![]() Another special education student who is LD was getting frustrated and upset, so I created an iconic version of the songs, and after he got his fourth belt, he told me he was ready to try "normal" music with the letter names written in. I had classroom teachers tell me how great they thought this idea was and how the kids wouldn't stop talking about it! I had special education teachers who were in shock at how well their students were doing and how excited they were! One boy, who is ADHD, manic-depressive, and very defiant, ended up getting his black belt. (At our end-of-the-year Awards Assembly, I made awards and gave them to the black belts. And, I had 56 students who received their black belt. The response was tremendous! The first year I had 74% of all my students who went on beyond the required purple belt. I tried this idea and it WORKED even better than I imagined!! The kids LOVED it!! I had kids lined up outside my door during my plan times and before and after school. Then, I added the motivation of receiving 'Karate belts' to get the students excited. So, I decided to base this book on folk songs that most kids are familiar with. When students practice a new song and they know how it is supposed to sound, they will practice it more and will work harder to make it sound correct. I remembered something that I had learned through my own experience with piano lessons as a child and also in my own experience with teaching piano. So, I did a ton of research, reading, and reflection. ![]() I also wanted to find a way to let the kids work at their own pace, because I felt that if I tried to keep all the kids together, the ones who were behind would just quit all together and the ones who were ahead would get frustrated for moving too slow. I wanted a way to get them playing at home and keep them really motivated through the whole unit. I wanted to find a really great way of teaching recorders to the kids - all kids - including the special education kids and the hard-to-reach kids. However, after creating and using "Recorder by Karate," it is now one of my favorite things to teach! ![]() So, needless to say, I was a little frightened by the fact that I had to teach recorders. In my first teaching job, I found out that recorders were in the curriculum for fourth and fifth grades. Before I began teaching, I had never played the recorder before.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |