79. Upgrade Turn and Talk to Musical Partners

Johanna Kuiper

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Have you done a turn in talk with your students? How did it go for me, getting students to talk academically with each other takes some work. So in today’s episode, I’m going to be sharing a fun way to get students up and moving and talking to one another about math. Let’s get started.

Welcome to solving for the undefined podcast, I’m your host, Johanna, founder of Miss Kuiper’s Classroom, the place that equips teachers and creating a healthy math classroom where students can thrive no matter their academic abilities. But it’s not always about the numbers, and that’s why I’m here, bringing you the formulas to solve your problems, math and otherwise, plus strategies on cultivating that necessary math mindset, and that’s what you can count on.

Hello, hello. Welcome to a brand new episode. I am so excited to introduce you to musical partners, and before I go into depth about what that is, I want to give you the backstory on how that came to be, and it all started when my principal and the middle school director from the district were coming to observe the math classes. The day that they were coming to observe was like the day after I had introduced transformations to students, and so there wasn’t really any practice to be done quite yet, like we still need to go over them a few more times before I was ready for independent practice or team practice, but I wanted the lesson to be engaging, not only for students, but something fun for someone to watch. I also wanted to throw in there some of those ideas that like had been passed down that we had to be using in our classrooms, and turn and talk was one of the big ones that we were asked to be using in our classrooms. And don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good turn and talk, but I wanted it to be more, and that’s how musical partners came to be, because I wanted to do a turn and talk, but I also wanted students to get up out of their seat and find a partner. But so many times when I’ve done like, All right, go and find someone who has the same color shirt as you. It doesn’t always go as planned, or it takes a little bit more management on my part, so I wanted to make it fun. And I was like, what if I add music and make it like musical chairs? And that is how the idea came to be.

So what is musical partners? So musical Partners is a fun way to get students to turn and talk or stand and share in a more engaging way. Think about it as musical chairs meet, find a partner. And the way it works is you have a prompt on the screen for students to talk about. Then you play music, you have them wander the classroom, and then when the music stops, they find the person who’s standing closest to them, and they turn and talk to each other. And I like to do this more than one time in a row, so I might do it three times, so students are talking to three different people throughout this musical partners time. And I like doing it like three times, because one, you’re going to get more bang for your buck, like you took the time to get students out of their seats, up and moving, so you might as well use that momentum to your advantage and have them talk to multiple people.

And now that you have an idea of what musical partners is, I want to kind of go over the anatomy of the Google slides that I use, because I think the visual component is important, because you’re asking students to do something that’s a little bit more riskier, of walking around a classroom, finding a partner, and that can be anxiety inducing for students. So having something that they can refer back to with a question or a visual is going to be important.

So thinking about the Google slide or the visual that I have up on the screen, the first thing that’s important is having the question your students are answering on the screen. And I know that might be like a little bit of like a duh moment, but one thing that I found is whenever students are talking to each other, having the visual of the question on the screen gives them a place to look. Because sometimes eye contact can be weird for students or when you’re talking to someone, so having a place to look at, giving them some place to refer back to, like, what was the question? Easing that anxiety really can help along the conversation and with having the question, having a visual if it applies. So for example, one of the times that I use musical partners is after a warm up problem. And I talked about the types of warmups that I do in my classroom in Episode 77 if you missed it, definitely go back and listen to that. But I will use musical partners like after which one doesn’t belong. And I’ll have students take their whiteboard with their answer, walk around the room and share that component with other people, but having the four pictures on the screen of the musical partners slide will help students refer back to like what they meant, or they can visually show their partner what they were looking at when they came up with their answer. Or another time that I will use musical partners is when students are reviewing notes or reviewing a problem, and so I will have where on the notes page that they are looking at, or what question they are looking at on their paper in terms of what they need to be sharing with their team. So it gives them a relaxation of knowing exactly what they’re doing with their partner, both in question form and in visual form.

The next thing that I like to have on this Google slide is a sentence frame. So having some place for students to start in terms of answering the question can be really valuable. Having those academic scripts, as my school calls them, the sentence frames on the screen, can be beneficial for English language learners, but also helps with that. Ease of mind as students are starting to answer a question, it gives them something to start off of, rather than just answering, “I don’t know”.

And the last piece of the Google slide is an upbeat music video, and I found a trick for this that I really enjoy, where in Google Slides, when you insert a YouTube video, or I think maybe any video, if you go to the format options, you can set when it starts and where it ends inside the video. So if I want the video to play for 10 seconds, I can choose, like the automatic play on click, I think it’s called, and then I can choose play from one minute to one minute and 12 seconds. So the music will play for 12 seconds of that video while students are walking around that way, I don’t have to be stuck at my computer doing the up, volume down, volume piece while the music video is playing, I can just click a button, have students walk, and maybe I can walk around the room during the timer as well. That way students kind of see that I’m participating in the activity, which helps accountability for students.

