Performing Arts workshops are held at Chelmsford High School
Session 1 8:30-10:00
PA1 Folk Dance and Circle Games
This session will focus on different ways to incorporate movement into your K-4 general music classes. Movement activities will include circle games, folk dances, movement exploration ideas, fingerplays and action songs. Come prepared to move and hopefully leave with some new movement songs and ideas that you can start using with your students the very next day.
PA2 Orchestra Reading Session
Bring an instrument and enjoy a morning of sight-reading some new charts with your colleagues. ***Participants should bring an instrument to play.
PA3 Classroom Management for Today’s Student: A Music Room For All
Today’s students are ever-changing, and our classrooms should be too! Join elementary music teacher Amanda Cooper for a session with ideas on how to make your classroom more inclusive for all learners. You will leave with practical and functional approaches, with touches upon UDL (Universal Design for Learning), teaching our most challenging students, ABC data collection, SEL (Social-Emotional Learning) concepts in the music room, and other actionable ideas for a more inclusive setting. This will be geared towards the elementary classroom, but all are welcome! Have something that is tried and true in your room already? Let’s share!
PA4 Competency-Based Education and the Arts
Learn about one district’s journey in collaboratively developing K-12 standards and scoring criteria, and applying it to student work. Participants will leave with standards and scoring criteria for art and music K-12 and the experience of revising rubrics based on student work.
PA5 Advocating Through Impact: Creating positive and impactful stories to demonstrate the power of music education
Through a generous grant by the Country Music Association, MMEA is taking on a state-wide advocacy campaign with national impact. We are working to collect stories on how music has impacted the lives of students and the community, and we will use these artifacts to promote music education at the local, state, and national level, as well as research how music impacts all areas of our state. This workshop will present our approach to advocacy, include some writing and sharing, and be a chance to discuss how we can prepare ourselves and other teachers to be strong advocates for music education.
PA16 The rehearsal process from classroom to the stage utilizing Shakespeare’s text.
The session will cover various ways to engage with students on how to get them out of their chairs reading Shakespeare, to exploring the characters wants and needs in the scene. I would like to take a scene and or a monologue and get participants up and moving in various ways to attack the characters and text. While some will be active participants “on stage” the participants in the audience would be there to encourage what they have seen and offer new ways to explore the text.
Session 2: 10:15-11:45
PA6 Barbizon of NE: Technical Theater Tips & Tricks
Registrants will be contacted by Barbizon to fill out a brief questionnaire to guide topics covered in this session. This will provide attendees with a great opportunity to ask questions and learn skills relevant to their level of expertise.
PA7 Teaching Recorder: Making it Fun!
Over the years, I’ve heard many teachers say they hate teaching recorders but I always loved it and I’ve always wondered why. When I listened, I noticed my classes were really different and perhaps that was the reason. I use the Recorder Karate series and let children progress at their own rate, this allows for differentiated learning. Children in a classroom do not read on the same level, children learning music will not either. My class period is broken into sections: Instructional time in small groups if needed, practicing/testing is broken up by an assessment game/break in the middle of the class. The games use music manipulatives to focus on reading note names and or fingerings and lastly children watch video clips of early music ensembles or other recorder performers. I have had great success with this set up and would like to share it with others.
PA8 Choral Reading Session: Older-Advanced Choruses
Warm-up those vocal cords and enjoy sight-reading some new charts with your colleagues. This session will focus on repertoire for older, advanced choirs.
PA9 Getting Things Done: Organizational Strategies for the Busy Educator
Inspired by the book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen, participants will leave with strategies on managing their calendar, neatening their inbox, and creating prioritized project lists. Get information out of your head, and use all that extra room for creative thinking! If your “to-do list” has 100 items on it ranging from “buy cat food” to “grades are due!”, this session is for you!
PA10 Music Advocacy Workshop
A fun and interactive open discussion on music advocacy with focus on retention and recruitment to keep students interested in music through sharing idea’s from both a local and national level. Investment ideas on all levels, elementary, middle and high school. Getting parents buy in to support student music involvement and strive for success. How music affects all parts of learning. The presenter will be David Kaplan, Director of School Services for Music&Arts for the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region.
Session 3: 12:30-2:00
PA11 Engaging Books for the Elementary Music Classroom
This workshop will feature engaging literature for the elementary general music classroom, expanding upon the Feierabend Songtale repertoire. Together, we will explore songtales and books categorized by grade level that excite students’ musical imaginations, and expand their knowledge of diverse musical cultures. Each book will provide an invaluable visual resource to reinforce understanding of musical concepts. Attendees will be encouraged to bring their own favorite books to share at the end of the presentation. Participants will receive a categorized list of these books with suggestions on how to incorporate the literature into a lesson.
PA12 Choral Reading Session: Younger Choruses
Warm-up those vocal cords and enjoy sight-reading some new charts with your colleagues. This session will focus on repertoire for younger, emerging choirs.
PA13 Band Reading Session
Bring an instrument and enjoy an afternoon of sight-reading some new charts with your colleagues. ***Participants should bring an instrument to play.
PA14 Rediscovering Joy and Self-Compassion with Mindfulness
We all know how overwhelming our lives can be and how easy it is to forget about ourselves when life is so busy.This workshop is a time to focus on just you. It’s a time to rediscover compassion for yourself. A time to revive joyful moments throughout the day.Come explore the art of mindfulness. Learn the magic of using breathing to activate the relaxation response, how to recognize our triggers and how our habits of thoughts and emotions shape how we relate to ourselves and to others. The session will involve experiential exercises, practicing mindfulness strategies, and exploring how self-compassion can enhance our emotional stability, improve resilience, and our capacity for collaboration.This program is for you if: You’d like to feel less stressed at work, You want to stop feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list, You’d like to feel happier and have a more balanced life, You’d like to quiet the noise in your own head for a little while, or You don’t have a lot of time, and you need to integrate these practices quickly and easily.
PA15 String Repair for the Music Educator
In Jen’s words (a string educator from Wilmington PS): “I think every string teacher I know would love some ideas on how to triage our instruments and things that we can do to make this better – for student, parent, luthier, and teacher.” We’ll go over various aspects of repair and maintenance for strings, helping teachers to implement skills and strategies to maintain the integrity of their instruments.
Dr. Luis Torres is our luthier of 10 years and an acclaimed conductor out of Ecuador. He’s studied with Boston Luthier Paul Weissmeyer, and recently we sent him to Vienna to train with Alexander Schütz, one of the best luthiers in the world. Dr. Torres is the first person from America to be sent to train with him. I can get you an official bio of all his accolades should that be useful.