Our lecture this week introduced us to the subject of music and that music can have quite the impact in the primary class. We looked at lots of academic studies that showed that music can actually help with other subjects, such as maths or English. We also learned that music can help with social skills because it’s not a solitary subject, for example, orchestras. The orchestra is made up of lots of smaller groups of instruments and they need to work together, within their section and within the whole orchestra. This was something I had never thought about. When I was in primary school, I used to play the cello but I never really saw music as a strong subject of mine. I viewed it in a similar way to art and that it was a subject that you were either good or bad at, it wasn’t something that you could improve on.
In our music workshop, we looked at how moods and how music can affect and create our moods. We listened to some different pieces of music and then had to write about how it made us feel. There was such a wide variety of answers given, even within my small peer group, which highlighted the fact that music can make everyone feel something different because of things like your background, life experiences, etc. We also discussed how even if you don’t personally feel confident teaching music, you can’t deny your pupils the opportunity. You may not feel confident teaching maths or English but you still need to teach it so why should you treat music like an option. Music can also be used to inspire creativity within the classroom. We done this by listening to a piece of music and taking notes of what we think might be happening during the music. We then had to come up with a story as a group and draw out a story board illustrating it. We then all presented our stories to the rest of the class and noticed that although there were some differences, such as characters or settings, everyones stories followed a similar storyline. It started off with a happy beginning but then because elements of the music, such as the tempo, volume and pitch, changed and sounded more aggressive, everyones story experienced a dangerous twist.
This week was our turn to do our drama micro-teaching exercise. We decided to focus ours on the book ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. We started our lesson my reading part of the book to the class and then doing a whole class warm up of acting out walking through the different environments mentioned in the book. We then read the rest the book up until they find the bear in the cave and used the conventions freeze frame and thought tunnel. In the freeze frame, the groups had to show their reaction to seeing the bear for the fist time and in the thought tunnels, everyone had to say a word that they felt described the bear. We then finally finished the story and this was when we done our final convention which was teacher in role. Once I put on my jacket, I took on the role of the bear and the rest of the class asked me questions, including why I chased the family and how I was feeling. From asking the questions, the class worked out that the bear was actually just lonely and only chased the family because he wanted some company. We then finished the lesson by saying that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover because we all thought the bear was scary but in reality, it was misunderstood.
I really enjoyed doing my micro-teaching because it was my first real experience teaching and personally, I thought that it went really well. Drama is something I’ve really enjoyed doing both in and out of uni so for that to be one of the first subjects that I teach was a very important personal moment for me. It also made me really look forward to going out on placement and further teaching and exploring different subjects.
