Ready, Set, Office! Developing new Pedagogy with the Power of Microsoft Office - Part 1

At my school site I'm involved with a group of teachers that are currently  looking for instructional positive deviances in our classrooms through research and data. We decided as a group to focus on building our students' use of academic vocabulary. Currently we're  analyzing the student use of vocab within our content areas, as well as focusing campus wide on 10 specific words. This has been a challenge for me. In the past my curriculum focused on building my students' reading skills of western music notation, not the English language. For me to participate effectively in the project, I was going to have to modify the activities of my music classroom. 

Our school-wide 10 vocab words, displayed on a bulletin board in a hallway. Kudos to the teacher that put this up.

Thanks to our meetings, where I get to listen to my colleagues (ELA!) discuss their processes for teaching and assessing academic vocabulary, I've been able to brainstorm and implement some new activities into my curriculum. However, to implement I would need new materials and resources that I didn't have. Instead of spending hours scouring the internet for the right tool/resource for my ideas, I've been able to easily create what I need thanks to the power of Microsoft Office and my Surface Pro 3.

The Meetings

I had a conversation with my meeting facilitator the other day. She told me that even though it looks like I'm not paying attention and participating in the discussions sometimes, she can tell the wheels are turning inside my head. She's right. As I listen to my colleagues, I'm writing down my mental musings into OneNote. These notes, which are readily available on any device I'm using thanks to the cloud, is where the creative process starts. The best part! No paper is required! As a teacher, paper is EVERYWHERE. Flyers, handouts, meeting agendas, new instructional materials, student work, advertisements. Using OneNote, my notes NEVER get lost ;-)

Meeting notes via OneNote & Surface & the Pen

Creating New Instructional Materials

Now that I have a plan, I need the materials to support that plan. Maybe it because I'm just particular, but if I'm going to use materials/resources to aid my new ideas, I'm going to make them myself. Using MS Office its Cake and Pie (piece of cake, easy as pie) ;-)

Listening Analysis Worksheet for Chair Tests

Chair tests are just plain fun….for the music teacher :-) For those unaware, in the music class we designate an exercise or musical passage to be used as an assessment test for the students. The students play the exercise/section one at a time in class. Based on the results of each students performance, they'll be seated in a particular order ie. first chair, second chair, third chair,…….last chair(!) within their instrument section. Its nerve-racking for the students, but great for me to experience (it also leads to great conversations about presentation skills, nerves, and overcoming them).  Anyways, I digress. Usually during a chair test, the other students just listen and wait for their turn. Well not anymore! Now, just like me, I want my students to listen, analyze, and give their own score for each student that plays. To do this, they would need a score sheet AND a rubric to score them with, which means I have to create one. Ready, Set, Office!

The Score Sheet

This one's pretty easy.

• Download an Excel copy of the class roster from the LMS to get a list of names. 
  
• Delete the extraneous stuff and tweak the file to include the score categories and a total score section.
  
• Copy and paste into MS Publisher (included with Office)
  
• Re-size if necessary and add some color.

The scoring section of the form. The bottom section is used for another activity and is discussed in Part 2.

The Rubric

• Create a table in MS Word. Mine was a 6 by 6.
  
• As text is added to the table, resize the table to make it look nice. You can:

                    - Click and drag the edges of the table
                    - Highlight the table cells, and use the Layout and Design tabs at the top of MS Word

• Add some color, and copy/paste into MS Publisher

Creating my listening rubric in MS Word. Students use this as they listen to each other's chair test performances.

The Final Product

• My Publisher file is composed of two separate pages. 
• To add another page, Click Insert --> Page --> New page
  
• I tweaked/re-sized the contents, make sure the colors will work, and added some other parts to it as well, such as name, period, etc.
  
• The group members section of the form is used later for another activity.

Both pages are finalize in MS Publisher and saved as one PDF document.

That's it! I save the file as a PDF so it's shareable and can easily print off of a thumb drive.

My students use the form now whenever they have chair tests. I use the original Excel file I created to enter their scores. Using the formula functionality within Excel, their scores are automatically added up to give me a final score. When the testing process is done, I can easily sort the data by Score and Instrument to see the new chair rankings. I also copy/paste the results onto my mega OneNote classroom whiteboard, so the students can visually see the rankings themselves. 

A student scoring while they are listening

Me scoring the kids onto my MS Excel sheet using a Surface Pro 3. The Surface allows me to roam around the room to get better viewing angles of their posture as they perform.

Chair tests can take a while for all the students to complete, especially when there are 40+ nervous children in one class. Having them complete the score sheet helps with classroom management, fulfills the listening, evaluating, and analysis standards of music education, using school-wide and classroom vocab words in context, and also sets my students up for the next activity associated with their chair tests.

Stay tuned for part 2 which describes the next step of measuring my students' use of academic vocabulary! In the meantime, leave a comment :-)


Disclaimer: I am the proud owner of a Surface Pro 1, however the fine folks at the Cerritos Microsoft Store have been kind enough to loan me a Pro 3 to use. It has been wonderful using it, and I thank them greatly!