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Tammy Axt General

Teaching music to students with autism

I teach music to a contained class of students with autism once a week. On a mission to program effectively for these students, I have been consulting with our team of experts and reading some new resources. Two months into school, this is what my period with them looks like:
An important part of helping students with autism is providing structure to their program. There are no surprises in my class. The order of the day is visually presented on the black board. To prepare the schedule, I bought frame holders that were two for a dollar at the dollar store. Next, with the help of an amazing TA at our school who is a Board Maker whiz, I chose some visuals that will indicate what kind of activities we will be completing in class. The schedule is taken down as we go through each activity.

Next, a challenge for some people with autism is sensory experiences. My class starts with the instrument of the day to allow students the chance to hear, feel and touch a new instrument. So far this year, each student has had the chance to experience and explore with a saxophone, baritone and a snare drum in the “musician’s chair”. Students can feel, hear and see the instrument that they are playing and what kind of sound they can create with the instrument. There have been some minor hesitations on the part of a few students, but with some encouragement and support, all of the students have participated.

Next, we do some songs and instruments playing together as a group. My goal for the beginning part of the year has been to find songs that the students will engage in. Some songs that have been successful are “animal actions”, “jumping in the puddles” and “play and stop” with instruments. Trying to play melodies or specific rhythmic patterns hasn’t happened yet, but we will work towards that. I try to listen really closely to the students during this section of the class and follow their interests and skills. For example, when we were playing instruments recently, one student asked if we could make our playing into a parade. “Yes we can,” was my answer.
Then, to build a reward into the structure of the class, the students have a choice activity at the end of the period. They can choose something arts-related. I usually have drama (costumes), art (drawing or 3D building) or music materials (instruments) for the students to access in their own way. It is a great time to interact with the students while they are taking the lead and showing me their interests. (It has been helpful for gathering ideas for our next class.)

Challenges that I have witnessed include that I have an open classroom with no structural space in it. Whereas in their classroom, there are designated areas for certain tasks, my classroom is very open with few distinctive spaces. Also, transitions can be really difficult for some students with autism, and movement between rooms can be stressful. I have tried to pick an activity that is highly engaging to start every class in order to ease the stress of the transition.

Building relationships with parents is important to every student’s success. I have chosen to build the relationship with parents by sending home a book that we have been creating throughout the term. The book contains a section for each instrument we have played and interacted with. In each section it has a picture of the student playing the instrument, the name of the instrument and a listening response completed by the student. Whether it is high, low, loud or quiet. When the book is sent home right before the break, I will include a note explaining my goals for our music program this year.
Finally, I would recommend two resources to help you understand your students with autism. The first place to go to is the Ministry of Ontario’s resource called “Effective Educational Practices for Students with Autism”. This is a great introduction. Also, an amazing new book “Teaching Music to Students with Autism” by Alice M. Hammel has been very helpful in my experience.

Overheard in my Ontario classroom:
Outside my classroom right now there is a large sign that is a countdown to the arrival of the Canadian Opera Company. The first day my students saw the sign there was a lot of excitement as they came into the room. I was so impressed at how culturally mature they were. We started our class and as they were speaking to each other excitedly, I realized something: they didn’t understand that the opera was coming – they thought that Oprah was coming.

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Tammy Axt Assessment, General

Creating Criteria With Students

Allowing students to have input on criteria for an assignment helps them gain a clearer picture in their mind of what they need to do in order to be successful at a task. Although creating criteria together for every task would be ideal, time usually plays a large factor in making this difficult, especially for planning time teachers. As a planning time teacher, you often see the students for around 30-40 minutes at a time once or twice a week.

Today I want to show you a very quick way (under five minutes) to create criteria with students.

My grade four classes are currently studying the recorder. They are about three weeks into learning this instrument and are now learning a few songs to present next month. In preparation for the assessment and evaluation for their upcoming songs, I wanted them to help create the criteria. I handed out a sticky note to every student when they entered the class. Their job was to write down one thing that they think a person would need to do to be successful at playing a song on the recorder. After about two minutes, I had some students start to share their ideas with the class and we started to listen for some patterns and began to categorize their ideas. Students had active discussions and came up with eight different criteria that they should be assessed on at this point in their learning. The criteria will change as we learn new pieces of music and gain confidence with our basic skills.

