Hello!

OK, I'm in desperate need of help before I have a nervous breakdown! Here's the story... and please bear with me as it might be quite long...

I have recently been given the position of Recorder Teacher at an inner London Primary. I was so excited, it's the first time I've done school teaching before as before that I have just had private pupils. I have posted on this forum before about it, wanting general advice as to first lessons etc. But now, my problem is far more serious.


Here is the scenario:

17 children of beginner ability, youngest children of reception age and oldest in Year 2 (KS1)

The lessons on Recorder are an HOUR LONG, which I raised objection to as I thought it far too long a period for them to concentrate, I still think I'm right about this

Reception children don't have the dexterity for the Recorder - the Ocarina, maybe, but they are finding it tough to get to grips with

The children behave APPAULINGLY, and I mean that. The first week they were all over the place, running around the room and playing with drums rather than listening to me, screaming and shouting, it was awful. And the kids that did want to learn didn't learn a thing.

The parents of the children that are well behaved are lovely and very supportive, but already I see a pattern with the other parents; one of which proceeded to come into my room once class had finished and play the drums (I was shocked). Not surprisingly the daughter who is not so well-behaved ran around saying 'Look Daddy' and proceeded to mess around on the Percussion!!!

I got further with them this week, for half an hour at the beginning of the lesson I changed tack and gave them rhythm work to do on the percussion. But then they got tired and restless and I lost control of them, with the parents watching outside. I felt awful and dread their classes now. And it's only been two weeks!!!


What I have done to remedy this situation:

I have emailed my Music Co-Ordinator and suggested that we either break up the lessons into 2 half an hour slots, or have one lesson of 45mins (which is still too long but they can JUST ABOUT concentrate for that long). I haven't had a reply yet.

I have spoken to a parent of one of the children who is really badly behaved, and the child started crying! I felt terrible as this child had played Recorder a little before and he is actually really talented, so I can't understand why he is behaving so badly, but I still think it had to be done.


I am new to this, but I have a KS2 Recorder class which is smaller and far better behaved, I am actually teaching them something and I love teaching that class. But the younger ones I just can't fathom, I don't know whether it's because I'm doing something wrong or if there is something I'm missing, but there are only a handful of children there who seem to really want to learn, the rest are not bothered and seem to be sent there by parents for other reasons. I know for a fact that some children would rather be in Gardening/Football/After School club... so why aren't they? All they do is scream, play up and challenge my authority. And that wouldn't bother me but it means the other children learn nothing! To top it off I don't think I'm getting through to them about making notes on the Recorder... the notes sound really bad and the children do't understand the concept of covering the holes with the pads of their fingers, to tongue or to blow softly. I've tried everything with them, but there must be something I'm not doing which is why they are not picking it up...


Please help. Tell me I'm missing something. That I'm a bad teacher. That I can salvage this. Anything!!!Because at the moment I feel like every Monday afternoon is going to be horrible for me!!! Is it my fault? I'm not a major disciplinarian but I feel like I have to be. What can I do???

That sounds very miserable for you. I would insist that the lesson be divided into two if not three groups.
You will need to get them all settled at the start of each lesson so why not get them all to sit down with their legs crossed and their hands in their laps as soon as they come in to the teaching room. When they are all settled and quiet get them to do some deep, slow breathing for a few seconds. Get a small bell also, and explain to them that if you ring the bell it means that they have to be very quiet. Try not to raise your voice but talk in a calm and firm way.
When they are not playing make it a rule that they keep their recorders held under their arms. This keeps the mouthpiece warm and also stops any of them from squeaking on them when they should be listening to you or another player.
If they are really unruly ask the head teacher to come in for a few moments at the start of the lesson to help to get them settled.
If all else fails get a board and a piece of chalk and write down the name of anyone who misbehaves. They will ask soon enough why you have done this. Tell them that if a name goes down twice you will be very upset indeed and that they will have to miss breaks for the rest of the day, week or year depending on how bad they have been!!!!! (Only joking by the way. A day is usually quite enough)
Keep the lessons fast moving and fun but do not allow a few to spoil it for the rest. Take them aside afterwards and explain what you expect from them. This usually works well. Have fun and do keep us informed.
When I was teaching in similar circumstances I had a pair of glasses made with clear lenses. I did not need glasses but they were a really useful aid to discipline. If I took them out and placed them on the end of my nose I looked quite strict. They were called my "Behave yourselves" glasses.

