I have led a number of workshops and Professional Developments in Arts Integration. If you work in the D.C. Metro Area and you would like me to come give a presentation about Arts Integration or the Kodaly Method I am happy to do so. Below is a list of the presentations I have done previously.
Upcoming Workshops and Presentations
October, 2016
Maryland Music Educators Conference
Mastery Through Repetition: 20+ Activities to Practice a Single Concept and Avoid Boredom
Repetition is essential to achieving mastery however, when practicing a melodic or rhythmic concept, it can be easy for you and your students to burn out on the same activities. In this session, participants will learn over 20 different ways to practice melodic and rhythmic concepts. Participants will receive instruction in whole group activities, teacher-led small group activities, and self-directed center activities. This session is geared towards primary teachers however many of the activities can be scaled up for middle and high school. A packet of source material and resources will be provided for all attendees.
November, 2016
National Association for Music Educators National Conference
Gaylord Texan Resort Hotel & Conference Center, Grapevine, Texas
Artful Thinking Routines and the National Core Arts Standards
Imagine someone walking into your music classroom to observe your instruction, what would they see? In my classroom they would see students reading and notating melodic and rhythmic passages, singing songs from a variety of cultural backgrounds, adding instrumentation to known songs and literature, and maybe evening doing some improvisation or composition depending on the unit we are in. Of course there are many more amazing things music teachers do that I left out but generally speaking, this is the scene in most music classrooms in the United States. And this is great! If your students are reading, writing, singing, and performing that means you are accomplishing half of the National Core Arts Standards. Did you know you were such an amazing music teacher? The challenge now is to better integrate the other half of the National Core Arts Standards into your instruction. In this session, participants will then learn about Harvard’s Project Zero Artful Thinking Routines and explore how different routines can be utilized to address these deficiencies. Participants will leave having completed five Artful Thinking Routines as well as a packet of resources and templates for further learning.
Past Workshops and Presentations
August 2016
Workshop
Prince George’s County Public Schools, Maryland
County-wide General Music Back to School Mini-Conference
Benjamin Foulois Creative and Performing Arts Academy
Presented to K-12 PGCPS Vocal/General Music Teachers
Artful Thinking Routines in the Music Classroom
In this session, participants will define Arts Integration in the Music Classroom, examine the National Core Arts Standards, and reflect on the challenges in consistently addressing the Responding and Connecting standards. Participants will then learn about Harvard’s Project Zero Artful Thinking Routines and explore how different routines can be utilized to address these deficiencies. Participants will leave having completed three Artful Thinking Routines as well as a packet of resources and templates for further learning.
April 2016
Workshop
Maryland United Specialists in Kodaly Spring Workshop
American Kodaly Institute, Loyola University, Baltimore, MD
Presented to K-12 Music Teachers from all over Maryland
Prepare, Present, Practice; Utilizing the Kodály approach for Complex Musical Concepts
Think back to the last time you attended an amazing workshop with wonderful materials that you could immediately bring back to your room. Now recall how your lesson went that following Monday when you dove head first into all that new material with your students. Enthusiasm for great material is an invaluable tool for every educator but so much learning is lost when we don’t take a moment to step back and really think about how to work our students up to the desired outcome. In this session participants will define the method “Prepare, Present” Practice” (PPP), explore how tasks analysis and backwards mapping contribute to the achievement of successful outcomes, and apply the PPP Method to various complex tasks found in the music room such as playing the recorder, reading the staff, and teaching folk dances.
January 2016
Professional Development
Rosa L. Parks Elementary School, Hyattsville, MD
Presented to K-6 Classroom Teachers
Increasing Comprehension Through Music and Drama
Many students in the primary classroom struggle with comprehension. In this session, participants will be introduced to the elements of music and explore how they can be used to make meaning when working through a text. By the end of the session, participants will have a concrete understanding of how to dramatize a piece of literature using music, how to assess student comprehension through the process of orchestration, and how to identify excellent literature for the purpose of dramatization.
March 2015
Conference Presentation
National Association for Music Educators Collegiate Conference
Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA
Presented to Undergraduate Music Students
Arts Integration: How to authentically integrate other content areas without compromising your music curriculum.
Arts Integration is the new buzzword in Education but many educators are still lost as to what Arts Integrated instruction actually looks like and how it affects their already crunched curriculum. In this session, participants will learn the basic principals of Arts Integration and how it can be utilized in the music classroom without compromising our own music curriculum. Emphasis will be placed on the co-equal model where the art form and the core content area are given equal weight. Whether it’s integrating Dance and Music or Math and Art, there is a way to achieve true Arts Integration without short changing our students on their music education.
March, 2015
Workshop
University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Presented to K-12 Arts and Non-Arts PGCPS Teachers participating in Cohort 3 of the UMD Arts Integration Certificate Program
Arts Integration Dance/Math Lesson: Entry Level Demo
Integrating the Arts into classroom teaching is a wonderful way to engage students and encourage deeper understanding of complex concepts. In this session, participants will complete activities that assess both Dance and Math state standards. Participants will demonstrate their understanding of the Dance concepts non-locomotor movement, body part, body shape, and level, as well as the Math concepts symmetry, asymmetry, shape, and angle. The culminating activity synthesizes prior student learning and assesses student understanding of the Dance and Math standards equally.
November, 2014
Professional Development
Rosa L. Parks Elementary School, Hyattsville, MD
Presented to K-6 Classroom Teachers
Pop-Up Puppet Theater: Increasing comprehension and oral presentation skills for students in grades 2-6
Students often struggle with comprehension and oral presentation skills. By integrating Drama and Literacy, we can strengthen those skills through puppetry without them even realizing it! In this session, participants will use Aesop Fables to strengthen comprehension and materials easily found in every classroom to create puppets in order to strengthen oral presentation skills. By the end of the session, participants will have: 1)created their own character puppet and puppet theater with scenery, 2) written script that interprets the Aesop Fable being used, 3) orally presented their interpretation of the Aesop Fable at least 10 times with multiple opportunities to edit and fine tune. By the end of the activity, you will be amazed what your students can do!
November, 2014
Professional Development
Rosa L. Parks Elementary School, Hyattsville, MD
Presented to K-6 Classroom Teachers
Artful Thinking Routines and Literacy: Utilizing Harvard’s Project Zero Artful Thinking Routines to increase Literacy in students grades 2-6
Artful Thinking Routine’s were created by Harvard’s Project Zero in collaboration with the Traverse City, Michigan Area Public Schools (TCAPS). The goal is for classroom teachers to utilize works of Art and Music to increase student critical thinking and comprehension. In this session, participants will utilize a variety of Artful Thinking Routines while examining the book This is not my Hat by John Klassen. The rich illustrations and first person narrative provide a wonderful opportunity for students to dig into the story and parse out explicit versus implied meanings in the text.
April, 2014
Professional Development
Rosa L. Parks Elementary School, Hyattsville, MD
Presented to K-6 Classroom Teachers
Arts Integration and Common Core: Bringing Music, Dance and Theater into your Classroom!
In this session, participants will receive an outline of the National Music, Dance, and Theater Education Standards. Those standards will then be examined through the lens of Common Core. The goals of this session include providing general tactics of Arts Integration that can be used in the classroom setting, to provide specific examples of Arts Integration Lesson Seeds as well as resources that can be utilized when creating Arts Integrated Lesson Plans. Participants will leave with a wealth of material that can serve as a jumping off point for their own Arts Integration exploration.
kodaimusic 