How Can I "Write the Room" in Music class?

I have longed to do some of the activities that classroom teachers do. Because there are so many classroom blogs, I seem to see their activities more often. I get excited and then deflated when I realize I really can't do that activity with my 1300 students that I see only once every 6 or 7 days.

However this past year I decided I would challenge myself (and my students) to "Write the Room". It was a GREAT success and here's how I did it!

Materials: clipboards, sharpened pencils, paper, posters all over the room to get info from

Presentation: I showed this slide in my daily Smart notebook file

When I give directions, I have them written on the board, I say them aloud and then I ask the students to repeat the directions to a neighbor. This seems to help visual learners, auditory learners and social learners.

Then... I let them go! The info they were looking for was on the walls. I used the Beatles MITS- each member's poster set was on a different wall. Their mission was to write down 2-3 pieces of information in each square of the paper. Each square was labeled with a Beatle member's name.

Some of my SpEd kids needed to write less and/or a partner to lend a hand, some of my gifted kids wrote more (their choice). I loved being able to sit back and watch them gather information ("Ringo is allergic to pizza??") 

I look forward to doing this again. I believe I would stick with members of a band to give a sense on cohesiveness but it might be fun to choose a STYLE of music and use 4-5 musicians from that genre, ie. Rock 'n Roll, Cool Jazz etc.

Now for the FREEBIE! Last week I mentioned that I had a freebie pertaining to a product I was working on. Tada! 

Click on this link or this picture

and you will receive a complete FREE MITS set of  Emma Bunton "Baby Spice" from the Spice Girls, that attention grabbing girl band from the 90's.

And if you think it would be fun to "write the room", I just released the entire set of the Spice Girls - all 5 members and a whole group set. Get it here @ TeacherPayTeachers