Hi...

I think Reception children (aged 4-5 ) are, on the whole, too young to be learning to play the recorders effectively. I don't know if the school has "music and movement" lessons, but I believe that is what the children of this age needs. You can use percussion instruments - for rhythm work, singing, dancing, listening etc. etc. but not formal instrumental tuition!

You should have at least one if not two Teaching Assistant with you to help run a group of that size. 1 hour is too long as well - 20 - 30 minutes would be ideal for these kind of activities. I think you should speak to the headteacher.

I agree too. Poor you - not an easy situation and I sympathise.

Lots of good advice already - and you will get the hang of certain aspects as the weeks progress and find you are able to forestall some of the things that happened in the beginning. But I agree that an hour is too long with children of this age, and ideally the group needs to be smaller.

Firstly, I would second the idea of splitting them into two groups of half an hour each, ideally in age groups. If possible, take out the good ones who want to learn and teach them separately.

Secondly, make sure they can't even get at the percussion instruments - put them away where they cannot be seen.

Thirdly, you need to be very firm. Children of any age will take advantage of weakness. You are a new teacher and they are testing you to see how far you will allow them to go. They don't know you, they don't yet respect you - you have to instill that respect in them. As for telling the parents, it's not the parents' job to discipline their children whilst they are in your class - it's your job. If my daughter's teacher told me she was misbehaving, my first question would be "Well, how are you dealing with it?"

They must all do exactly what you tell them to. Get them sat on the floor in a circle. Get down there with them. If they try to get up, fix them with a stern glare and say "Sit down, right now! Did I tell you you could get up?" But once they are there, you have to give them a reason to want to stay in the circle. Do fun things. Play rhythm games. Make it more rewarding for them to behave than misbehave. Play a game that involves them doing what you tell them to, eg Simon Says or something. Or that song "Everybody do this".

But ultimately it is about your attitude. Expect to be obeyed. Don't allow any glimmer of doubt to enter your mind. Don't shout at them because once you start shouting it rapidly loses its effectiveness and you end up having to shout all the time to get anywhere. Praise the good ones and be really lovely with them. Again, give the naughty ones a reason to behave themselves. Give out stickers for good work/behaviour/ concentration.

Also ask if you can observe other lessons in the school. Watching other teachers is a very good way of picking up good classroom management strategies.

As you have found out, controlling a group of children is very different to teaching one-to-one and different strategies are required. You need to manage the behaviour before you can even think about teaching them anything that requires concentration.

I hope that has helped. Classroom management is the major part of teaching. Anyone can teach a class of angelic kids who sit passively, do as they are told and get on with their work. It's much harder to teach 'real' kids.

Is this at the end of the school day? If so, I think the idea of expecting a large group of children of that age to concentrate for an hour is crazy. Even the well-behaved ones will soon start to flag and the general 'atmosphere' in the lesson will start to put them off...

I probably teach in a rather similar school but am lucky enough to start my beginners in Y3 - in 'taster sessions' and in groups of not more than six! I also have the scope to 'remove' those children who have no interest in learning - that makes a huge difference! Even at that age I find many of the children lack the co-ordination to manage successfully and progress can be painful (in many ways!)

I would imagine that the possibility of putting the percussion instruments out of sight does not exist but if you could split the group, it is easier (but not easy!) to manage 8 children than 17! I agree that you have to be VERY firm with them from the start - you can always lighten up a bit when you feel it is appropriate...

With a bit of luck the worst offenders will probably drop out quite quickly and you may be left with a more manageable group who really want to learn. In the meantime, I think it is entirely reasonable to expect parental support on behaviour matters.

I wish you every success but remember, it does get easier...

W

Here's a wacky idea

Tape over with masking tape all holes not needed to play certain notes - different for different groups - so you have a range of notes that can be played by each child just having to put one finger and the thumb down.
Then point or ask them to play one note and pass it on, point randomly to different groups, choose a tune and conduct it by pointing to the different groups in rhythm. Worst offenders could be given simple conducting using the names of the groups.
You can also play a note and ask which group has this note. Play two groups together and ask them which sounds good and which doesn't.

Best of luck

You can simply ban some children for one or more lessons!