If you want to learn how to do the time piece of the videos in Google Slides. I’m going to be posting a quick tutorial in the show notes on my website so you can watch that and figure out how to do that for you in your classroom.

All right, now that we’ve talked about what musical partners are, as well as the anatomy of the Google slide that you will use, let’s talk about how this is helpful beyond just a fun activity to do with students.

The first benefit of doing this is standing increases conversation and the length of conversation. So if you’ve ever noticed, whenever you’re at a function and you get up to leave, you end up spending a lot of time standing and talking to people as you’re exiting, and that’s the same idea that we’re trying to implement in the classroom. When you’re standing, you’re more likely to engage in conversation with people than if you were sitting down. So standing increases conversation academically and like, the length of time that you’re speaking.

Number two, movement helps the brain. So just being up and moving for those like 12 seconds that you’re having students roam the classroom is going to be beneficial. It helps get the blood flowing again, gets it back to the brain, helps oxygenate you, which helps you think better, and it just gives students a break from sitting all day because they’re in school for eight hours and they’re sitting for a majority of that so just that little bit of movement can help bring back the energy to your classroom.

And then the last reason why this is helpful, or why you should use it, is it’s a novel experience for students, it’s not something they’re probably going to see in their other classes. So it’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be new. And when things are exciting and new, people are more likely to participate in them because it seems fun. So they’re more likely to walk around the classroom, even if they end up standing next to their friend and having an academic conversation than if you were to do the normal turn and talk.

Now, the last thing I wanted to share with you is some steps on how to implement this if this is something that you want to try in your classroom. So like I shared before, I tend to do this after a warm up, or when I want students to review a problem together. So say you just finished a “which one doesn’t belong” style task, or some other warm up problem. You’re going to have students take their notebook or their whiteboard, whatever they initially wrote on, because you want them to have a basis first. You don’t want them to go into this cold. You want it to be a fresh thought in their mind of something they just completed. That’s going to give you a better retention or better conversations than if you just asked a question right as they’re getting up and moving.

So once all your students are standing, you’re going to put the visual on the screen, you’re going to ask the question, you’re going to start the music and have students wander around the classroom. Then when the music stops, they’re going to find the nearest person or two and they’re going to share what they wrote down and on their whiteboard or their notebook. And then you’re going to repeat this one or two more times, so you’re going to play the music again. Have them wander the classroom. When it stops, they’re going to find a new partner or person and then share what they wrote down and then do it one more time.

When this is all done, you’ll have them return to their seat, and you can either go over it like review, or you can just move on to the next thing.

The first time I implemented this like during the observation, was I first asked students, “How many of you have done musical chairs?” And I kind of gave it that basis of what they were doing. And I was like, okay, “So you know how musical chairs? You’re standing around the class, you’re standing around a group of chairs, and you’re walking while the music plays, and as soon as it stops, you’re sitting down in a chair. It’s going to be like that. But instead of finding a chair, you’re going to find a part, a partner, and that’s the person you’re going to answer the question with.”

Prepping them ahead of time of what the activity is and what it’s like. Because I feel like a lot of students have played musical chairs, or have seen it played, or know what it is, you can kind of relate it to that and give them a basis of what they’re doing. So two pro tips for you that I’ve kind of shared, but I want to give it more emphasis now at the end is when you do this, also walk around the classroom when the music is playing, and maybe even find a partner, or stand with a group that’s already partnered up and just hear what they have to say, or even answer the question yourself. When students see you participating in it, they’re more likely to do it too, because they see that it’s it’s not above you to do it, so it’s not above them to do it. And you can achieve doing that like stopping the music by either presetting it with the Google Slides hack I shared with you, or doing a mute button for your TV or display, and then unmuting it when it’s the next round to go.

And then the last pro tip is make sure students have something in their hands when they’re walking, whether it’s their whiteboard, their worksheet, their notebook, something that they have pre written down what they’re going to say or what they did. This will help with anxiety, as well as actually being able to have those academic conversations, because they’re not going into it cold and just like that. That is musical partners. It is a fun way to get students up and talking to each other in an academic way.

If you have questions about musical partners or you try it, I’d love to hear about it. You can send me a message on Instagram @misskuiper. I’d love to answer any questions or hear how the experience went for you and your students. And with that, I’ll calc-u-later.

Thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode. To find all the links and resources to things talked about in this episode, head on over to misskuipersclassroom.com and click on podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai