron (for more about that, check out this blog post). So teacher friends, save your voice… while feeling like a 2000’s pop star. 😉
Pool Noodles
Seems strange, right? Well with Spring around the corner, I can’t wait for Dollar Tree and Walmart to have these in stock again. This year, I’ve seen a lot of music teachers cut pool noodles down to make sand blocks for personal music kits, but I’ve found another use for them, inspired by amazing PE teacher. If you are used to incorporating a lot of singing games and play parties in your lessons, most of them need to be modified for social distancing.
Chasing games and games with joining/clapping hands present the biggest challenges this school year. But my teammate Kyle had a great solution: pool noodles and shipping tape. Cut a pool noodle into thirds or quarters, and wrap shipping tape around one end. This will create a soft, no-contact device for tagging. The tagger holds onto the pool noodle at the shipping tape end, and tags their classmates with the other end. After their turn is up, wipe down the shipping tape, and it is ready to go again.
If you want students to make a bridge or arch for a game such as “Let Us Chase the Squirrel,” the two students can hold a pool noodle in each hand, and create the bridge with their outstretched noodles. This not only keeps students from touching hands, but also keeps more distance between them. These same benefits work well for handicapping games like “Oboshinotentoten” or “Freddy Oaka.” However, you will need two smaller noodles per student in this case. Like I said, I’m checking Walmart every grocery trip to get my hands on more of them!
One last thing…
There’s just one more thing to share with you about in-person teaching right now: it gets easier. The first few days, I felt a bit smothered by wearing a mask for so many hours in a row. But you quickly get used to it, and don’t even notice your mask by the second or third week. The anxiety of keeping everyone safe and healthy gets easier, too. You learn that doing your best is all you can do. Students get used to the new rules and masks, and they’ll even help brainstorm modifications for some activities. Although this year is hard, it is manageable as long as you don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Please stay safe, take care of yourself, and remember that your best is good enough.
Happy teaching!
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