Run, run as fast as you can you can't catch him but you can describe him! Here is a great writing stimulus about the Gingerbread Man! Full of descriptive language! It's the Gingerbread Man Description song! Get your kids to sing, dance, move and write! Rock on with the Gingerbread Man! Listen to the song and watch the animation below!
The song is based on a description I jointly constructed with my Kindergarten class at the conclusion of our unit on the Gingerbread Man. We brainstormed all the things we knew about the Gingerbread man and labelled him on the SMARTboard! I then started to strum an few chords and put a melody to the words.(Lyrics!)
I recorded the song and animated it. After that I uploaded The Gingerbread Man Description song to my YouTube channel (Rocking Dan Teaching Man) and showed the Children on the SMARTboard. The class then made up a dance to go along with the song. It was so much fun! The children loved singing and moving to the music! "Run, Run, Run as fast as you can, you can't catch him he's the Gingerbread Man!"
The children had so many adjectives stuck in their heads about The Gingerbread Man. They enthusiastically described him to each other. There was so much rich descriptive language in their conversations about The Gingerbread Man! It was amazing! Time to write about him!
Using the song as a writing stimulus the children drew and labelled pictures of The Gingerbread Man then they wrote a description about him. If the children were stuck for ideas they went back to the song for help. It was wonderful to hear the children singing the song and to see them so engaged in their writing. They did a great job! Wow, the power of music and movement as an educational tool! It was a great multi-sensory learning experience for everyone!
The Gingerbread Man Description song has now been seen in 41 different nations! I got some lovely feedback from a number of teachers who used the song to help their children with their descriptive writing! So I recorded a live acoustic version of the song as a way of saying thanks to all those who watched or used my video! A special thanks to Barbara Kibler and her Kindergarten class in North Carolina, USA for all their enthusiasm. Rock on with the Gingerbread Man!
If you have used The Gingerbread Man description song in your class and would like to share your experience then I'd love to hear from you! Thanks everyone and keep Rockin'!
In November 2013, I was awarded The Frater Travel Scholarship from the Australian Catholic University. The money from the scholarship gave me an amazing opportunity to
travel to Las Vegas in the United States to attend one of the world’s leading
primary educational conferences called “I Teach K” run by Staff Development for
Educators. http://www.sde.com/index.asp The conference was held over four days and offered a wide range of
workshops covering the Kindergarten curriculum and technology. The presenters were top experts in primary education and I learnt a great deal from all of them. The Frater Scholarship is open to anyone who has completed Post Graduate studies at ACU. If you have a desire to travel overseas and further your professional development then I recommend you apply for the 2014 Scholarship. My Post Graduate Certificate was in Early Childhood Education. http://www.acu.edu.au/study_at_acu/courses/scholarships_and_financial_support/Scholarships_and_Bursaries_Browser/bob_and_margaret_frater_travel_scholarship
(Here I am being awarded the scholarship from the very generous Bob and Margaret Frater and Professor Anne Cummins)
The interview panel for the award were very interested in my YouTube channel "Rocking Dan Teaching Man". I mentioned how I like to integrate music and movement across the curriculum. I also let them know what a pleasure it is to share my music with teachers and children across the world by posting my songs on YouTube. (320 000 hits to date). (Here is a link to my YouTube channel Rocking Dan Teaching Man)
One of the great joys I have as a teacher is to be able to collaborate with my students to write songs about things we are learning in class. You can look at my "We love monsters" post from earlier in the year to find out more. http://rockingdan.blogspot.com.au/2014_04_01_archive.html
One of the reasons I wanted to travel to Las Vegas and attend "I teach K" was that I had seen that Pete Harry aka Harry Kindergarten was going to be presenting a session called "Teaching with YouTube." Since I had started a YouTube channel of my own I was very keen to learn more about teaching effectively with YouTube. Pete's YouTube channel is great! He has lots of different songs and videos about the Kindergarten curriculum. Here is a link to Pete's YouTube channel. His channel has over 70 million hits!
On the first day of the conference I was eating lunch and I heard a voice say "Are you Dan?" I looked up and it was Pete Harry. I jumped up and said "Pete!" I may have been a little star struck! It's great to tell people "Harry Kindergarten recognized me!" His session on "Teaching with YouTube."was fantastic and I learnt so much from it. I was really overwhelmed when he started the session by pointing me out in the auditorium. Pete projected a large image of me up on the screen and told his audience to check out my YouTube channel "Rocking Dan Teaching Man". Wow that was such an amazing surprise. Thanks for the shout out Pete!
Here's Pete Harry showing my image on the big screen!
(Rocking Dan Teaching Man meets Harry Kindergarten)
Pete is a really nice, talented and humble guy. His presentations were fantastic!
using my song "The Big Bad Wolf Description Song" in her kindergarten literacy presentation "Blow through the common core with the three little pigs."
( "The Big Bad Wolf Description Song" being shown by Deanna Jump)
Deanna said she loves my songs. She uses "The Big Bad Wolf Description Song" to help teach descriptive language about the Big bad wolf to her children. Wow! I was blown away! High praise indeed from such an accomplished and well respected educator. It was wonderful to meet Deanna after her presentation. She was so warm and friendly.
Here is a link to "The Big Bad Wolf Description Song"
"The Big Bad Wolf Description Song"
Some people were saying they had trouble finding in on YouTube. The more hits it gets the more "visible" the song becomes. If you go to YouTube then type in "The Big Bad Wolf Description Song" in quotation marks it should be the first song that comes up. If not then type in "Rocking Dan Teaching Man"and you should go straight to my YouTube channel. Look out for my new song coming out soon "The Gingerbread Man Description Song".
I also had the chance to meet (in person) my educational music and movement mentor Heidi Butkus from Heidi songs. http://www.heidisongs.com/ Heidi is an experienced and highly respected Kindergarten teacher. She makes multisensory educational music and movement DVDs for children. They are a great way for kids to learn letters, sounds, blends, sight words and mathematical concepts.
I met Heidi on "Linkedin" www.linkedin.com/ in December 2013. She told me how much she liked
"The Elephant Mass Song" (Hey who doesn't!)
As a result Heidi very kindly offered me the chance to co write a song with her about place value for new DVD "Musical Math 2". Needless to say I jumped at the chance to work with such a legendary educational singer/song writer. So back and forth from LA to Sydney (12084 Km) song lyrics, melodies and demos traveled digitally.
The sessions I attended that Heidi presented were fantastic. She is an expert on multisensory teaching and critical thinking. Heidi is such a kind and generous person and a wonderful educator. I learnt a great deal from her! I love using her DVDs in my class and so do my students!
Here is a link to her critical thinking question cards for shared and guided reading. They are fantastic and I now use them daily.
Meeting Kathy Griffin (teacher) from www.kathygriffinteach.blogspot.com was another great experience! Kathy introduced me before the beginning of her session on differentiated reading. She gave a great shout out to my YouTube channel which was fantastic! Kathy is such an energetic and enthusiastic educator and a wonderful person.
She has lots of great ideas about differentiated teaching of reading and writing through hands on multisensory teaching.
("We Will Read You" sung to the tune "We Will Rock You")
We will read is a fun and engaging way to learn letters and sounds and blends.
Kathy also has lots of great strategies for classroom management and morning meetings.
(Here is a great song for teaching children how to sit and listen.)
Kathy sells her resources on her Teachers pay teachers store.
I attended Palma's workshop "It's a great day for science" she has so many fun engaging ideas for teaching science in the Kindergarten classroom.
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It was terrific to be able to share my YouTube channel with Palma, she was very impressed with my song "The Friends of 10" and is keen to share it with her colleagues and possibly use it in future maths presentations which is fantastic!
One night after the workshops had finished I attended a bloggers meet and got to meet lots of other great teacher bloggers! Including my blogger friend Terri from Kinder Kapers http://merrykinderkapers.blogspot.com.au/. She is such a great lady and teacher. She has lots of great teaching ideas on her blog! Terri is a big fan of Rocking Dan Teaching Man! I had so much fun with her!
(Here I am with Terri from Kinder Kapers)
I was also lucky enough to meet Kim Maloney at the bloggers meet. Kim is a music teacher and fellow Australian. She creates amazing music teaching resources. Check out her website!
Also at the bloggers meet I donated 10 CDs as prizes in the Teacher giveaway "Rocking Dan Teaching Man's Greatest Hits" 24 rocking educational songs. It was fantastic to see my CDs being given away!
(It's great to make teachers smile! Here are the lucky winners of my CDs)
A great session I went to on the last day of the conference was "Kindergartners can be authors too" by Crystal Radke from Kreative in Knder.
http://kreativeinkinder.blogspot.com . She gave a fantastic presentation on kindergarten writing, fiction and non fiction. Her process involves brainstorming, drawing, labeling and writing. It was such a good session I went to her Teachers Pay Teachers store and bought it. I have been back at school for three weeks now and I am using the ideas from this workshop. My children are so engaged with their writing.
Here is a link to her unit Kindergartners can be authors too in her Teachers Pay Teachers store.
I had the pleasure of attending Greg Smedley's session Building Math Skills Every Day: A Smorgasbord of Math Strategies. Greg has so many great ideas, routines and activities about building Maths skills in the Kindergarten classroom. I have started using his Maths calender as a lesson starter which has been great. His addition and subtraction machine is so much fun as too is his hands on number bond activity and 3D tens frames. Lots of great ideas to try! Here is a link to his wonderfully creative Maths Pinterest board. http://www.pinterest.com/gregsmedley/math/
Greg is a great guy, he is very creative and an engaging presenter. I really enjoyed his workshop! He has been a wonderful supporter of Rocking Dan Teaching Man and has shared some of my songs via social media, including the very rocky "Come on and meet the shapes" and "We love monsters"(The monster description song) Thanks Greg you Rock!
The final workshop I attended was terrific it was called "Making The Leap to Success in Your Well- Managed Differentiated Centers" by Mary Amoson from Sharing Kindergarten http://www.sharingkindergarten.com/
She had lots of fantastic ideas about differentiated learning centers across the curriculum. This is something I have taken on board and am trying with Science, Maths and English right now!
As part of The Frater Travel Scholarship I had the opportunity to travel to San Francisco and visit The Computer Science History Museum. At the Museum I was able to learn about computer technology and it's impact on education. The whole experience was
fantastic professional development for me as a primary teacher.
(The Google car of the future) (one of the world's oldest computers in action)
The Frater scholarship also enabled me to be able to
purchase some computer software which will help me with the recording of my
educational songs and the making of my educational animations for primary
school children that I post on my YouTube channel.
Flip Boom All Star is a great program for making simple animations! https://www.toonboom.com/products/flip-boom-all-star
I would highly recommend
primary teachers with post graduate qualification from ACU to apply for the Frater Travel Scholarship. The benefits of traveling to an overseas educational
conference are incredible. Thanks to Bob and Margaret Frater for making this trip possible through their generosity and kindness. I would also like to thank Professor Anne Cummins for all her support and kind words, Gai Melville my Assistant Principal for alerting me about the Scholarship and for her great reference and Dr Cathie Harrison from ACU my Post Graduate Lecturer for her wonderful reference. It is such an honour and privilege to be the 9th Frater Scholar! A special thank you to my beautiful and talented wife Celine who came with me on the trip and has been a tremendous support through out my teaching career. She is so supportive of everything I do and especially of my music and educational projects.
(Here we are outside the Computer History Museum in Moutain View CA)
Hey everyone! Rocking Dan Teaching Man is participating in "The Best for the Best" Teacher appreciation product giveaway. Four of my songs from my YouTube channel are in the give way.
You can win mp3 versions of classic Rocking Dan Teaching Man hits including "The Friends of 10, "The Elephant Mass song", "Funky Fish F song."and "Rocking Our Way to 100" along with products from 106 teacher bloggers! The songs are a fantastic way to help support K-2 children with their learning. Thank you for watching my videos and for all your support!
If you haven't checked out my YouTube channel yet go there now! Don't forget to subscribe!
Who doesn't love monsters? They are so much fun! All of them so different. Some are big and scary and others are friendly and nice.
At the end of our monster unit this term my Kindergarten class co wrote a song with me about monsters. The song is based on all the things the children discovered about monsters through books, movies, songs, monster play, monster sensory boxes, artworks and poems during the term.
Here it is! Enjoy!
We Love Monsters (A description song about monsters)
To start the song writing process we revisited the different descriptions about monsters we had jointly constructed during the term. This was a great stimulus for the children. After reading these descriptions again we brainstormed all the things we could think of that described monsters.
what they look like
what their personalities are like
what they like to do
where they like to hide
how they behave
The children were so enthusiastic about the brainstorming it generated some great discussions. I recorded all the things the children said about monsters on the whiteboard.
Using these ideas I was able to strum a few chords and come up with a bit of a melody and some lyrics. We talked about making the song rhyme like a poem for example bed rhymes with fed, mean rhymes with scream. We also talked about that when you are writing a song sometime you can use words that half rhyme like eyes and surprise.
I was able to go away with these ideas from this lesson and develop the song some more. I took the song back to the children and after some discussion about what they liked and didn't like about the song I was able to come up with the final version. We sung the song many times! The children enjoyed playing along with percussion instruments and making up monster dances! By the end of the two weeks many of the children had learnt all the lyrics.
Next I recorded all the instruments (guitar, bass, drums, lead vocals and backing vocals) on my laptop at home.
Hmmm which guitar should I play?
Once that was completed I made an animation to along with it.
The Monster clipart I used is from the very talented Maria DiCesare have a look at her TPT store.
The children then engaged in sensory play about monsters and collaborated with each other to dictate stories to me about monsters. They were very focused on using descriptive language in their play and story telling. I read the stories to the class and the children acted out the stories as I read them! We collected all the stories and put and made a big book of monster stories.
The final step was to get the children to use the "We Love Monsters"song that they helped to write as a stimulus for their independent descriptive writing. The children drew monsters, labelled them then wrote about their own monsters. It was great fun! The children had the song stuck in their heads and enthusiastically took the the task!
Here are some great monster resources:
Monster Spray song and activity pack by the amazing Debbie Clement.
There are so many great teaching and learning activities you can do with the movie Monster Inc
I hope you enjoyed reading about my colaboritive song writing with Kindergarten! Until next time keep rocking and learning with Rocking Dan Teaching man. For more songs and animations check out my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCImSxYV3FEQ-skkY67kFcxw
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