Welcome to Mrs. Stucki's Music class!
Using IPads For Music Class!
I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I found out I was going to have Ipads to use in my music room this year. I work in a rough inner city school where many of the older students tend to be negative, rude and disrespectful to all the teachers. Many of them would frequently interrupt the lesson. Nothing seemed to motivate students even after calling parents, changing their seating chart, setting rules, giving talks about respect, doing fun music games, earning fun days or movie days. I was excited to find something fun to motivate and involve them in musical learning.
Fun Ipads Music Games: I quickly started looking for games and fun activities to put on the ipads. I found that the sky is the limit with so many apps to chose from. Two of my favorite apps are Tiny Piano and Story Bots. Both of these apps are free and easy for students to use.
Motivating Tough Students with IPads Games: My plan was to use the IPads for music centers but realized that I could use them to motivate my older students. It worked like magic. After two weeks of using the IPads in my music room, my class no longer resembles a tough inner city classroom. The older classes are now respectful, participating in class and doing their work without being negative. What a big change from when they started at beginning of the year.
How It Works; Since I have 5 IPads, I divded my class into groups of fives with one person on an IPad. At the beginning of the class I announce what group will be using the IPads today. I remind students that if they interrupt the lesson, they will lose their turn to play on the IPads when it is their assigned IPad day. I stop teaching the last 10 minutes of the class and let the assigned group play in the IPad center. The rest of the class will play a music game, folk dance, boomwhackers or other activity. A different group of students would get to use the IPads on the next day.
Try using IPads as a way of changing bad behavior if you teach tough inner city kids that are disrespectful. IPads have worked better than any other behavior plan I've used in the past. Teaching music is a joy again and my classes are taking responsibility for their own musical learning. Leave a comment below and let me know what you are doing with IPads in your classroom. See you back soon for my next blog! Sherry Stucki :)
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Check out some of my favorite games and activities!
