DRAMA

This weeks session centred around micro-teaching. Micro-Teaching is a very useful task to experience what it may be like to teach drama due to children in primary schools. It allowed us to see what it would be like to teach but also to be a pupil as the class was separated into different groups, meaning that the groups that weren’t teaching experienced what was being taught.

This session allowed us to see what issues we may run into trying to teach drama like not being clear enough with our instructions, giving too little time for an activity or too much time. Learning from these mistakes before even going into the classroom is very useful and builds a lot of confidence in my own ability to teach drama to a class full of children.

The experience overall was very useful and built a lot of confidence in my own ability in teaching drama. Confidence is key as a teacher.

At the end of the session we also briefly looked at teaching themes that are topical at the time. At this time it was remembrance week when when people wore poppies. Through drama we explored the idea of war, rationing, evacuation and conscientious objectors.

MUSIC

“An increasing number of primary schools are obtaining musical software for computers. Some of it effectively converts the computer into a musical instrument which can be played alongside others. With other software, it is more appropriate for the pupils to compose using the computer alone.”

-(Mills, 2009)

Increasingly so, I.T and software are becoming key resources in schools. So for todays session we looked at garage band, a musical software that allows pupils and teachers to create and alter music pieces. It is important that we as teachers gained and understanding of the software as it allows for the chance to create music with having a large range of instruments- which many schools won’t due to budget constraints. It is also software that many children might also be aware of as it tends to come installed on iPads or iPhones which the children might have.  It is quite likely that if the children haven’t used garage band they have used something very similar.

In the session we were tasked with creating an animation with music behind it- my personal I.C.T skills are very much sub par and as a result struggled with this task and found it quite stressful. However, to improve upon this I will download the software to my own laptop and continue to try.

REFERENCES

Mills, J. (2009) Music in the Primary School. Oxford: Oxford University Press.