The students will all have a copy of the criteria in their duo tangs and I will give them feedback regularly on this sheet as we are working towards improving our skills.

Taking five minutes to create some assessment categories not only gave them a set of very specific skills required to be successful, but also gave me a lot of information. As you can see from the picture below, the amount of students who wrote “cover the holes”, “blow less”, “finger or play the pitches correctly”, “put the left hand on top” far outweighed tonguing or correct rhythm. I can use this information for planning my upcoming mini lessons.

In addition, over the next couple of weeks, I will also be using two or three minutes per class where one student gets to be the teacher and we will practice assessing each other using the criteria. I will play some pieces on the recorder and have the pretend teacher give me some very specific feedback according to the criteria. In just a few classes, the students’ ability to give feedback to each other will drastically improve and this will create an environment where there are multiple experts in the class and everyone can help each other.

Overheard in my Ontario Classroom…

As my family comes from the province of Prince Edward Island, I grew up participating in kitchen parties. I have been inviting my grade five students to participate in kitchen parties with me including some very rowdy versions of I’se the B’y. To demonstrate a true kitchen party, I have been using spoons, foot stomping, piano, pots and pans and basically anything I can to make the songs lively. I was singing joyfully the other day and instead of singing “I’se the B’y that builds the boat”. I sang “I’se the B’y that kills the boat.” Some of the students paused what they were doing with confused looks on their faces and finally one boy raised his hand and asked “Miss. Gallant, do you have something against this boat?” I had no idea I had even sang those lyrics.
Sometimes students are paying closer attention than you are.

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Tammy Axt General, Professional Learning and Growth

Building Support Without a Team

There are many challenges associated with being a planning time teacher. Your group of students is constantly changing, you often teach a variety of grades and subjects, and you have a very limited time to teach the students what they need to learn. I feel the biggest challenge for many planning time teachers, however, is the fact that they don’t belong to a grade level or division team at school. This requires planning time teachers to be quite creative when building communities to continue their professional learning and growth.

Over the past week or so, I went around to all the planning time teachers at my school (Music, French, Gym, Drama/Dance) and asked what they do to build a professional community.

Music
In Peel, we have a teaching and learning community of music teachers called JEMMS (Junior Elementary Music Makers). This group of teachers sets up mentorships and offers workshop, but primarily they are just an email distribution list to which you can ask any question. Every day in Peel, some music teacher who is at a school by themselves has a group of people that they can ask about resources, special education in music, management, performance groups or any other question that they might have. Check to see if your board has one, or start a list yourself!

Gym
In speaking with our gym teacher, I discovered that she feels that tournaments are a great way to start building a community of gym teachers to consult with. She also feels that networking at the annual gym conference gives her a community of teachers she can rely on.

French
Our French teacher is not a new teacher, but fairly new to teaching core French. With a new curriculum and a new assignment, she has headed to Facebook to build that community of teachers to help with lesson ideas, selecting resources and getting French savvy. The Facebook group that she belongs to is “Ontario Core French Teachers”. In addition to working collaboratively together, one of the members of this group also leads a live question and answer period for French teachers once a week.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many other social networking sites have sections for Music, French, Drama, Gym and Dance teachers. It is a great way to build connections provincially or even globally.

Drama/Dance
Our drama/dance teacher sits on the executive of the Peel Elementary Dance and Drama Association. Associations can be an amazing way to get some access to new resources and incredibly knowledgeable teachers. If you feel like you are too inexperienced, volunteer to be the secretary treasurer or a member at large. I guarantee you that the time you volunteer will be given back to you through new ideas, resources and great professional dialogue.

Overheard in my Ontario Classroom…
Last week one of my grade one students informed me that he was having a horrible morning and that it was truly the worst day ever. When I stopped, bent down to his level and asked him why, he informed me that his sister had cut her finger at the breakfast table this morning and he felt very sad for her. Can you imagine what our world would be like if everyone had that much empathy for each other?

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Tammy Axt First Week Reflections, General

To the Outdoors!!

The students and I often have a similar struggle when we return to school in September. After a whole summer of biking, running around and enjoying the great outdoors, we come back to school and spend a large portion of 8 hours a day inside. It can make you crave the sunlight, fresh air and make one or two of us a little restless.

