Music

Music is an art form that has the potential to enhance learning in many other areas. Musical involvement is very  important for every child to engage in because of it's many benefits. I learned that singing can be used in many more ways that are meaningful than I anticipated. Through presenting I learned it's much harder to teach a song when multiple people need to teach it.

My goal for teaching music in my future classroom is to use it more often than not. I don't simply want to play music for my students to hear but get them involved. So many people think they can't be musical but it really doesn't take too much effort if you get music exposure throughout your life. I have been involved in music my whole life and I know it has benefited me academically so I hope to use it in the classroom quite a bit. I really like the idea of tying songs to the curriculum because I retain things so much better through music and I know a lot of my students will too.

As far as being ready to use music in the classroom goes, I need to keep practicing teaching songs. I was a primary chorister for a year and a half and I taught with the 4 rules already so I'm fairly familiar. It always takes a little practice to get back in the routine though. I also want to practice singing some of the folk songs an becoming familiar with the melodies again by singing with my baby daughter. She loves music and I think doing some activities with her and my musical husband will help me prepare to teach music in my future classroom. This was totally my unit where I was completely comfortable.

Working in this team was alright. Natalia did a lot of the work of writing the script which was awesome and then most of us contributed to it. I did the editing and revising of the document which wasn't much work at all. We all got along well, it just didn't feel like every single member pulled their weight. This same group member decided not to come to our group meeting to practice either which was disappointing but we got through just fine. I think when I have students work in groups I will have all students be assigned to part of the project that they must turn in so they stay accountable and contribute. I have done the entire project so many times in multiple classes my whole life and it gets old really fast. Natalia is taken advantage of like this too and I feel bad for her. I think that is what I would change but I do like group projects because we can glean so many good ideas from other people.