Week 15

We only have one week of classes left. We have been really really busy trying to finish up our final projects. They were originally due on Monday; however, our teacher changed the date to Wednesday. I am so glad she did because I am completely swamped with work from all my other classes also. This past week we working more on incorporating movement into music. We learned a few simple dances we could share with our future students. I was practicing my recorder this week because I met with out teacher on Friday to play a few songs for her. This allowed me to receive quite a few extra credit points. I learned the recorder back in my grade school days so it was fun to jog my memory this semester on how to play it. It was probably much easier for me than other in my class because of my music history. I already knew how to read music, unlike some in my class. I have enjoyed this semester very much, and I am sad to see it come to an end so soon.

This past week we only had two class periods. I was unable to attend Monday because of registration for my classes for the fall semester. It was very important for me to register as soon as possible because I needed to get the correct classes. I commute over an hour every day and needed to make sure I my schedule was correct and well planned. On Wednesday in class, we learned a little more about adding movement to songs. The class split into two groups and we had to make up movements to a certain section of the song. We also learned more about teaching children to actively listen to music. It is important to help our students learn how to hear the different components of a song. We do not have class on Fridays anmore because we are supposed to use the extra time to work on our final projects. There is a lot of work involved in this project so I really appreciate this extra time out of class. There are a few students, however, that are still attending class to learn how to play music in the teachers band. It is hard to believe that we only have a couple of weeks left of class for the semester!

Week #13

This week we concentrated on presenting the rest of our lesson plans. Our group presented on Monday, and I believe it went very well. It was was nice to show the rest of the class what we had been working on. There was the last group that presented their lesson on Wednesday. They also did a very nice job. We had our individual lesson plan due for our project. This project was similar to our group project except we are not teaching it to the rest of the class. I enjoy incorportating music in to lessons because I think the children would really enjoy it. It would help them to become more interested in the subject being taught. Our main concentration from now on is going to be our final project. This is a lot of work so I am very glad we have Fridays to work on the content of it. There isn't much left of this semester, and I'm sure it is going to fly by.

Week 12

All of our concentration this week was put towards our group literature projects. We spent a little time on Wednesday reading a story and incorporating music into it. I think my group (social skills) worked well together, and I feel we are very prepared to present on Monday. We were able to accomplish everything expected of us. We completed a lesson plan, incorporated music into the story, and were also able to incorporate an extra lesson into it. Our extra lesson has to deal with telling time. The most exciting part of this process was trying to figure out which instrument could create a sound similar to the animals in our story. The major challenge was the time constraint on us. It is hard with a group with this many people to try to meet together. The class time helped some with this, but I wish we would have had a little more. Overall, I think this activity is a lot of fun and can help us to incorporate it into our classroom when we become teachers. Children can benefit in many ways from this type of lesson. First of all, they will be more excited to learn because of the music. The students will also appreciate our creativity and enjoy using insruments while telling the story. As college students, we enjoy playing the instruments with the stories, so elementary students will absolutely love it.