This week in music we were working with the glockenspiel and using figure notes. Each note is a different shape and depending on the octave – a different colour. It also shows a longer note by having a line of colour after it and shorter notes are shown by ‘squashing’ the shape to fit as half the size it was. We had the chance to play some different tunes on the instrument and I chose ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ and ‘Jingle Bells’. I had a lot of fun with this and I surprised myself by picking up this form of notation quite quickly. By having the music presented to me using figure notes, I found it less daunting and more straightforward than looking at a normal piece of sheet music. This increased my confidence when approaching learning a new instrument.

Below are the figure note sheets of music:

A video of me playing ‘Jingle Bells’ using figure notes:

Next, we had to do an improvisation to the beat of ‘Hit the Road Jack’ – 16 bars – while the rest of the class listened, and the lecturer accompanied us on the piano. I found this exercise daunting and I felt I had been put on the spot. I began to relax after I heard some of my peers playing as I realised that most of us had similar levels of experience and no one was an expert. When it came to my turn I was nervous but got through it and felt proud that I had achieved it. I think that it is important to remember this experience as I feel that many children would struggle when having to present a solo to their whole class. I do not think I would use this method with children, perhaps relying on volunteers who felt confident.

Teaching music to children is something that I feel is very important. According to the Arts Education Partnership (n.d.) learning music improves recall and retention of verbal information. By learning to play an instrument children are also developing the parts of the brain responsible for verbal memory, an important skill for remembering information in all academic subjects. Music students who were tested for verbal memory showed a higher recall for words compared to non-music students (Ho et al., 1998; 2003, cited in Arts Educations Partnership, n.d.).

Drama was very fun and engaging in today’s session. Despite being shy, I have always enjoyed drama and I studied it in high school, so I was looking forward to this input. The drama conventions that we were looking at in today’s session were:

• Freeze Frame – When the children stopped, not moving or speaking representing a critical moment in their drama.
• Thought Tunnel – A double line of children who speak the thoughts and feelings of the character who is walking between the double lines.
• Teacher in Role – When the teacher takes part in the drama alongside the children.
• Vox Pop – The teacher asks the children when they are, in role, a series of quick questions about the position their character finds themselves in. (Killen, n.d.).

We were villagers and there was a dragon who had been eating local livestock and everyone feared the dragon. We were to create a freeze frame of a typical day in the village when the dragon appears, and we can see the fear on everyone’s faces. Next, we used thought tunnel by having the ‘dragon’ (lecturer) walk between us while we said what the villagers felt about him. A town meeting was then held with the lecturer playing the part of the mayor (Teacher in Role) and we as villagers discussed what we should do about the dragon. Some people wanted to kill it, others wanted to capture it, but the overall view of the dragon was negative. The lecturer was then hot seated as the dragon and we found out that he was just lonely and wanted friends and so our initial assumptions had been wrong. At the end we used vox pop – in small groups we were to have it so that one person was a news anchor asking the villagers questions on their feelings towards the dragon. I feel this is a particularly useful drama as it can help deal with tougher subjects such as bullying and mental health, but in a way that the children can relate to and without it being too harsh to deal with or overtly personal.

Paige-Smith and Craft (2011) state that as teachers we must be able to differentiate between what they call “creative practice” and practice which “fosters creativity”. The former relates to the imaginative ideas we have on how to work with children. The latter is the one in which teachers need to use if they want true creativity within their classrooms. It is about ensuring that we, as teachers, encourage the children in our class to express their ideas and possibilities and that we do not stand in the way of this (Paige-Smith and Craft, 2011). We don’t want to be the kind of teachers who stand at the front of the class and tell the learners what to do, but more the kind of teachers who, through the creative arts, foster collaborative thinking and solution-focussed, creative learners who know how to transfer their skills into different contexts.

References

Arts Education Partnership. (n.d.). How Music Education Helps Students Learn, Achieve, and Succeed. [Online] Available: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED541070.pdf [Accessed: 23 October 2018].

Killen, A. (n.d.). Drama Conventions and Tools for Teaching. [Moodle Resource]. Available: Integrated Arts Module. [Accessed: 23 October 2018].

Paige-Smith, A., Craft, A. (2011) Developing Reflective Practice in the Early Years. [Online] Available: ProQuest Ebook Central. [Accessed: 23 October 2018].