Journal # 4

These last few weeks, my class learned a great deal about incorporating movement into music, in order to help children be more active in the classroom and active in their learning of music skills. Another concept we focused on these last few weeks was on listening and how to incorporate that into our teaching.Therefore, much of our classtime was spent going over the importance of both movement and listening when teaching music. However, it was made clear to us that movement and listening can be done in all subject areas in school, and that the activities that accompany them are great to keep children engaged in their learning whether it is musical or not. While learning how to listen to music, we also focused on identifying tone color, dynamics and changes in rhythm within music.
One way in which we learned how to incorporate movement within a musical classroom was by doing various warm up activities, such as just moving to music or making up motions to music to do while we were moving around the classroom. These warm up activities got our blood flowing and us ready for class, so we knew that these warm up activities would definitely help to warm up younger children who need a good deal of physical activity to stay focused. Outside of the warm up activities, our class spent time being with partners and learning various dance moves to put to music. Our teacher would teach us movements, and we would have to follow them to a certain pace and do them in conjunction to music. Another activity we did was also in partners, and our teacher had us make up a dance to the music she provided and it had to be original and go along with the music. We competed against other sets of partners to see who made up the most creative dance, therefore teaching us creativity along with movement concepts. Finally, we learned how to identify tone color, dynmanics and change in rhythm by doing an activity in which we were split into two groups and had to pass around a ball in a circle to the pace of the music. We would change our pace when there was a change in dynamics or tone and it helped us learn how to identify those using our listening skills.
I feel it is important for me to learn both movement and listening skills in music because both of these help in all areas of school. Movement and listening can be used in all classrooms not matter what the subject, and they only enhance the children's ability to engage in learning. Being that I will be a teacher one day, I value what I have learned as far as the movement and listening activities that our teacher presented because I know they will be helpful with my students one day. The warm up activities that I have been taught and the various listening games that we have done in class can be used in my classrooms, even though I am not planning on teaching music. My students will never be bored and can get the exercise they need while learning musical concepts.
I feel it is important for children to learn both movement and listening skills and concepts because it provides not only a fun aspect to learning for the kids by keeping them active, but it keeps them creative. What I learned through participating in these listening and movement activities is that children are left to interpret the music in their own way and show their creativity in how they express themselves in relation to the music. I also feel that these activities help children understand music and appreciate it, so I feel they are very helpful to the students in the classroom. It is fun to listen and dance to music, and therefore to be able to incorporate that in a classroom, children will enjoy school on a whole other level.