Five Favorite Pins of November

I've been so busy lately participating in the linky parties of other teachers that I forgot about my own! Here goes my monthly linky party, this time for my five favorite pins of November.

If you are a teacher blogger and would like to participate, see the link-up directions at the bottom of this post.

#1: Before John was a Jazz Giant

I love children's literature, and I love jazz, so I was super excited when I found this book on Pinterest! The illustrations are beautiful (by Sean Qualls, the illustrator of Dizzy, another jazz book) and the text looks poetic. I just bought my copy (you can view it on Amazon by clicking on the picture above) and I think I may play John Coltrane in the background as I read.

#2: Italian Folk Dance

This is actually a pin that I pinned to Pinterest myself. I was searching for Italian folk dances, as I was writing a program for my third graders based off the music of Europe. (At my school this year, we have a school-wide theme of continents, so that each grade level is assigned a continent. Since third grade's continent is Europe, I am creating a program based off of European music for them.) Anyway, I couldn't find any Italian folk dances in any of the resources I had, so I decided to search You Tube, and I found this really cute dance!

The group of students who performed this are in pre-school (which, if you ask me, is pretty impressive given the part of the dance where they were creating bridge after bridge!) I think the dance could work well with grades 2-3, so I am going to teach this to my third graders for their program. The music is "Tarantella," and can be found on Amazon here.

#3: Teaching Music

This looks to be a very comprehensive music education site, based out of the UK. It's free to join, and has lots of great articles. I especially enjoyed the article on creativity and Kodaly's principles by Mark Penrose. I will have to continue to dig deeper into this site!

#4: Letters to Students

I've talked about David Row's blog before, but hadn't read all of his blog entries to date. I found this on Pinterest, and really liked his idea of writing personal letters to each student throughout the year. (Click on the picture above to see his original blog post.) With 500 students, this would take a long time, and since it's November, I might choose to only do one letter per student, but it is an ambitious and wonderful idea to really connect to every student. Thanks to David for the idea!

#5: Practice makes progress

I found this on Pinterest and just love it!

So many of us have grown up hearing that "Practice makes perfect," but how many of us have been frustrated when practice didn't make perfect? Perfection is pretty unattainable, so I love this saying, and will post it in my room soon! If you click on the picture above, it will take you to a blog where you can download the sign as a PDF.

Before I give instructions about joining the linky party, just a reminder to enter into my 700-Followers Giveaway if you haven't already! I will be announcing the winners next Tuesday, November 26 (oh, I just realized...that's my birthday! Perfect timing!) You can click on the picture below to enter the giveaway.

Directions for the linky party:

If you are a music teacher (or a classroom teacher whose ideas could work in any classroom), and you are interested in joining the linky party and blogging about your five favorite pins this month, here are the directions:

• Save the linky party graphic above onto your computer (by right clicking), then include it into your post, with a link to this post.
• Blog about your five favorite pins. Include pictures with links when possible.
• Click this button to join the linky party!