Journal #11

We have mainly been focusing on a creativity this past week in preparation for our children's literature project. There are many different things that can be done with music when reading a book. It has been said that many children learn better and remember information better when that information is associated with music just because they are able to connect with the music that they are listening to. I think a very positive aspect that we focused on this week was that there really is no right and wrong for children when they are trying to incorporate music. We were given many different examples of how to do this. For one story we read about Chicken Little we decided what words and expressions would be good to enunciate and focus on by adding music. The teacher also showed us how to take it to another level by adding a melody into the song. It really had nothing to do with the story but it gave us a simple way to add music to the story just to make it more interesting. However for another story about Thunder Cake we were given the expressions that the teacher wanted us to look it but we were allowed to create our own sounds... It was really interesting because we looked at another factor and that was recycling and the environment. Children can really benefit from this because it allows the children to express themselves in a way that like and they know can show the real person that they are. Allowing students to be creative gives them the chance to feel like they are in a safe environment. I also think that we as students are benefiting as future teachers when we are given the chance to read the book to the class because it is allows us the chance to work on our creativity by expressing ourselves as we read the story. We learn how to change our voices and make it much more interesting to the class. Earlier this week, we learned a new concept and that is called Binary Form. This means 2 and it usually focuses on the pattern of AB. A is known as the chorus or refrain and that is usually what we remember most in a song because we hear it so often. The B is known as the verse and that is the melody, what changes in a song. An example of this was when we listened to the song and incorporated the hand jive into it. We performed the Hand Jive during the chorus of the song so we were able to remember it more so. Another example would be the story/song, Chicken Little because every time you introduce another character we repeat the song, "It hit me on the head." The songs however, Rock-a-bye baby, and the Itsy Bitsy Spider to not demonstrate this Binary concept because they do not have any part that repeats, they ave no chorus. I am excited to see how people incorporate music into their literature book because I think that there are so many lessons that can be learned from these stories as we saw with Thunder Cake, it looked at math, social skills, science, etc. It should be really great.

Reflection #10

This week we really focussed on creativity and how to get students more involved with in it. We read stories and played music to begin to understand how our students are going to be thinking and looking at things. Some of the different concepts we learned this week through the process were a certain form known as binary, which includes an "A" and "B", the verse and chorus. Another concept is timbre which is, tone quality, letting us know that everyone has a different sound to their voice. I think that this is important because as teachers we are going to need to realize that each of our students are going to have different qualities in both voice and other things and we need to understand how to bring about those qualities.
Part of what we did this week was story telling. One of the first stories that we read was about the three piglets. I don't exactly agree with the way this story was taught because the first time a single person read the story which was fine because the teacher said she would chose different people to read stories at different times. However, the next time we went through the story she assigned sounds in the story to people in the classroom. I feel though that if that is the case then you need to make sure that every student in the class is involved at a time because once you have students who feel that they are not needed in the group you will lose their attention and that is something hard to get back. Another story that we went through was about a girl who went on a listening walk and made sure to just listen to the sounds as she passed by and really look at the world. I think this was a fun story to learn about creativity with children because it had so many different options of sounds that children could learn to play with. One of the things that I believe is important to make sure that children understand about creativity is that there are no limits. Each child has different opinions and visions on things. There fore although to the "normal" world a pig may make a distinct voice different children may have different adaptations which is okay.
This to me is where student-centered learning comes into play. Children deserve to have all the freedom in the world to express themselves. Although children do need limitations and boundaries to clearly understand right and wrong at times it is a great thing when they chose to show their emotions. Creativity is one of the greatest gifts you can give a child and it has to be developed to the extreme how that child choses to because creativity is something that will always let them enjoy the world. I believe that student centered learning was greatly enhanced in this activity because children were given a specific sound they had to make however, they were able to use their voices and body parts however they needed to make the sound as real as they wanted it to be. Another way that it was enhanced was by having the different music instruments and allowing children to chose which one they felt best suited the sound intended. This allowed the students to best express themselves and it lets them feel like its okay to chose something that other people may not see as typical because they understand that other peers in their group may also chose something not typical as long as it is real to themselves.

