Help me give my students instruments to play during music class! The ukuleles, woodblocks, boomwhackers, and drumsticks will allow my students more playtime and less wait time during music class.
My elementary music students are a great group of kids. They are very excited to learn something new or practice something we have already learned every day. They especially love it when they get to play instruments. We are a small K-12 school in a rural area, so my students do not get much exposure to music other than what they hear online, on the radio, or in the music classroom.
My students have the opportunity to express themselves in ways they cannot in the general classroom when they come to music class.
Students that struggle to do math facts can still feel successful when they learn the words to a new song or can participate in a circle game. They have the opportunity to break up the routine of the general classroom and attempt new things in a safe environment.
My Project
In my classroom, students love to play musical instruments. They get the chance to hear the music and participate in the music, even if they are not too fond of singing. Because we are a small school in a rural region, music class is the only exposure many students get to musical instruments.
Providing my students with a few more instruments to use will help my students participate more often, help eliminate classroom management problems that arise from wait time, and help my students experience music in a more personal way.
We currently have six ukuleles. This means only about one-fourth of my students in each class get to play at any given time. It takes a long time to learn music because students must share and forget the chords more easily because they did not get much playing time. Five more ukuleles would mean half of each of my classes could play, lessening the wait time for an instrument and helping reduce off-topic conversations that can also take away from the students' learning time.
We also have some other smaller rhythm instruments that I like to include frequently during class. The woodblocks, drumsticks, and boomwhackers will help replace some of our equipment that has begun to show its age and supplement our numbers so more students can play more of the time.
More than a third of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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