Fast and fun way to reinforce the instrument families with your students!

April 28, 2016

Instrument Family of the Week – Rotating Bulletin Board

I’ve been spending a lot of time these last few weeks teaching students about each instrument family! We’ve learned how to identify different instrument families by looking for clues on each instrument like a mouthpiece, strings, reeds, tubing, valves, mallets, and lots more! I love teaching students to look for clues and use their critical thinking skills to sort and identify instrument families. It’s especially fun to teach them all the fundamentals and show them easy and well-known examples like the trumpet, clarinet, or snare drum. They feel like champs! Then once they know all the basics it’s fun to throw an uncommon instrument like the sitar, flugelhorn, or English horn at them and see if they can determine which family each instrument goes with. If you want to see all the materials that I use when I teach instrument families, check out this set of resources!

So, students have been learning a lot and are experts at identifying and classifying instruments into the four instrument families, but there’s one big problem. You see, at my school I have a pretty odd specials class rotation. At my old school I would see every homeroom twice a week for 30 minutes. At my current school I see a homeroom every day for a week and then don’t see that homeroom again for FOUR WEEKS! So, if I’m teaching Mrs. Miller’s Kindergarten students this week I’ll see them every day during the KDG time. Then next week I’ll see Mrs. Hall’s Kdg every day for a week. Then the next week… well, you get the idea. While it’s nice to have 5 consecutive days of learning, it’s a pain that I have basically a month in-between sessions. Kids forget a lot. Kids need a lot of time reset expectations about talking/learning/moving/etc.

The Bulletin Board as Teacher

I needed a way for my hallway bulletin board to become a teacher and reinforcer of material. Students forget a lot when there’s a month in-between classes! I put together a few different resources to create a rotating bulletin board that has students looking, learning, and smiling! Here’s what I did.

First, I printed off this “Read All About Me” Bulletin Board Set. These posters mimic those “Read about Me” papers that Kdg and 1st graders often do in their homeroom. A lot of my Kdg teacher friends feature one “Student of the Week” and that kid gets to bring in information about themselves, pictures, and more. The posters I printed mimic that idea and show off different instruments as if they were people. The posters give details like when the instrument was “born,” its “family,” “fascinating facts” about the instrument and even some of the instrument’s “favorite things.” It’s a fun set for kids to see and learn from!

Once I had all of that printed off and ready to go I went to the cabinets and fished out my big cardboard instrument posters. I think officially they’re called something like “Meet the Instruments” and they’re by Bowmar. I remember these posters hanging on the wall in the music room when I was in elementary school! They’re great big posters on heavy artboard and have wonderful pictures of various instruments. I don’t really have space to hang these in my tiny room at school, but I knew they would make a PERFECT addition to my bulletin board in the hallway.

Family of the Week Rotating Bulletin Board - Quick, easy, and effective!

So, I took the big instrument posters, divided them by family, and whipped up a little sheet that says “Family of the Week” for each of the four families. When I put everything up on the bulletin board one side has the “Read All About Me” Posters with fun clip art images of instruments and on the other side there are big and colorful posters with real pictures of instruments. I’ve been rotating through the large “Meet the Instruments” Posters each week and simply change out the sign that says “Family of the Week.” It’s a fun and easy way for me to use these great resources and also help students learn about the instruments.

I added this “Family of the Week” Poster and switched it out every week. Here’s a free copy in PDF form, in case you’d like it.

Do you have any other fun tricks and ideas about teaching the instrument families or maybe you have a genius way to use the big Bowmar “Meet the Instrument” posters? Maybe you just have fond memories about seeing those big cardboard posters in music when you were a kid. If something in this blog post inspired you, triggered a memory, or gave you an idea why don’t you leave a note below in the comment section. I’d love to read your ideas or suggestions about how to make this bulletin board even more effective!