Today’s lecture was called ‘Why Music Matters’.

The lecture gave me insight into the variety of experiences music gives children, for example, in the classroom, in the school and in the wider community. Many children are already exposed to music and have a keen participation in music through learning to play an instrument or sing, learning to compose a piece of music, use ICT to create music such as ‘Garage Band’, learn to perform in front of an audience and also learn to listen to the music to understand the key concepts within the music. Many people discover music through simply listen to music and attending concerts.

In today’s music workshop we were placed into groups and given a specific section an academic piece of writing called ‘The Power of Music’. From this we were to create mind maps to simplify what we took from the reading. The specific part on the reading given to my group was creativity. Within this section it discussed pupils who had engagement with music tend to achieve their full learning potential.

From doing this activity it was evident that those who engage in the music or making music will have great impact their intellectual development throughout life. This workshop as well as the dance workshop was how the use of rhythm is needed in both music and dance.

Today was the first introduction into dance within integrated arts. Before we started the workshop we had a discussion as a class about how we felt teaching the arts a lot of us tended to have the same response as ‘unsure’, ‘scared’ and ‘apprehensive’.

We started the lesson by playing games such as tig, number game to make a object/ shape related to the certain number. We were then introduced to the ten step dance sequence, which is jump, hop, turn, slide, gesture, reach, balance, twist, kick and roll.

We then went into groups and worked to create a dance using the ten steps sequence introduced to us in our workshop. From this we then continued on to discuss the body parts used when dancing.

A music lesson which could be done in the classroom is could be listening to a piece of music reflecting on how the music made you feel. Then create a storyboard on what you think is happening throughout the music to then write a story about what is happening linking it to literacy, creating a dance about what you interpret the music is trying to say or creating a play to preform in font of peers.

Reference:

Hallam, S (nd) The Power of Music: It’s Impacts on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people. Institute of Education: University of London.

 

Cone (2009) Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances