Reference Sheet for Folders

 

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 

• Google Slides
• PDF

Reference Sheet for Folders for 2nd year students--articulations

• Google Slides
• PDF

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! 

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?

Parts of a Note Beginning-of-the-Year Bulletin Board

 

For this year's beginning-of-the-year bulletin board, I wanted to label the different parts of notes and eventually came up with the title "Take note: We are all PART of what makes our school community shine!"  It's a little wordy, but I liked that it included both "note" and "part."  You could insert your school name in place of "our school community" too.  This bulletin board can also double as a year-round reference, simply titled "Parts of a Note."  

Parts labeled:

• Note head (the internet is telling me it's really spelled "notehead" but I just can't do it...)
• Stem
• Beam
• Flag
• Dot

I used the pictures of the different rhythms from this blog post and rearranged them for each note part (see links to printouts below).  I did use a black Sharpie to round out a couple places that looked a little cut off.  For the large version, I printed as-is, then cut a half-inch off each side to be able to use an 8 1/2 by 11" background.  For the smaller version, I set the print settings to 2 pages per sheet and then cut each to 3 1/4 by 4 1/2".  The colored background was a half-sheet of paper, 4 1/4 by 5 1/2, with a bigger black background behind that, again cut to make a half-inch border.

For the large pair of eighth notes, I didn't trust my free-hand drawing skills, so I greatly enlarged an image of an outline of eighth notes, printed/cut/traced onto black paper and then cut/attached the pieces.  I used a Cricut for the text (Fontastic Fonts, DJ Smooth) and arrows, but created a Google doc with everything here to print out.

• Text (Google doc)
• Rhythm printouts (Word document)
• Rhythm printouts (PDF)
• Template for large eighth notes (Word document)
• Template for large eighth notes (PDF) 

Feel free to use!

Fingering Charts for Folders

 

This fall I taped fingering charts into the folders for my students as a helpful reference for both my in-person and virtual students.  For second-year students, I included all the notes they should have learned last year and will be learning this year.  For first-year students, I included bubbles for the notes they will be learning this year so students can write them in as they learn them.

I used Finale to make the notes, using the Alpha note feature to add the letter name to the note head.  I made the bar lines and time signature invisible and played around with the spacing to get it to match the fingering chart above.  Then I took a screenshot and pasted that into Word.  For the fingering chart, I used Word and copy/pasted circles for the bubbles and text boxes without a border for the note names.  These just fit on the inside of a folder.  Feel free to edit to include the notes that you would like!

• Fingering reference chart (Word document)
• Fingering reference chart (PDF)

See also: Reference sheet for folders