Divide them into groups of no more than 6 and give each group 20 mins each, be very insistent with the teacher over this then use every classroom discipline technique in the book. Use rewards for good behaviour - stars stickers, and report badly behaved students to the classroom teacher. It will take time but by week three you should have them knowing who is boss.

Move the groups around at your discretion so they are same and not mixed ability groups. The conducting idea is a good one as it gives any child not playing something to do. As is singing along. It doesn't necesssarily have to be Kodaly style, but again you are using another part of a childs musical intelligence.

Its much easier to discipline when you catch a child being good rather than have to continually reprimand.

Good luck

Is this an after-school club? If so, you don't have the option to divide into groups and may have to make the best you can of it. There is no way they can play the recorder for a whole hour, so you will have to do other musical activities too - and if parents complain you can easily justify it because they can't learn the recorder unless they understand pitch, rhythm, etc.

So. You will need lots of different activities to split up the hour. Singing, action songs (probably the sitting down type!) - get some children to keep the beat on percussion, or even to play a drone on recorders if you can find something that will work.

"Dot charts" are great - I'll see if I can explain it here. You have a large 4 x 4 grid with coloured blobs in the holes so that reading across each line in turn it goes something like:
blue, blue, space, space,
red, space, red, space,
green, green, green, green,
blue, space, space, blue.
LOADS of possibilities here - get them to chant it all at once while you point to each square, then give each group a colour and they chant just their own colour - then they could play only on their own colour.
If you turn it upsidedown it is a little harder; if you turn it on its side it is LOTS harder. The advantage is that all the children are looking at the front focussing on you and the chart, and they are all involved all the time. If you want to know more, PM me.

Clapping rhythms back. Listening to music and clapping the beat. If you're desperate (might be a good finisher) give them music to listen to with their eyes shut and then give them paper and crayons while you play the music again and ask them to draw what they imagined. If you want to keep the recorder theme, try some of Piers Adams' CDs.

As far as discipline generally is concerned (REALLY hard if you're not an experienced infant teacher!!!) try stickers for good behaviour. Maybe divide them into teams and have a big chart at the front of the class that you can put stars on during the session (be careful how you divide the teams up though - if one team is obviously way ahead or behind the others then the children will stop bothering).

It sounds like you could do great stuff with these children, but it's definitely not just teaching the recorder. Good luck! and keep us posted how you get on.

Some absolutely EXCELLENT advice here already, amt!

I've PM'd you.

Is this by any chance part of Wider Opportunity recorders for whole class teaching? Are you being employed as a peri to go into this school for just the one hour, which is the economic unit for which they pay you through the music service ?

Even singing with this age group is no longer than 30 mins. If they are going to learn something about the recorder this young, the time would be much better used if you had them in at most 2s or 3s for 10 mins. This may not suit the school if they have you there to cover the whole class for e.g.PPA, but your professional interest is in teaching them efficiently.

If you do have to take all 17, their music education will be served by 'pre-recorder' exercises, rhythm, singing, action songs. Get them singing nursery and children's songs: really well known ones, (google the Tweenies song list,) and have just one child at a time 'accompanying' with a single note, pitch the song so that the note fits.
Getting to play can be a 'reward,' but you can fairly rotate it.

Don't feel bad about the discipline difficulties. I have spent the last 17 years as a supply teacher, and am now also teaching wider opps singing, but I still shudder to think how bad I was trying to keep order when I went in to help with my son's reception class singing, before I returned to teaching.

Keep absolutely calm, wait for silence before you give an instruction, apologise to the whole group, in a very quiet voice, that you cannot teach them the good fun things you know they will enjoy while some children are not sitting in the right place.

Remember, some of these children are just coming into some kind of civilised pattern of living, and it may be totally alien to their chaotic lives. They will always push the boundaries. Even the General Teaching
Council recognises that children try it on with a new teacher for at least the first three full days: that's a whole term of one hour a week. Have your rules and be consistent, but fair.

Things will get better.
Good luck

V

I'm not a teacher, but I've done some teaching of Science in classrooms, and worked with lots of young people in various situations. I thought Science practicals with Year 7's were bad, but I'm now thinking infants with recorders is even worse.

When helping run "music" sessions with my local Brownie group (so 7-11 year olds, and possibly not going to work with younger children) having a few minutes where they could bash and blow as much as they liked helped to get it out of their systems. They also quickly realised that they didn't much like the racket being produced. Indeed, some of the youngest children were quite intimidated! I later combined this with doing dynamic changes. Of course, you need a really good way to get them to stop!

