Charanga is an online resource that can be utilised for teaching music in the primary setting. A positive of it being an online resource is that it can be altered without the need for reprinting costs. It is an outstanding resource for primary non-music specialists.

Within the resource there are many different tabs, one of which is called This Day In Music. This can be a good way of introducing music to the class and catching the pupils interest. After exploring Charanga within our music workshop today, I now feel I would be more confident in teaching music. I believe it is a resource that children will enjoy and engage well with, as it is regularly updated with new songs and it is a different way of learning about music whilst still achieving the experiences and outcomes.

There are programmes for each primary level and combines playing instruments such as the recorder and glockenspiel, along with vocals. Each song is broken down into 6 steps, which is essentially 6 weeks worth of music lessons. It builds upon the different layers of music, similar to what we have been learning in previous workshops in a way that is fun and engaging for pupils. Building up the layers from discovering the pulse and then adding rhythm.

The first part of the lessons involves the pupils listening to the song and being able to ask questions like, what instruments can you hear? and,  do you like the song? By using questions like these enables pupils to use their thinking skills and reflect upon how they feel about the song.

Music helps cultivate thinking skills, such as abstract reasoning, that are an essential part of children’s learning and give them the capacity to be able to solve problems (Rauscher, 2000). This part of the resource provides evidence that music can help enhance thinking skills that Rauscher describes.

Higher order thinking skills were the focus of our visual arts workshop. Each emotional learning card had an image with a series of questions on the back of them. These images were meant to deliberately test our tolerance of ambiguity, which is essential within the arts. I felt I was able to decipher the meaning of the image I was given, along with accepting the possibility that someone else may have had a differing opinion to me.

This task allowed us to prove that without prior knowledge of the resource and materials that we could develop our higher order thinking skills. Tasks like these could be effective in the classroom to promote the development of thinking skills, which can then be transferred into other curricular areas, for example, visible thinking within literacy.  A successful outcome of the expressive arts is the attainment of rewards in other curricular areas (Scottish Executive, 2006).

Taylors model of assessment was the rubric that was used to analyse the pictures. Taking one or two questions from each category of process, form, content and mood, in pairs we were able to explore the range of possibilities of what the image was telling us.

Developing my own higher order thinking skills has been valuable to my own learning this week. It is a skill I had not really given much thought to, however the workshops have allowed me to realise how integral they are to be able to enhance other life skills, like problem solving.

A single image can evoke a rich conversation. With art needing a problem at the centre, having the skill set to be able to contribute to the rich conversation is crucial.

Reference List

Raucher (2000) cited in Arts Education Partnership (2011) Music Matters: How Music Education Helps Students Learn, Achieve, and Succeed [Online] Available: https://moodle.uws.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/36855/mod_folder/content/0/Music%20Matters%20Final.pdf?forcedownload=1 [Accessed: 29^th October 2019].

Scottish Executive (2006) A Curriculum for Excellence- Building the Curriculum 1: The Contribution of Curricular Areas [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/Documents/btc1.pdf [Accessed:  29th October 2019].

Norwegian students were visiting campus this week and so the focus of this week was Norwegian aesthetics.

The school system in Norway differs to a great degree to our school system in Scotland.  Norwegians stay in nursery till age 6, a year later than we do here and then spend 10 years at primary school. To complete high school only takes 3 years and the Norwegian government fund higher education for a further 8 years.

A massive reform in 2017 has meant that every teacher in Norway must have a masters degree. There is also much more focus on physical and outdoor learning – you CAN learn maths outside! The University of Oslo has made a variety of changes for the teacher training that focus more on the practicality of teaching such as how to manage the classroom and making assessments in the classroom (International Ed News, 2013). Comparing this with the Scottish education system which puts emphasis on attainment within numeracy and literacy.

Art is a compulsory subject from the start of schooling and as they move further up the school turn to crafts like wood carving. Dance and drama are combined with dance being a major part of school.

Our music workshop took place within the Mac Lab looking at the app Garage band.

We created an autumn soundscape composing our music, as well as trying out different loops and sound effects to get the sound we wanted.

This is a good resource that can be used within the classroom as it gets children thinking about different sounds and also enhances digital skills whilst exploring many experiences and outcomes. Children could record themselves telling a story and add their own sound effects, or make their own animation and add music.

It is an app that the Norwegian students could use within their own teaching and could take some of the ideas learned in the workshop today and apply them in their own lessons.

We adopted the Norwegian focus of outdoor learning in our visual art workshop and were asked to create an intervention using natural materials. Art always has to have a problem to solve and by doing so equips pupils with the life they will need. “Years of research show that it’s closely linked to almost everything that we as a nation say we want for our children and demand from our schools: academic achievement, social and emotional development, civic engagement, and equitable opportunity ” (Smith, 2009, n.p).  Due to this  our group created a barrier out of stones and then broke it down to create and solve the problem of breaking down barriers, promoting resilience.

