Thursday, July 30, 2015

First Day of Music Emoji Activity

Hi everyone!

     Yes, you read that title correctly. I am using emojis for my first musical activity in grades 1-5. After all of our procedural talk, seat assignments, and tour of my classroom, I wanted to have a fun activity that gets the kids excited and involved right away!


I honestly have no idea where I got this idea, other than the slight possibility that I was perusing Twitter and someone had tweeted something and included a TON of emojis (which usually drives me crazy...but in this case, thanks to that random person!)


I will have two different groups of students depending on grade level and class- those who have personal learning devices (in our case, iPads) and those who don't, or who have not received them yet. For those students who will already have their personal devices- 3rd through 5th graders- I will ask them to take out their devices and open the "Notes" app, where they can access emojis using the alternate keyboard. 

For those students who do not yet have devices (1st-2nd), I will hand out a blank sheet of paper and have an assortment of emojis printed and cut out for them to choose from and glue onto their paper.

I will play a musical selection- haven't chosen the song yet- for each class and they will respond to the question "How does this music make you feel?" using emojis! They will not be limited to just one- it will be up to them to choose how many it takes to express their feelings. It will be a short enough activity that students will be able to share their reflections before either the end of the class period or our next activity! I may even decide to do this as a group activity for the first day of Kindergarten using the SmartBoard!

What are your thoughts? Do you like this idea or have anything to add? I'm open to suggestions and I'm so excited to see how this activity turns out in just over a month!


Hope you are all enjoying your last couple days of July!
~Ms. Patrician




8 comments:

  1. I love, love, LOVE this idea! At my school our students are not 1:1 with devices but we have an iPad cart so I am definitely going to try and work this into the schedule at the beginning of the school year.

    I wonder if there's a good way to have students send you their responses so that you can collect and present them. Maybe screenshots? I think a lot of people- myself included- would be very interested to see how their responses vary with different musical styles!

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    1. You probably saw that I took pictures of most of my students responses on paper and put them on Twitter, since we couldn't use iPads in most classes :( However, I think a great way for them to respond could be to use padlet.com- which is a great resource and a way to collect all the responses at once. Can't wait to try it!

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  2. I've been looking for new ways to incorporate more emotional literacy activities into my curriculum- this sounds perfect!! Stealing this idea for sure!! #fermatafridays

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  3. Another reason I love this activity is because it's an activity that my ELL students can use to express their opinions confidently.

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  4. Do you have a way to make the emojis larger so you can see them easily? I haven't figured out how to do that yet. Do they hold up their iPad to show their emoji?

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    1. For most of my classes, I ended up printing out Emojis (because they took their iPads away), so this wasn't an issue. For the classes that used iPads, I had them (or their partner if they have trouble with English) explain what the emoji's expression was. I may look for a program that is more like Word that could do bigger Emojis...just haven't found it yet.

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  5. Hi, again. I just realized that if you get to use iPads again, Doodle Buddy has fun emoji stamps, with the added bonus (?) that each stamp makes a sound! When your students find the "poop" stamp, you will have hysterical laughter for quite awhile. Ahhhh, 5th grade boys...

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    1. Awesome! Thanks for the heads up! I will keep that in mind when I get iPads back! :)

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