Another thing well worth finding out is what the school's general discipline policy is. Find their list of standard rules that apply everywhere in the school, sit your bunch of bratlings down, and remind them that it applies in your lessons too. In many schools, there's a system where a teacher raises their hand when they want everyone's attention, and then as each child notices, they quieten down and also raise their own hand. Find out what you children are familiar with and use that. Consistency with what they already know will help.


Finally, good luck. I think the worst thing with younger children is that they can't be reasoned with. (Mind you, niether can stubborn and obnoxious 14 year olds, but that's another point...) Try not to let the behaviour management issues get you down. It's the hardest thing in the world to deal with when you want so much to pass on your enthusiasm and knowledge, but are scuppered by the group bratling effect, and I'm still learning to manage it myself!

I know exactly how you feel. OK, not with the parents because mine was a lunch time group, but the badly behaved children, I sympathise. Also unlike you, I had 2 groups for half hour each. One 'beginner' and one 'advanced'. The beginners were terrible. They run around, do anything but what you want them to. I wish I could say I found a way to control them, but in the end, I let the ones who obviously didn't want to learn do whatever they felt like and had the small group of children that actually wanted to learn surrounding me and learning things. It was still hard though, because I had to make sure the other kids weren't causing too much havoc. I think one of the problems is too many children. 10 is the maximum I'd suggest. I had about 18, and it's just a silly amount, with the different rates at which they progress and their behavior. Teachers just keep pressuring more kids into the group though and before you know it you have double the number you want.

I hope you manage to control the group because as you know teaching a group something successfully is a great feeling (going by my advanced group). Unfortunately (I think!) I cannot teach recorders any more due to a new job, but I hope you don't feel like giving it up like I did. After a few weeks you'll probably learn who wants to be there and who doesn't, and can focus your attention accordingly! Good luck! Oh, and stickers work a treat as a reward scheme! Cheap, and the kids love them!

How are things progressing?

Once again, this forum has proved to be of such invaluable advice to me, thank you all so much for your replies, and to those that PM'd me. And Willobie... thanks for asking!

The situation is this: I've had another 2 weeks to teach the 17 children in Reception and KS1. That 17 has now increased to 20 (?!) which I'm not crazy about to be honest, but I didn't want to stop these kids from learning so let them join. The discipline situation is just the same, and I think it's still because of either the numbers in the class or that the lessons are too long for such young children. There are some children that are CLEARLY disruptive, and I deal with it the best I can, but I decided on Monday that enough was enough and I insisted on a meeting with the Extended Schools lady.

I spoke to her today before my KS2 class (which is a different kettle of fish altogether; there are 7 children and they all want to learn). She was really, really supportive actually. Her line of thinking was that I am in charge, and I can deal with things the way I see fit, and she'll support me 100%. She pointed out the kids in the KS1 class who had behavioural issues in school, and suddenly their behaviour makes sense. This doesn't mean I'll tolerate it but it does mean I'm more aware of certain things going on with those children. She was reluctant at first to split the KS1 children into 2 groups but after explaining my reasons she agreed to let me go ahead and do it after Christmas. I'm also moving some of the older KS1 children up into the KS2 class after Christmas so they don't lose out on anything. So although it hasn't all be sorted out YET, it's well on the way.

I did learn a lot from our chat actually. She was saying that as an instrumental teacher, it isn't my job to come in and manage behaviour, it's my job to teach them, and that if I found I was doing more behaviour management than teaching then something clearly had to be done. She also said that part of the problem was the lack of uniformity on ground rules amongst the peri teachers; some teachers operate a '3 strikes and you're out' rule, whilst others say that once is enough and that they don't have to tolerate it, so they mercilessly don't let them back in their clubs/classes. I suppose different teachers have different methods, but I'm going to be a lot clearer about my discipline next Monday and also try and rebrand the classes; I think that teaching such small children the Recorder is a bit of a mistake unless you combine it with Musicianship skills, teaching them the basics of music. I'm going to write to the parents and explain this, and my supervisor will back me up. So we'll see how it goes...

Any further help or ideas, please keep posting!

Great stuff!
That's progress. Keep us posted,
V