Week 8

This week we learned why it is important to use musical instruments in education. We learned the different ways in which the instruments help the student's learning and development. We also learned a new note on the recorder, which is the F#. We also talked about the benefits of creativity to children, especially when incorporating music into the classroom.

The benefits of creativity can range across many different spectrums. For some it can help them learn better than just listening to the facts spoken and for others it can create a sense of self that they may not have had before. In music students can express their emotions without retribution from others. Music can help children use their imaginations more over time as well as learn a new and exciting release for their feelings and thoughts. Music can help children understand the use of composition in everyday life and encourage them to write songs and pieces of their own to show their family.
For my multicultural project I will be doing a unit on Ireland.


Emilie

Self Evaluation: Week 6

This week we taught our lessons to half of the class so that we could get them all done in the three hours. I think my presentation went pretty well despite a few mental blocks from cutting a different things from the lesson. I sang in tune and in my head voice very well. I also kept the tempo of the song well; the phrasing of the song was more difficult than some but was no problem for me to figure out. I was prepared for teaching the lesson and did not use any extra materials or instruments in the lesson. I captured the classes attention and worked on sequencing the steps of my lesson according to the time allotted to me. Toward to end of the lesson, the flow got a little off due to the cuts that I made to the lesson to meet the time constraint. I should have gone over the French words of the song a few more times to ensure that the students were pronouncing them correctly.
What I found most difficult about presenting my lesson was getting over the nerves of teaching for the first time in a school setting in front of a group of my peers. Though I asked them to, the "students" did not sing after me when I introduced the English words to the song. I also could have had the dance the students performed involve t circles which moved opposite each other on the repeated phrases of the song. This is one of the things that I did not do well during the lesson. The "students" did very well at learning the dances and words of the song. I believe I did well at keeping the attention of the students and motivating them to perform the song many times.If I could do this lesson again I would change the way the dance is performed. I would also work more on the French words with the "students" to improve their pronunciation of the words.

Emilie

Week 5 Flew By

This week in class we worked on our lesson plans for our first teaching presentation of the semester. We worked on the lesson plan in groups of three with each of the groups having a leader who helped the other two with any problems with their lessons. We looked at the criteria of the lesson presentation and were told the consequences of missing a day of the lesson presentations. We also worked on the recorder more on Friday. We learned the note "D" on Friday as well as the formula for the major scale.
We learned the way of writing a lesson plan last week but this week we were taught by each other as well as our professor. We worked together to perfect our lesson plans while we also thought of different dances which would work well with our song. We also looked at the criteria of the lesson plan presentation which included many things from the flow of the lesson to the musicality of us as teachers. The musicality refers to our voices and the pitch with which we are singing. On Friday we worked with the recorder again, learning a new note "D". After learning the new note we looked at the formula for writing a major scale which is that the 3rd and 4th notes as well as the 7th and 8tyh notes must be a half step apart.
It is important for us, a students, to learn the fundamentals of music so that we can understand the difference between the music which is appropriate for young students and that which is not.. It is important for us, a future educators, to learn the fundamentals of music so that we can use this information to teach our respective subjects with an intonation of music which can help students who learn differently. The use of the recorder will remind us, as students, that not everything is easy for others. This puts the abilities of others into perspective for those of us who do not struggle with musical concepts and skills.
It is important for children to learn the concepts and skills which are written into our lesson plans so that they understand the different ways in which music can touch the lives of students like them. The use of recorders in classrooms will help with the psychomotor skills of young students as well as those of older students, especially those in high school. It can be important for older students to learn the way a lesson plan is written so that they are able to understand why the music classroom is structured the way that it is.


