Music

“The most effective schools recognised that regular, sustained experiences were essential to secure good musical progress. Schools where curriculum provision was weaker showed limited understanding about musical progression or did not give enough time for music” (Ofsted, 2012).

 This week, we had our music lesson in the computer lab exploring the programme ‘Garageband’ on the Apple Macs (Inc, 2016). This programme is equipped with ‘a complete sound library that includes software instruments, presets for guitar and voice, and virtual session drummers’ (Inc, 2016). This, I feel, allows the children to be innovative and expressive through technology, but learning new musical skills at the same time. We tried and tested the various instruments and technologies before creating our own 32-count tunes.

https://1drv.ms/i/s!AnNTHzvgMm8cgSRMjtDcIaHSeDMM

This is a video from a school exploring Garageband and I think that when everyone puts their sections together to create a final piece it gives them something to be proud of.

 

Drama

“adopt a variety of drama skills to win the attention and interest of our students, to convey information effectively to our diverse and demanding ‘audience’” (Schoolzone, 2015).

Today’s main task in the drama session was micro-teaching. We did this micro-teaching in groups with the stimulus of a children’s book. The book that we chose was ‘Beside Myself’ which was about twins that swap identities. We felt that this was a good choice of book as there are two strong characters and a strong story-line that many themes can be taken from.

Our micro teaching consisted of  partner and class activities. The partner work was for the pair to act as their partners and mimic their mannerisms, speech and aspects that make them individual. This made participants consider all aspects of their partner’s personality and traits. This activity would work with all stages of the primary school, however, it is probably most effective with upper-primary school as they are more observant and aware of people.

The second activity was a thought tunnel with the whole group. The purpose of the thought tunnel was to consider how they would feel if their identity was swapped for another. We got a variation of good describing words and thoughts in this activity and I feel that this activity could also be done with a wide scope of age groups.

After our micro-teaching, we took part in other groups’ activities which varied from a Harry Potter stimulus, to The Gruffalo, and the activities ranged from freeze-frames to monologues. It was interesting from both a learner’s point of view and as a student teacher to take part in all of the drama activities.

 

Inc, A. (2016) GarageBand for Mac.Incredible music. In the key of easy. Available at: http://www.apple.com/uk/mac/garageband/ (Accessed: 17 November 2016).

Ofsted (2012) Music in schools: Wider still, and wider. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/music-in-schools (Accessed: 22 November 2016).

Schoolzone (2015) Schoolzone: Using drama skills in the classroom. Available at: http://www.schoolzone.co.uk/resources/articles/GoodPractice/classroom/Drama_skills.asp (Accessed: 17 November 2016).