During this week’s music input, we continued playing the glockenspiel. However, instead of using Figure Notes to help us play we moved onto using conventional notation. We worked through a PowerPoint at a relatively quick pace to ensure that we covered it all. Although, if we were doing this with a class it is clear that you would take this at a much slower pace to ensure that everyone understood the notes being used. As the musician myself in this cases I found it difficult to keep up with some of the music pieces, this was because I find it hard to sight read and need slightly more time to work out the notes before I play them. Clearly though this will not be the same for the children as they would be given much more time.
We then moved on to improvisation where Julie played a section of ‘Hit the road Jack’ on the piano and then we had to play 16 bars continuing on from her.
When she first told us that we would be doing this I was very nervous because I was aware, I am not great at playing the glockenspiel and I didn’t want to mess it up especially because it was in front of the whole class. This highlighted the way children may feel when they are asked to do this task. As a future teacher I feel that it may be a good idea to allow children to do this kind of activity in smaller groups as this would encourage all children to take part and be creative preventing them from worrying about playing to the whole class. Although, because Julie only told us that we would be improvising right as we did it, I was less nervous because I had less to worry about it and instead just had to throw myself into it. Overall, even though I was originally apprehensive about improvising once I had done it I realised that it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting and that actually I quite enjoyed it. This shows me that improvisation in music is so important because it allows children to express themselves and be creative when making music pieces. Hallam (2010) agrees with this as she says that playing and being involved with music increases confidence and provides children with another way to communicate their feelings.
While in dance we continued our work from last week. During this week’s dance lecture, we were asked to create a dance concept and a short game that could be used as a warmup with a class. We then in our groups shared these games. This was a worthwhile experience because it allowed us to expand our library of warm up activities to use with classes in the future. It is so important that we have different warm up activities that we can use with children as it is key part of dancing safely.
We then continued with our dance from last week. First, we practiced the whole class sections of the dance. I really enjoyed this part of the session because although we were doing it as a whole class, we had all had a say in the moves that were used. This I think for children would make it very fun because they will be proud of the dance that they have created together rather than it being a teacher lead lesson. Cone (2009) states that “one of the most powerful experiences dance educators can offer children is the opportunity to create dance that reflects their ideas.” We then moved on to incorporating our individual group dances within the bigger whole class routine.
This made me feel nervous and uncomfortable as I prefer not to dance in front of the whole class. I felt slightly out of my comfort zone. However, after doing our dance I realised that everyone was being very supportive of each other and that performance is one of the most important part of creative dance. As this is the part the helps to boost your confidence when everyone loves the dance that you have created. I therefore think that most children would really get involved with this activity. As a teacher I think that this is key part of creative dance as this is a key part of the dance curriculum “I am becoming aware of different features of dance and can practise and perform steps, formations and short dance” (Scottish Government, 2017).
Overall, I feel that the lessons taught in todays inputs have been very valuable within music we learnt how to progress on from figure notes and through the teaching of conventional notation. While in dance I began to understand the role of the teacher in creative dance and also understand the importance of performance and the confidence that this can help children to develop.
References
Cone, T. (2011) Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances. Journal of Dance Education. [Online] Vol. 9(3) pp. 81-89. Available: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15290824.2009.10387390 [Accessed:4 December 2019].
Hallam, S. (2010) The power of music: Its impact on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people. International journal of music education. [Online] Vol.28(3) pp.269-289 Available: file:///C:/Users/Molly/Downloads/International%20Journal%20of%20Music%20Education-2010-Hallam-269-89.pdf [Accessed: 20 November 2019].
Scottish government (2017) Benchmarks Expressive Arts. [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/improvement/Documents/ExpressiveArtsBenchmarksPDF.pdf [Accessed: 20 November 2019].
