Welcome to the Move it Groove it podcast, where we explore creative ways to incorporate movement into your elementary music classroom. Today's episode is all about adding more movement to your lessons.

First off, we'll be discussing the importance of movement for kids. Movement is not only a fun way to engage students but also helps with brain development, gross motor skills, and can even improve academic performance.

Next up, we'll be talking about the use of scarves in your music lessons. Scarves can be used for a variety of activities, such as tossing and catching to the beat, waving to the rhythm, and even creating choreographed dances.

Another great way to add movement to your classroom is through walking and jogging activities. These can be done in place or around the classroom and can be used to reinforce concepts such as tempo and rhythm.

Dance is another fun and effective way to incorporate movement. Not only does it promote physical fitness, but it also helps students develop coordination, balance, and teamwork skills.

For those looking to add an extra challenge, a musical obstacle course can be a great option. This can be set up using various objects around the classroom and can include activities such as jumping, hopping, and crawling.

Lastly, we'll discuss how you can use storybooks to add movement to your lessons. By incorporating movements and actions into the story, students can actively engage with the material and retain information better.

We hope these 9 ways to add more movement to your elementary music classroom have inspired you to get your students up and moving. Thank you for tuning in to the Move it Groove it podcast. Stay tuned for more fun and engaging ways to incorporate movement into your lessons.

What we talked about:

Pirates of the Caribbean lesson plan (with the Choose Your Own Adventure lesson plan bundle) 

Yoga Pretzel Cards 

Stories That Sing lesson plan resource book to find the lesson plans with lots of movement

Hungarian Dance No. 5

This podcast is a proud member of the teach better Podcast Network. Better today. Better tomorrow, and the podcast to get you there. Explore More podcast at WWW dot teach better podcast network.com. Let's get on to the episode,

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Are you an elementary music teacher who's frustrated and overwhelmed? I'm Jeanette Shorey, a happy music teacher who loves teaching every day. But it wasn't long ago, I was in your shoes. Join me Wednesdays to help you find happy in your music classroom.

I like to move it move it, I like to move it. Carol Welch says that movement is medicine for creating change in a person's physical, emotional, and mental states. And if you are a teacher, especially an elementary school music teacher, then you know that this is a true fact, this month has been move more month and what better opportunity to add more movement to your music classroom than during move more months. And during that crazy end of the year time. Movement is like magic for your elementary kids, because it's so good for them. If you exercise regularly, then you know that you feel better all the way around when you're moving your body movement is even more important for your kiddos at the end of the year. And it's truly the best way to help your students shake their sillies out, I remember my dad used to get us out of the house. And you remember, if you're well, you might not be my age. But in fact, you probably aren't my age. But when I was a kid, my parents would be like get out of the house and don't come back until dinner. And we would just run around and do you know all kinds of fun, random crazy things that we did, we'd go out and ride our bikes, we'd run around the neighborhood, we'd play games, we'd go visit other friends. You know, I don't know if it was a safer time. Or if it just was a time when parents were more okay with letting their kiddos go out of the house without them. So, it that doesn't happen so much anymore. Kids get home, a lot of times they have two working parents. And that's just the situation and they get home and they have dinner and they hang out for a little while maybe watch a little TV plays video games, and then they go to bed and they started all over. So they don't get the same kind of moving that we did as kids or I should say that I did as kids, I remember, my dad used to do these fun bike races, and we would play release, and I can't remember how to play that. And we would play hide and seek and he would run all of these games with all the kids in the neighborhood. And you know, so I grew up doing a ton of movement and people in my generation now I am in the over 50 generation, but people in that generation, we did a lot of moving around and I am still a person who needs a lot of movement. I do not do well, when I'm not exercising every day. In fact, I start getting a little, you know, sad and a little stressed out and you know, so it's really important. And I find that when I'm exercising. I feel so much better not only physically but also mentally. Did you know that less than 25% of our students are doing some form of daily physical activity. I mean, that is insane. Less than 25%. Over the past few decades, the stress level among kids has gone up by 40%. And extra stress can lead to slower brain development. And it can even slow down physical growth. I mean, if that doesn't scare you, I don't know what will. So lack of exercise is also something that contributes to poor mental health and we are having a mental health crisis in our country right now. So exercise releases those good endorphins and dopemean, and helps relieve stress helps put a smile on your face. And it also helps you to sleep better. And when you're not sleeping well, it's really hard you know this yourself, when you're not sleeping? Well, it's really hard to focus and pay attention. Imagine being one of those kiddos who is having trouble sleeping. And because maybe they're not physically active enough, I mean, figure they have a lot more energy than we do, you can just see it right. So it is really, really important that they get extra movement. Now, I don't know what your county is like. But in our county, we have PE the kids have PE every single day for 30 minutes, which is amazing. And you may not have that I know in parts of Florida, where I still have friends that teach, they get Pe once a week for 30 minutes. So that's a little crazy. So whatever your situation is, exercise can help with all of the challenges that we face as music teachers. And I think it's important to add more movement to your students days. So I tried to add movement to every single class. Today, I'm going to tell you nine ways that you can add more movement to your music classroom. First of all, incorporate some dance. So you do not have to be a dancer in order to incorporate dance, you can do some line dancing, you can do some, you know if you want to do a little salsa in your classroom, or this year, I tried to do the samba in my classroom. And it was a basic form of the samba. But it didn't work very well, because my students were having trouble with it. One of the challenges with incorporating dance is that a lot of students are not getting movement, so their bodies just don't move well either. So that's another thing you can do to help your students is to help their bodies move and flow a little bit better. So what I had to do is I had to take some of the trickier steps out. And if you are not a dancer than and I'm not a dancer either, but you can take out steps, it does not have to be the actual Samba, it can just be a dance that kind of looks like the samba to some samba music. So incorporating dance is a really easy way to get them moving and up. And it's also a great way to reinforce music concepts. Another thing you can do is to use rhythm sticks. So rhythm sticks are a great way to get your kiddos up and moving. You can get them you know flowing with those rhythm sticks, you can do some tapping, you can do some flipping. And you can also have them get up and use the rhythm sticks like maybe they marched around the room to the study beat with the rhythm sticks or something like that. Another way to do this is to play musical games. So you can do things like freeze dance, you can do a statue game, you could do musical chairs, not my favorite, I'm going to tell you because I find it not that safe. But if you have kiddos that can handle musical chairs, that might be kind of a cool one to scarves are a fantastic way to add movement to your music room. My kiddos especially love to toss the scarves in the air. And it can be just something easy and fun. One of my favorite pieces to use scarves with is Hungarian dance number five, and it's got it starts out with slow and then goes faster, faster, faster. And it also starts out soft and goes Louder, louder, louder. And you don't have to make up specific movements for your scarves. You can just have your kids move to the music that's totally fine to do. Or you can use it as a form lesson where you use specific movements for each part of the piece or song. For example, I have a choose your own adventure series that currently I'm planning to add more to this but currently it has a Star Wars theme. And it's got the Pirates of the Caribbean theme. And the Pirates of the Caribbean I managed to find these super cool pirate scarves. And we use them actually one year when we did a pirate song with my choir, but I love to use them just for this Pirates of the Caribbean activity. And that one has three different parts to it and a a B and a C part in the form. And so during the one part we marched with our scarves and then during the that's the A part

Be part, we toss the scarves in the air. And it's cool because it's set in a meter of three. So they get to, you know, feel the meter of three, two. And then the third part, we make our scarves into sales because it's a legato part, and we use our, we make the scarves sail through the ocean, so that's kind of cool too. So you can really use your scarves for anything. I also love to use movement activities to teach musical concepts. So if you go back to that Hungarian dance number five, you can have your kiddos move to with the scarves or just with their bodies. And for example, this past week, with my littles, we did an activity where my students were doing Hungarian dance number five, and we started out with a walk like a slow walk. And then we did a regular medium walk. And then we did what I called a fast walk or a jog. And when they jog, they move their bodies slow. How do I say it, your feet move fast, but your body moves slowly. So that is jogging. And I always tell them, we do not run. But I had them walking to the study beat, I had them do like a long, slow walk first. And then they did a medium walk and then they did a jog. So that's something else you can do where you have them. Or you could do it with dynamics because that particular song has dynamics in it too. So you could have them move their body, you could have them come up with the the way or you could show them away to move their body to soft music. And then they could do medium movements for medium. And then they could do big movements for big loud sounds. So that is another thing you can do. Number six, you can do a drum circle. So it's really great to try and have some of your students playing the drum circle playing in the drum circle. So it's really fun to get your kiddos the way that I like to do it is everybody starts out learning the drum part. And I've got enough drums conga drums for my students so that they share. So they two of them share one drum. And so we start out learning the whatever the drum part is, and then we split off. And sometimes we'll do like, where they get to improvise movement. And sometimes I'll give them specific movement. And they can use the drums and do some movement with those drums. So that's kind of a fun thing to number seven, incorporate some yoga into your classroom, you can put on any kind of music, it doesn't have to be yoga music, and you can just do like a statue game where you do some yoga with your students and or you get them to maybe do it like in partners or something like that. So that's kind of a fun thing to do, too. There is actually a group of cards like yoga pose cards that I will link to in the show notes. It's kind of fun to use. Number eight, create a musical obstacle course. So you can set up stations around the room, and kind of like what are yo Mita does with her like her circle of instruments. So you could do it in a circle where you you know have your instruments set up in. Usually it's like Woods metals, shaker scrapers and skins. And so it goes wood metal shaker Scaper shaker scrapers, skins, and then would metal shaker scrapers, skin. So that's how that would work. So you would do maybe a xylophone for your wood, and then maybe a metallic phone or a symbol for your metal. And then maybe your shaker scraper could be a Guido or a maraca and then your skin would be a type of drum. And then you start over. So that is one way where you they they play some rhythms on their different instruments. And what I like to do is hold up Woods only and then the woods get to play and then metals and the metals get to play and you can do something as simple as you know, having them read your rhythm cards, that kind of thing. And then I like to do this, move down, move down, every body move down and they move down and so they get a little bit of movement in there while they're also getting some rhythm reading and they're getting some rhythm playing in there. The other thing you can do is with the musical obstacle course, is you can have your studentshave different stations. So you set up an actual station of let's say,

you can do the same thing where you have a wooden metal, a shaker scraper and a skin. Or you can have all the woods in one area and all the middles than another. And when the long rhythms come, the metals get to play and when the shorter rhythm has come, the woods get to play, etc, you get the idea. So, and then they get to move through the stations that way as well. So that's kind of a fun thing to do. You can also do like clapping games, um, movement, meet and greet games, I mean, those are just a fabulous thing to do. And then finally, number nine, you can use movement to tell a story. So one of the things that I like to do is choose a song or a piece, and maybe tell the story of the piece like what story does the piece tell? And, or you can have the students come up with their own story. So for example, you could have them

you know, listen to the music, and decide what comes first, what comes in the middle, what comes next. And then they can move it that way. So there are lots and lots and lots of ways to add movement. Are you ready for your bonus, the bonus is to use storybooks, to add movement to your classroom. So many storybooks have movement words, and a movement word would be something like skip or flop or jump. So the way that I like to do this is we read the story book first. And then we go back and do a picture walk. And we use our detective magnifying glasses. And we try to find the different movement words in the story. Now I don't give them actual magnifying glasses, although I guess you could if you had like a class set of the storybook, but normally we don't have that. So we just go through and we find the movement words. And then I put on some music. That kind of sounds like for example, if you're in the swamp, maybe something that sounds kind of swampy, or maybe something that sounds like a duck waddling, you know, that kind of thing. And then I show if I have littles, then I'm going to show them the movement and model it for them. And then they're going to kind of echo it back, if you will. If I have bigger kids, I'm just going to show them the words. And we're going to go through at once with the music and let them move it. And then we're going to go through it again. And we're going to I'm going to read the story, and they're going to do the movement that way. So that is exactly the way that I like to add lots of movement to my classroom. So let's go back and do a quick review. You can incorporate some dance, you can use your rhythm sticks to get your students up and moving. You can play musical games like freeze dance, you can use scarves, you can do movement based activities to teach musical concepts. You can have a drum circle, you can incorporate some yoga, you can create a musical obstacle course, use movement to tell a story or our bonus. Use story books that have movement words, and let them do the movement that way. So we know that adding movement to your music classroom has tons of benefits. And I recommend that you take advantage of some of these creative ideas, add more movement to your classroom, and help your students to be happier, healthier, more engaged learners. Well, that's all I have for you today. But before I go, let me remind you, keep learning, keep growing and keep being fabulous. You