Un Jour Dans Sa Cabane

I grew up in Maine, and still consider that "home" along with North Carolina.  My mother grew up in Maine in "the county" - Aroostook County, which borders Canada.  I grew up speaking a smattering of French with my mum and my "Auntie Jo" who had a very thick French accent and learned English as a teenager.  I love this fun song, and the "Zoom bala" part is really fun!

 Enjoy!

Music Room 2018

Relational Teaching. This is important in my community. Important, discussed, encouraged, and celebrated. Challenging for those of us who teach huge numbers of students. Our co-curricular faculty (Spanish, art, music, PE, media, science, and tech) decided to forego the typical team or class awards in favor of celebrating the individual and honoring those students who "Go Beyond" (our school motto).
I am doing this in a number of ways- swag tags from Tracy King, AKA The Bulletin Board Lady (on Teachers Pay Teachers), Cool Kid Spray, inspired by David Row from Make Moments Matter (which my kids already love), and being a Bell Ringer/Chicken Squawker (see my video on Facebook @ofortunaorff. I am also doing something new with classroom management and I already love how concise and easy it it has been to describe and enforce.
Here is the tour of the room, take a peek them go check out the post and video on Facebook to see how I use all these things in the classroom! @ofortunaorff

I also recently posted about re-wrapping my mallets - head over to facebook - @ofortunaorff to check out the video!

"Cool Kid Spray" - ridiculously fun and students yesterday (first day of school) loved it!

Check out the windows - Crayola makes window markers and they were so much fun to use!

And a pic of me as I start my 25th year of teaching and my daughter starts Middle School!  Happy New School Year!

Back to School!

I am back from Finland and the International Music Village! What an amazing experience!  I toured around Helsinki for 4 days before the Music Village began and then hopped on a bus for 4 hours with music teachers from Russia, Croatia, Finland, Georgia, Spain, Italy, Singapore, Australia, Poland, Austria, and many other countries.  The accents and languages were so fun to listen to and the enthusiasm and energy was infectious.  Then we began making music, dancing, and singing together and it so difficult to describe the joy, excitement, and thrill of the experiences I had!  Here is a picture of our wonderful group from all over the world!

This is my last week of summer break and I am so glad I have this time to begin to process the experience!  I am at school a little this week to get my room ready and begin the process of everything "back to school". 
Plans?  The first couple of weeks I have several things I do - especially name games and songs!  For some reason, I have a difficult time remembering names, which is a little tricky for us music teachers who usually have between 300-1000 students names to remember!  So, for me, I need to remember all the returning students and learn the new children's names!  Last year I posted the "Ultimate List" of name games and songs.  Check it out here!

Hope you have a great start to the school year!  Be sure to follow the blog on facebook - @ofortunaorff where I post videos and extras!  

Happy beginning of school!