Integrated Arts: workshop – music and dance // creative.
Music: This weeks music workshop was theory based. We split into small groups and were given a different aspect from the International Journal of Music Education. My group were given the numeracy chapter to read and create a mind map from. We found out information on maths learning connected with music. What I found most interesting was that people who had many years of private lessons in music, or people that played a keyboard, scored higher in maths than people who didn’t learn an instrument or who played another instrument. Learning an instrument helps with memory and sequences, which is involved in maths. “Music involves creating patterns of sound. Mathematics can be described as the study of patterns.” (John, 2013). We then discussed as a class all the different subjects which could be connected to music. After this, we worked as a group to create a lesson plan that connected music with another subject. We decided to do ours on literacy and music. Our learning intention was to be able to translate ideas/emotions from a piece of music into written text in the form of a creative story. Our success criteria was : I can listen to a piece of music and form ideas, I can put my ideas together and create a story. We decided that we would do a question and answer as one form of assessment. We could also reflect on the experience as a class. The class lesson was that the pupils would listen to 3 pieces of music, and at the end, picked which piece they would want to write about. The pupils could then brainstorm their ideas and come up with their story. This would show that as a whole, everyone in the class would have different ideas and feelings towards a piece of music. To follow up, pupils could create a storyboard of their story, and then could act out their stories in groups. Although the class wasn’t practical this week, it was helpful to a student teacher as we were able to create our own lesson.
**I can respond to music by describing my thoughts and feelings about my own and others’ work.
EXA 0-19a** (Scottish Government, 2004, p.68)
Dance: At first, I was worried about going to this class as I wasn’t sure what we would actually be doing. Even though I went to dance classes from the age of 3, I still was anxious as it was a new environment. We started off by writing down a word that described how we felt about teaching dance to our own class. I wrote ‘nervous’ as I wouldn’t know where to start in teaching a class to dance. However, after this workshop, I definitely gained confidence and would know how to do so now. Firstly, we began by doing warm up games. We stood in two lines and the people at the back had to pass along the dance move, like a game of chinese whispers. Next, we stood in a line and walked around the hall. Different genres of music would play and the person at the front of the line would do a movement that they would connect with the song. This made me nervous as everybody was watching you and waiting for you to do a movement. However, we all calmed when we realised we were all in the same situation. We then discussed how you could warm up all the muscles in your body and which activities we could use for a class. This was helpful as we were given ideas that we could use when on placement. We then went onto labelling parts of the body. We labelled bones, muscles and organs. We used one person from the group and drew around their body on big pieces of paper. This would be a fun and educational lesson for children as it’s active learning. Before doing this activity with a class, I would make sure to teach them about the different muscles, bones and organs in the body so they could correctly identify which place each part goes as we found this quite difficult as adults. Finally, we worked in a group and went round stations with different dance moves such as ‘twist’, ‘hop’ and ‘balance’. We connected 10 different moves and performed it to the class. It was interesting that even though everybody was given the same words, all the dance routines were different.
**I can explore and choose movements to create and present dance, developing my skills and techniques.
EXA 2-08a** (Scottish Government, 2004, p.63)
Reflection
Music: Having a theory based Music lesson was a change, however, a positive change. Learning that Music helps children across the curriculum and with their own lives, was something I had never taken into consideration fully. Children who struggle with home or school life, can turn to music for an escape or to fully express themselves. Music not only helps with confidence but it also impacts other areas in Education such as Numeracy, Literacy, pupils concentration, self-confidence and general attainment (Hallam, 2010). During the workshop, we split into groups and looked at different sections of the Hallam paper, which was effective as I learned a lot from my peers, rather than having to read a full reading. Personally, I don’t think that young pupils need to learn the academic side of Music yet. However, as a student teacher, the academic reading was important as it taught me that Music allows all pupils a chance to prove themselves.
Dance: Creative dance is something that I never really learned in my time in school. I was quite nervous at the thought of teaching Dance, however, after the workshop, I have learned a lot. I learned the 10 key movements which everybody needs to dance. This gave me a starting point for lessons I could teach my pupils in the future. Teaching children these dance moves are important because without them, pupils could not adapt their dancing ability. When teaching Dance, teachers need to remember that the main ideas need to come from children. “The vision for the dance belongs to the children” (Cone, 2009). Teachers also need to ensure that children have warmed up properly, so that there are no injuries. Warm-ups can be done by completing games such as themed tig, or simon says games. Children tend to fully engage in these games which would make sure they have warmed up and are ready to dance. Children can be split into groups to create dance moves in relation to the 10 key movements. This would encourage teamwork and allow children to share their ideas. A main barrier to dance, is the teachers confidence in teaching it. Some teachers do not know where to start when teaching Dance which will make them very nervous and stressed. If teachers are given good support or the right training, the Arts could be much easier for teachers to teach.
Link
The link for the workshops is the positive impact the Arts have. The academic reading from Music showed that Music can positively impact a child’s life and can be used across the curriculum. Dance showed that the Arts can boost self-confidence and has health benefits also.
References
Cone, Purcell, T. (2009). Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances. London: Routledge.
Hallam, S. (2010) International Journal of Music Education. [Module Resource] Available: Integrated Arts in Education module on Moodle. [Accessed: 13 December 2017].
Scottish Government. (2004) Curriculum for Excellence [online] Available: https://www.education.gov.scot/Documents/all-experiences-and-outcomes.pdf [Accessed: 18 December 2017]