Emilie

My Music History

My name is Emilie Mann and I am a Junior at Northern Illinois University. My musical background goes back to riding to visit my grandmother in Indiana and listening to the radio when I was younger. When I was in fourth and fifth grade I was taught how to play the recorder and I was in choir with the other kids who decided to give up recess to learn how to sing. at the end of fifth grade we were allowed to try instruments both for the band and for the orchestra. By the end of that day I had decided that I wanted to play either the flute or the alto saxophone. In sixth grade I started in the band with the clarinet just until my saxophone was ready. I have been playing the saxophone now for almost ten years. In middle school I also sang in the choir and by the end of my eighth grade year I was singing solos with some of my best friends. In high school I sang in the middle choir for two years before auditioning into the Chamber Choir, the highest choir besides the Show Choir. During that time I was also playing in the Symphonic Band and often spliting my time between the Chamber Choir and the band. I was also spending most of my time in the after school bands like the Marching Band, the Pep Band, and the Jazz Band. While I was in Choir and Band, we went to contests and often were scored highly receiving either a I or a II in all of the contests but a few. For the choir we sang a wide range of songs in many different languages. Among the languages we sang in Hebrew, Swahili, Latin, German, and Spanish.
In the first two days of classes, I found the activities refreshing since most my classes are serious and would not allow us to act like children. I thought the name learning game was a great idea especially when working with younger children, as I plan to do. I also found the activity we played on the first day a good way to make younger children comfortable when they are first starting school. The way we learned the activities was also well thought out and made the memorization of the songs easy. The use of movement in the song also would help focus the children and release their excess energy. These activities could help to keep the children from fidgeting during the regular class sessions while also helping them focus on the tasks at hand.
Emilie

Homeschooling and Modern Ideals

Since the beginning of recorded history, the idea of educating children has been firmly in place. Only in the past two hundred years or so the idea of sending a child to one person with many other children has become commonplace. In the past forty years the regulation of the materials students learn has come to the forefront. this idea that one person who has a certificate to say that they went through special training has overtaken the idea that mothers were the best teacher for their young children. this may have come with the migration of families from the Midwest to the west coast and the inability for the mothers to teach their children while traveling the long distance to the coast. this could also have come about when Horace Mann started the first school in Ohio. This change in ideals has often led to the ridicule of the children who are still being taught at home. The children in traditional schools call these children names and tease them about not being like everyone else. Do you think that the change from homeschooling to traditional schooling has led to the chastisement of children who are different? How would you deal with a child who was ridiculing another for the way they were home schooled and brought up different? Would you ever consider placing you child into mainstream schools after homeschooling them in earlier years?
~Emilie

Becoming a Education Major

I am trying to figure out what I can do to increase my chances of being accepted into the College of Education for the Fall of next year. I have gotten good grades since I have been at Northern only one 'C' and one 'D' but I still feel that it may be impossible to predict the outcome. My advisor has told me that with my grades I should be fine when it comes to the Spring when I need to apply but since this is the first time that I have had advising with her I don't know if I will be okay or not. What types of things are you doing to try to ensure your acceptance into the program? Is there anyway that having those two bad grades will cause them not to accept my application? I know they take the people with the top GPAs but I have talked to many people who have gotten in with slightly lower GPAs than mine is right now. If you have gotten into the program how were your grades when you were accepted?

Math, History, English Oh My!

Have you ever noticed that when teachers bring the subjects of math, history, and English students seem to shutdown a little. I do not believe that it is because they dislike these subjects more than any other, but perhaps it is the way in which these subjects are being taught. I remember in Elementary and Middle School my teachers would just teach us the facts in one set way without giving us room to discover another way to reach the same answer. Those years were often frustrating though at the time I did not fully understand why; the mixture of this is the right way attitudes from the teachers and the you can do anything attidtudes from home often confused me as a child. As I teacher I hope to provide my students with the knowledge that there are many ways to rationalize different ways of doing even the simplest math problem. I also hope that my students will learn to not only memorize the facts behind history and math, so that they may regurgitate it on a test, but that they will learn the reasons why these facts were listed in their textbooks in the first place. I learned at a young age that learning just the facts that the teachers think you should know often led to problems when I was taking a test and asked to place those facts into the context of that time. With English, my Middle School teachers would ask us to write stories about made up places and people. I found this effective because I loved to write stories and poems. In sixth grade, we were asked to write poems in several styles, like Hiku, I found this very rewarding since I strongly connected my poetry to my life. During High School, my teachers would tell me that my poetry had no focus but I knew that they did not understand the free-flowing style that I used on a daily basis. One night while watching a poetry slam I found a new style that I adapted to very easily and soon became the basis for one of my longest poems "Conformity" which asks the question "Why are people judged on apperance and not what's inside". This poem also became the reason I want to publish my own book of poetry, which would track my life from the young carefree years of Middle School and early High School to the more troubled years later in my life. How have the different styles of teaching math, history, and English effected your learning experiences from childhood on? What type of learnign works best for you, seeing the material, being able to touch the material, or hearing the material spoken? Personally I respond better to hearing the material as well as writing that information down to cement it in my memory. Did any of the ways your teachers taught English change your outlook on life and the influence that your experiences had over what you write for assignments?
~Emilie