The music session today was very constructive as we moved on with learning how to teach music to primary children. We had a visit from a primary 6/7 class, who played a piece of music to us and then taught each of us how to play some basic chords on their instruments.

We were one to one with a pupil each and they taught us what they had been learning in class about playing their instruments. Having a child talk us through it and explain what they knew was insightful into how they learn and how much they are grasping. It was interesting to have them teaching us as it brings us back down to their level and helped me to really see how to put things in order for them to understand. As music is not taught by specialist music teachers in all schools, having an experience like this was valuable as one day I will need to teach music to my class. It is also thought by Mills (2009) that children will benefit more from having their class teacher teach them music as they are aware of how the children are doing in other curricular ares and will be the ones the will notice a difference in performance in other areas after teaching them music. ‘Pupils and children make day-to-day links between work in music and other curriculum areas’ (Mills, 2009, pp.3) and so having the class teacher there through it all would benefit the children in many ways.

Reflecting on this workshop I feel that it was such an educational session as we got to see the teaching of music from the perspective of a learner. We were being taught how to hold and play an instrument by the very same aged children we one day might be teaching music to and it gave me a really good idea of how to go about it. Taking into account the language they used and how they explained it will be very helpful.

Drama

In this weeks drama session we read through a book called ‘The Tunnel’ and from this we practised more of the drama techniques we had been looking at.

This is the perfect book to bring into a primary classroom as it had so many opportunities for different techniques and told a really good story. Role on the wall was the technique we focused on which involves drawing a picture of a character within the story and on the inside writing how they might be feeling in the situation and on the outside writing what others might be thinking about that person in the situation. It really gets children thinking and considering the feelings of the character.

The idea was to draw the picture and write the words at the beginning of the story, then return and reflect at the end of the story and see how our minds had changed.

I thought this was a really good exercise and is one that I hope to use when out on placements or when teaching.

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