Dance Reflection

What?
When I think of "the arts", dance is the form that comes to mind last, or at least it used to.  I wasn't aware of how useful and beneficial children's creative dance can be in the classroom.  It allows students to be incredible expressive and creative and imaginative.  I learned many different ways dance can be incorporated into lessons and how it can be a teaching tool.

So What?
Learning about this art form before field might change the way I approach my lesson plans.  It has gotten my mind going as far as how I can add creative movement and dance into one or two of the lessons I will teach while in field.  For field, we're only focusing on the area of Social Studies, but there are many subject areas that dance can be used in.  I could research and find dances that come from certain cultures or time periods, and that would work wonderfully to mix dance into my field experience.

Now What?
As a future educator, I need to keep up on the breatkthroughs in the arts and education.  I need to let my own creativity and imagination go and explore, so that I can help my students foster and use their own creativity.  At times, I think/have thought that dancing is just a silly thing that makes people let lose and laugh a little. To incorporate this into my future practices, I need to remember the real and true advantages of dance in the classroom and not just that it's fun.

And...
As always, this project was great and is something that I plan on referring to when I am an actual teacher.  I feel as though this was one of the easier assignments, which was nice seeing as how field is right around the corner.  To be honest, I don't feel as though I contributed much to my group.  I feel like my other group members took charge and told me what to do, which worked for me.  In working with multiple people with multiple visions and ideas, I have learned that sometimes things don't turn out exactly how you might think they should.  I personally would have gone in a different direction, but I believe in being a team player and my group and I still came up with a good presentation.

Music Reflection

What?
Music is the combination of tones and sounds in succession.  Music in the classroom is my favorite thing! It should be in schools for many reasons.  According to the class text, the brain is predisposed to detect patterns and sounds, which means music and academic achievement are linked.  Music is a significant part of life, it's natural, and it uses the whole brain. 

So What?
Being a strong musical learner myself, I plan on incorporating music into my classroom as much as possible.  There are songs out there that cover all subjects, which I can use in many of my lessons.  I'm very passionate about music and believe that it is extremely beneficial in the classroom.  When teaching music to children, it's important to keep it simple.  They will have a much harder time learning material through a song if the song is too difficult.  Repetition is also important.  Our brains need to hear something many times to create meaning from the information.

Now What?
To effectively teach and integrate music into my future classroom, I plan to start researching and collecting songs that I could potentially use for my students.  I can't teach songs if I don't know any.  I hope and plan to express my creativity and let it grow so that I can come up with fun and unique ways to mix music into my class.  One bonus way I'd like to integrate music is to learn how to play music myself.  Bring my ukelele to class for my presentation was fun and engaging, and I would love to do that again, or bring another instrument, in my future classroom.

And of course...
Working in my groups for this project went great.  Unlike the larger groups, it was just Mallory and me.  However, that didn't matter as much as I thought it would.  We split the work evenly, which is always nice.  She got our picture book and printed the little cards while I came up with the lyrics and played along.  The decision to do Utah symbols was both of ours, and in my opinion, that was a good decision.  Through working in teams, I've learned the value of different points of views and ideas.  Collaberation with others can create beautiful, new, interesting things.