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My schools have shifted from having school rules to talking about school values. I adjusted my school rules display to reflect this change in language. Most of the bullet points are the same; just the headings have changed slightly. I talk through these briefly the first day of small groups, and they stay up all year and get referred to periodically.
School values bullet points:
For the last couple of years, I've been wanting to put a reference sheet in folders for students. The glossary in their book has more words than we talk about in a year, and they're sorted alphabetically, rather than by topic. It can also be a little overwhelming to see so many words on those two pages in the back of the book. The folders that my music store supplies does have musical terms inside, but they are not the same words that I would have picked out, and it's all just words, no symbols. I wanted something that could work for all instruments, so I'd only have to make one per grade level and something that was a little more visually appealing. My stumbling block has been knowing what to include and what to leave out, as there is so much that I could include but only limited space. Here's what I came up for this first version:
Reference Sheet for Folders for 1st year students--tempo/dynamic
Reference Sheet for Folders for 2nd year students--articulations
As always, feel free to make a copy and edit for your use!
The versions for first- and second-year players are nearly the same, except the first-year version has dynamics and tempos and the second-year version has articulations in place of those.
I used Google Slides to create the reference sheet, as it was really easy to create different text boxes and move them around and format them the way I wanted. The symbols are screenshots from Finale (going to the "Staff" tool, I can uncheck "Barlines" under "Items to Display" to just see the symbols with white space behind instead of barlines).
Then, I downloaded the Slide as a PDF, edited the PDF to copy/paste that page into two. When printing, select a custom 1 by 2 pages per sheet (portrait orientation) to get two reference sheets per piece of paper. When cut apart, they fit perfectly inside the folder!
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The other things I stick into folders at the beginning of the year are a pencil on a piece of yarn, a fingering chart, the concert dates for the year, and list of contents.
We'll see how these reference sheets work this year, and then I can always update them for future years! What would you like to see on a reference sheet for beginning string students?
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