We focused on land artists  during our visual art workshop and when creating our intervention were inspired by Richard Long. He is a famous land art artist, whose main focus was creating sculptures out of stones.

Reference List

International Ed News (2013) [Online] Available: https://internationalednews.com/2013/07/11/teacher-education-in-norway/ [Accessed: 22nd October 2019].

Smith, F. (2009) Why Arts Education is Crucial and Who’s Doing it Best Edutopia [Online] 28 January, non-paginated Available: https://www.edutopia.org/arts-music-curriculum-child-development [Accessed: 22nd October 2019].

Our  written assignment was the focus of today’s lecture, looking at how the assignment could be broken down into sections and looking at certain topics within these sections. By doing this, it should make the writing of the assignment easier and less complicated as we know what is required in each part.

We have to choose 2 of the arts we feel we have learned the most from and from the inputs we have had so far I think music will be one of the art forms I choose.  It is one of the subjects I have the least knowledge about and feel as though I have gained a lot of valuable information about the curricular area, like how music can enhance wider skills to enable children to fulfil the four capacities. Being creative can support a wide range of tasks, including environmentally, culturally and within the community (Education Scotland, 2013).

Our music workshop was centred around rhythm and pulse. Chanting and marching  a song to a steady beat was the first part of the session,

“Pulse is a steady beat ,                                                                                              You can feel it in your feet,                                                                                   Keep it steady, keep in time,                                                                                Let’s sing this song another time!”.

By explaining what pulse is and giving children real life references, for example, our heartbeat is a steady pulse. Then allowing them to sing and march would cement their understanding of the concept.

We also looked and performed presentations about rhythm. We participated in doing some drumming whilst looking at some presentations that were focused on both first and second level outcomes.

Printing was the subject of today’s visual arts session, working in the style of Bob and Roberta Smith.

As above, we created our own slogans and used highly contrasting colours to create a high impact that gives children agency and the freedom to express themselves.

Reference List

Education Scotland (2013) Creativity 3-18 Curriculum Impact Report. [Online] Available : http://moodle.uws.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/532076/mod_resource/content/2/Creativity3to18.pdf [Accessed: 19th October 2019].

Music is an extremely important subject within the curriculum. It can help increase spatial awareness, with experiments such as the Mozart effect, which has found that spacial tasks, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle were completed quicker after listening to classical music (Telegraph Reporter, 2015).

Music is also an inclusive subject that can enhance wider skills, such as improving confidence and social skills by singing in a choir or playing in an orchestra.

Having an awareness of music by discussing music and realising that everyone has different musical tastes and thoughts on music is extremely beneficial to both us as teachers and pupils alike. We all have our own likes and dislikes, for example, my favourite kind of music is pop punk, I am not too keen on heavy metal.

We were able to prove this theory within the music workshop with listening to five pieces of music and we had to write down one word about how it made us feel. There were many different answers around the room and yet we had all listened to the same piece of music. We learned that there is no right or wrong answer.

By having this appreciation of music ourselves, we can instil this within our pupils and encourage them to become successful learners, effective contributors, confident individuals and responsible citizens. The Greenmill String Project is a great example of a program within Ayrshire that allows children to develop the skills needed to attain the attributes above.

When teachers were interviewed, they stated that “Some are looked-after or accommodated children. This project engages all of them. That has a spin- off into the classroom. They’re more engaged there too. They have a confidence that suddenly they’re good at something.” ( TES, 2011).

In our music workshop, we looked at using music to inspire us to think creatively through literacy. There do seem to be benefits for engaging in musical activities in relation to reading beyond
those associated with language development (Hallam, 2010, p42). We firstly listened to a piece of music and we were then asked to create a storyboard based upon what we heard. There were many different interpretations around room, but our group decided to base ours on a man being chased by a bee. This activity can be taught to all ages and modified to suit each level. For example, if the activity was being taught to infants, you could ask them to draw a picture of what they hear using music as the stimulus.

Music can allow us to find pathways to other curricular areas. We would not get away with not teaching maths, so we shouldn’t not teach music!

Reference List

Hallam, S. (2010) The Power of Music pp 40-47 [Online] Available: http://www.dickhallam.co.uk/resources/The%20Power%20of%20Music%202014.pdf [Accessed: 9 October 2019]

Telegraph Reporter (2015) ‘Mozart effect’: can classical music really make your baby smarter? The Telegraph. [Online] 28 March, non-paginated. Available: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11500314/Mozart-effect-can-classical-music-really-make-your-baby-smarter.html [Accessed: 9 October 2019].

TES (2011) Strings Attached [Online] Available: https://www.tes.com/news/strings-attached-0

I have decided to incorporate a video blog for this weeks reflection please find the video below.