To help with the transition, I try to do a few music lessons outdoors in September and October. It is amazing what you can do with instruments and sidewalk chalk.
If you have any kind of concrete outside your building, the possibilities are endless for using chalk instead of a pencil for a period. Early in September, I have my students simply start by drawing any musical symbols that they know. For some students, this requires a bit of prompting or visual cuing but others come up with a plethora of symbols. After doing this simple activity, I can begin to gather information on which students will need support and others who will require challenges when writing and reading music. I also like to go outside to review the musical staff with my junior students. We practice drawing a staff and placing all the notes they know on it. I also draw a giant staff outside and we do relay races to remind us of the placement of the pitches on the staff.

For the younger students, this is the time to let them experiment with a variety of instruments outdoors. The kindergarten and grade one students can make all the noise that they want without making the volume unbearable, as it would be indoors. I encourage my students to create as many sounds as possible with something like a rhythm stick, tambourine or found objects outside. The students begin to realize how to create different timbres of sounds which will come in handy for their future musical journeys.

Before you head for the outdoors, remember to:
Inform the office of where you are going to be. I e-mail my head secretary at the beginning of the week to let her know which classes I will be taking outside.
Take some sort of communication tool with you outside. Either a cell phone or a walkie talkie will work. That way, if a parent unexpectedly shows up to pick up their child, the office is able to reach you.
Finally, inform the classroom teacher of your intentions, so that they can have the students ready with jackets and outdoor shoes.

Overheard in my Ontario Classroom…
The creative process includes the very important element of sharing one’s work. Therefore, my classroom constantly has groups or individuals sharing their creations. In week two of my class, my grade two students had the assignment of sharing a poem using different kinds of voices. As one group of 4 began to recite their poem, one of the boys let out a very large fart. Shockingly, the class and the boys managed to keep it together and finish their poem very successfully. After the class applauded, the boys began to walk back to their seats. As they did, I overheard one boy say to the other: “I wish you would have waited until the end to fart. It would have been a really great finale.”

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Tammy Axt First Week Reflections, General, Learning About Your Students, Planning

Planning Time Coverage in an Autism Spectrum Disorder Class

Hi everyone! My name is Tammy Gallant and I am a music teacher for students in grade 1, 2 and 5 in the Peel District School Board. This is my fourth year as a music teacher and I hope to be able to assist those new to the planning time role in schools across Ontario. My school is a suburban school about 30 minutes outside of Toronto with a very high ELL population. In addition to music, I also have planning time coverage in the full day kindergarten and contained Autism Spectrum Disorder classes. I hope you enjoy my posts.

As mentioned above, I am very lucky to be doing coverage with the students in the contained Autism Spectrum Disorder class. A colleague of mine was also given the ASD class on a different day. So, the two of us decided to meet before the first day to discuss possible ideas for our 40 minute classes with them. The conversation went something like this:
“Tammy, what do you think we should do with these students during our first period with them?”
“Maybe we could try to do some songs or games, but I really don’t know these students as many of them are new to the school.”
“Which do you think would be better, a game or a song?”
“Well, possibly some songs. In the past, I have had great success with some action songs but I don’t really know this group of students that well. They may not like them.”
“What do you think about some kind of craft or art activity?”
“I haven’t done a lot of art activities in the past with the ASD class as they haven’t really enjoyed it. But, these new students might really like them.”
The conversation went back and forth like this for about five minutes until we both realized that we could plan all day long but it didn’t matter until we actually met and interacted with the students. We decided that our best course of action for the first four or five periods that we had this class was to try a variety of activities including: songs, bean bag games, puppetry, books, short videos, art activities, instrument building, costume play, French language exposure, etc… We also tried different structures within the class such as teacher-directed, small group, circle time, student-led, and exploration time.
We decided that we both would take some observational notes and meet after the first two weeks to discuss some longer term planning for this class. The aim will be to make it as enjoyable as possible for these students while supporting them to meet their own unique goals. I will keep you updated on our evolving program.

Overheard in an Ontario Classroom…
One kindergarten class was asked what kinds of things they could make up songs about. After answers like butterflies and school, one old soul in the front row raised his hand and told us that he would like to make up songs about being brokenhearted. One can only assume that his family are avid country music listeners.