Week 2 What Did We Do?

This week in Music 373, we learned two very important musical concepts steady beat and rhythm, we also began to learn how to play the recorder. The different concepts were easy enough for me to understand because of my extensive musical background. In the recorder lesson, we learned how to play the first three upper register notes B, A, and G. The two musical concepts were taught to us by having each student write a rhyme and say their rhyme to a steady beat and a rhythmic beat. This way of teaching the two concepts was perfect for students to grasp the meaning of the two different musical concepts. The way we learned how to play the three notes on the recorder felt like we were in a Suzuki style class since we were not able to see the music written out.
In the class we had this week about rhythm and steady beat this was shown to us by having us experiment and find the best way to strike the hand drum or hit the rhythm sticks together. For the recorder lesson, Dr. Wang showed us the note that we were supposed to play. Then she let us hear how the note was supposed to sound and finally we were allowed to play the note in four short notes. This type of teaching would be ideal for younger students who are interested in playing music before they are able to grasp the concept of reading the notes on the page.
It is important for us as future educator to learn these concepts so that when we are teachers we will be able to teach to children who learn in all different ways. For children who learn best through seeing the information they have the written aspect of subjects like math and social studies. For children who learn best through hearing the information they can learn through the use of music in the subjects that they may find the most boring. These concepts also can help us as teachers understand the different reasons for the learning style differentiations. After we learn the different musical concepts, we will be able to use them throughout our teaching careers in many of our subjects.
It is important for younger students to begin to learn musical concepts at an early age so that the creative portions of their brains will continue to grow and create new synapses. Another reason for the beginning of music education at an early age is to aid in the learning of other subjects. The use of music in the general education classroom could liven up the boring subjects for students who cannot read very well or have problems with reading comprehension. The use of music with older students could be to emphasis different periods in history. Music can also be used to create prime conditions for learning and understanding in the students.

Children's songs I know:
Mary Had a Little Lamb
Row Row Row Your Boat
Do Your Ears Hang Low
Mulberry Bush
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
The Bear Went Over the Mountain
Are You sleeping Brother John
I'm A Little Tea Pot
Take Me Out to The Ball Game
London Bridges
Tomorrow (Annie)

Emilie

My Name Rhyme

My name is Emilie
I have a large family
When they come to see me
We'll have a little party
I wrote this name rhyme in response to an assignment for my Music 373 class.
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

Homeschooling and Social Behavior

From the time I was old enough to go to school, I thought that every child in our neighborhood was going to be in my school. I soon found out that many of the children on our block were taught by either one parent or another at home. This confused me because, at the time, I did not understand what homeschooling was. My sister explained it to me once and referred to the kids as socially awkward, she was a few years older than I was, but I still did not understand. When I got to Northern and took the EPFE 201 class I learned the differences between the use of homeschooling and the social interactions of the children being home schooled. Many of the students on my class had someone they knew that was home schooled and often would describe them like my sister did when I was little, socially awkward. I thought that this was presumptuous to classify all home schooled kids this way since I knew a few people in the Music Building who were not socially awkward and were home schooled. Since that class I have met more people who were home schooled and have normal social networking skills. This idea that to be "normal" you must be sent through a traditional school system has often irritated me and caused many of my friends to become irritated as well. How do you feel about homeschooling children? Would you ever willingly home school a child? If a child cannot adapt to the structure of a traditional school, would you home school them or send them to another school?
~Emilie

Learning again

When I started at Northern, I had moved to Illinois after having taken a year and a half after high school to figure life out. During that time I took car of my toddler nephew and marveled at the way he learned new information everyday. Now I am forced into that position as well. I am relearning things that I learned in my youth and had forgotten, things that I never knew why they were done the way they were taught. I have learned in classes why becoming a teacher is important to society as a whole. I have also learned to question what I am being told. In History 260 with Dr. Hagaman, we were told to look beneath the surface and question what historians were writing about and the period they are writing in. This advice has aided me in all the classes I have had since that first semester. Have you a had a particular teacher here at Northern who has told you to question what you are being told? Have you had any teachers who have asked you to look at everything in a different way to find the truth? When you decided to become a teacher did you ever want to be like any of the teachers you had growing up?
~Emile

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?