Lakeside Lions

I absolutely LOVE going out to visit Kathi Garlick at Lakeside Elementary.  She is pure joy!  But my favorite part....is hearing all the funny things she says to her kids.  I can't stop myself from giggling and I'm probably a big distraction but I can't help it!  Here are a few gems from my most recent visit:


1.  Put your head back where it belongs.


2.  Student:  I had a waffle this morning.
      Kathi:    Why didn't you call me?  I thought we had a agreement about waffles!


3.  Student:   Look how loud I can clap!
     Kathi:      Wow!  That sounds like an explosion!


4.  What's in your mouth?  Lets not put that in your mouth.  Due to the fact that its hard to sing with a big thing in your mouth.


I'm sure there are many more, but it's hard to type them all up when you are crying because you are laughing so hard. 


Kathi has great classroom management and the kids just adore her.  They respond really well to everything she does.  When kids are a little out of control she uses an attention getter with all of her classes and it works like magic.  It goes like this...

T...Lakeside Lions,

S...Lakeside Rocks!

T...Now is the time,

S...When nobody talks!

And if there is a student who is a particular distraction...Kathi hands out stop signs.  I love it because it makes the kids take ownership in their misbehavior instead of the teacher having to constantly correct every little thing.

Kathi is a pro at a lot of things, but most especially at using the Silver Burdett Making Music Books.  You know a teacher has spent a lot of time developing lessons from those books when they look like this:

I really enjoy watching her use these lessons and see has she has tweeked them to fit her style of teaching.  The day I was visiting she was reviewing 16th notes with the upper grades and introducing combinations of 8th's and 16th's which can be pretty tricky.  First Kathi talked about what the different combinations looked like and then handed out some cards to the kids that had the rhythms and some corresponding words on them.  First they had to practice the correct rhythmic syllables and then they got to put the words to it.

Each card represented a total of 4 steady beats and at the end, after they had practice individually to a steady beat, they put it all together as a class.  Here's what they ended up with.

Kathi had another great activity with her 4th graders where they talked about different rhythm combination and then searched a familiar piece of music to find those same patterns within it.  Sorry, no pictures here...I was probably laughing again at her witty remarks. 

Way to go Kathi!