In today’s lecture we looked at why music matters. People can experience music in various places such as in class, in school and in their community. There is also many ways I learned that I could integrate music into the classroom. An example is using ICT in music which links important subjects in school together showing pupils that they can enjoy both of these topics.
In today’s drama workshop we were looking at a few more groups presenting their microteaching. I felt much more relaxed this week as it was not me who was standing up in front of my peers leading the lesson. It was useful to see what drama conventions that they had decided to use and how they related this to the storys that they were using. We also did a task after this where we looked at two characters from a book. The book was called the tunnel and looked at two characters called Jack and Rose. We then used role in the wall to give our descriptions of what both of the characters may have thought of each other within different parts of the story. We picked Jack and inside the outline of the body we put words down that we thought Jack would have used to describe himself and then around the outside of the outline of the body we wrote down words that we thought Rose would have used to describe Jack throughout different parts of the story. I found that this could be a useful thing to do in the classroom as it allows the pupils to engage more with the story and show them how their perception of the character may change as more of the story is uncovered. This lets the pupils discover more of a story to see if their perception changes on the characters and allows them to explore how they could use various drama conventions to act out different parts of the story. An experience and outcome that I felt could relate this workshop is “I enjoy creating, choosing and accepting roles, using movement, expression and voice” EXA 1-12a. (Scottish Government, n.d).
In today’s music workshop we listened to a piece of music that was seven minutes long. “Listening is the fundamental skill necessary for experiencing music as a performer, composer or audience”. (Hennessy, 1995, P38). Children can develop their listening skills by listening to various different types of music which in turn can help them be creative when it comes to the children creating their own music or analysing other peoples music. We took notes whilst listening to the music. The kind of things I had written down were when the music was happy or sad, louder or quieter and when the pace of the music changed. We then had to work in groups to create a storyboard about the music piece. My group decided that it had sounded like some sort of chase, so this lead us to create our storyboard about a rabbit being chased by a fox. When the music was quieter the rabbit had found a hiding place but then once the music had quickened up again the fox was chasing the rabbit up and down hills. The music ended upbeat so our story ended with the rabbit escaping from the fox. This would be a very useful method of incorporating music with art in the classroom which pupils would find enjoyable as they would be able to be creative. This means that the pupils can draw whatever they felt that the music was describing which allows them to be engaged with the music that is playing and they can then be creative with what they draw after the music clip has been played.
The drama and music sessions linked together today as both workshops encouraged us to use words to describe certain characters and then going on to gain an image of these characters whether it be imaginative or drawn on paper.
References:
Scottish Government, n.d. Curriculum for excellence: expressive arts experiences and outcomes. Assessed online. Available at: https://education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-eo.pdf
Hennessy, S. 1995. Music 7-11 developing primary teaching skills. London and New York: Routledge. P38.