Journal #8

This past week in class we mainly talked about the final project for this class as well as dealing a lot with creativity. I think that this music project although incorporates a great deal of information is a way to increase our ability to be creative. This is because we have to chose a culture to talk about, the exciting part is that it doesn't have to be a culture that you relate to just one that you are interested in. We also completed an assignment on the use of musical instruments to help student's creativity.
I think that it is very important for students to be creative because that is something that will greatly help them in every aspect of their life and in any career that they chose. For example if they want to become teachers then they need to understand that sometimes a lesson might not go as planned or that a child is not understanding the material in the way that it is being presented and therefore they have to use their creativity to work with the challenges they are given. Or for instance if they want to become a doctor they might be faced with a power outage in the middle of surgery and need to be creative to keep their patient alive.
Creativity is something that increases the brains capacity to be able to understand information. It also helps students create connections between what they are learning in school to their real lives so that they can better retain that information. We learned in chapter 5, the different ways that instruments can be used to increase the student's creativity. Through instruments such as the piano, guitar, claves, melody bells, etc. students can learn about pitch, melody and harmonies. I believe that it is extremely important for students to expand their creativity as early as possible because they will be able to better express themselves later on in life and realize the person that they really are.
As for my cultural project I have decided to study the Israeli Culture. I feel that it is close to my heart because my entire family is Jewish and many of them come from Israel. I hope to learn a lot about the culture and customs to better understand where I cam from.

Journal #7

Studying for tests for me vary depending on the class that it is. I honestly thought that for me I would have to prepare a little bit less for music because I have such a musical background and understand things such as the different note names and values and the definitions of different terms such as melody and steady beat. However, this past year I have learned to review for tests by actually completing the study guide. For me I can understand it much more if I actually take the time to make notes about each concept as well as writing down what I don't understand and then looking back at those terms. Like I said, it was really easy for me to understand, note names, times signature, note values, and definitions because being a piano player that comes naturally to me. However, I felt that it wasn't necessary to put such an abundance of information on the study guide because taking a look at the children's vocal ability and characteristics, and their song interests for example their is such a wide range to know of that and we had no idea what would be on the test and it turned out to be only one question and I know that for a lot people that was something that they spent a long time learning when they could have been putting their time into something that was emphasized much more on the test. It was also difficult for me to remember the half step, whole step sequence because since I can remember every music teacher I have ever had has explained to me that a white key to a white key is a whole step even if there is no black key in the middle so I had to relearn that. Although, I understand what staccato and legato is I think it was completely wrong to suddenly add that to the test on the day that we were reviewing for the test not learning new information. I think that a lot of the test was confusing, for instance no one remembers at all when during this class we learned the notes that correspond with solfegee.
Some of the things that we have learned during the semester were the definitions of steady beat, the constant repetition of one sound, rhythmic pattern, the combination of long, short, and silent sounds, melody, combination of various pitches. We also learned about a C major scale as well as G major. We learned that in order to be considered C major, the notes have to go from C to C and that in a G major to follow the sequence of WWHWWWH there has to be an F#. We learned about the way the way a lesson plan should be written in this class and that some of the important factors it should incorporate are concepts and skills both musical and non musical, objectives, closure and assessment. In talking about lesson plans, we also talked about a man named Kodaly who believed that every child should be musically educated. He felt that in order to teach a child music you need hand signs such as Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do. He also came up with rhythmic duration patterns to refer to the different notes such as quarter, half, eighth, whole, and sixteenth. He referred to them as Ta, Ti-Ti, Ta-ah, Ti-Ri-Ti-Ri, and Ta-ah-ah-ah. Speaking of the different notes, we learned about their values, for instance, quarter note is 1 beat, half note is 2 beats, whole note is 4 and the eighth note is 1/2 beat. We also learned the corresponding rests. On Fridays we began playing the recorder and in doing this so far we know the G, A, B, C, and D notes and their fingering charts. One of the last things that we have learned so far is how to transfer a song into both a rhythmic notation and a melodic icon.
Although this is not everything that we have learned it is a very big majority and the basis of what most information stems off of. I hope that as the semester progresses and the information gets harder we will be better prepared both before and during the test.