Journal 10

This week in Music 373, we continued learning more about adding music into storytelling.  What works best in a story telling activity is making sounds to specific words that kids would know and have them play instruments when the word they picked came up.  We also used garbage from our homes to make noise to a story which increases creativity.  We also learned about binary form from a song we play this week.  This is what we generally learned in Musc 373 this week.

During the week, we read the story "Chicken Little."  In this story, all the names were in bold and we had a lot of instruments to play for each of the bolded names.  The teacher would basically read a story while the listened for the names so they can play their instrument.  The teacher would also have to teach a beat to the students so they can learn more about timbre and dynamics from hearing all the different sounds.  Lastly, having a part in the story where everyone is involved in a "mini" orchestra would be a lot of fun for the students and learn harmony from the song.  This is what we learned from the "Chicken Little" music activity.

In another activity we did, we read a story about thunder and why not to be scared of it.  We brought instruments from home, such as water bottles, aluminum foil, and cereal boxes.  Whenever the teacher would say a thunder-type noise, kids would become creative and make their own noise similar to thunder so the kids would have an idea of what it is like.  Not only did the kids learn more creativity from this story, they learned a lot of social skills and such.  They learned about emotions and family, they learned counting, science, and physics even.  This is one of the other music-storytelling activities we learned this week.

The last big thing we learned was about binary form.  I forgot the name of the song played, but it was a pop-type song; we went into two groups in a circle and danced in opposite directions.  Binary form is comprised of two parts; A and B.  Part A is the chorus-verse and part B is the refrain-verse.  It is usually comprised in 8 measures per phrase.  Pop, rock, and folk music are examples of types of music in binary form.  This is all that we pretty much learned in this week of Musc 373.

Journal 9

This week im Music 373, we did more child creativity learning.  First, we made our own sound effects from a story being told.  Second, we sang a song repeatedly based off an older and more adult-like song.  Then I just gained some personal knowledge, such as reading to a classroom.  This is basically what we did this week in class.

On Monday, I read to the class a book called "The Listening Walk."  Ms. Wang had us all make our own sound effect to the words she wanted us to describe which, if you put yourself in a child's perspective, helps them learn a lot in creativity.  This also is very helpful in keeping the children active and interested in what is being read.  This increases the children's imagination as well in thinking about how the sounds relate to the objects in real life.  This is what we learned from class on Monday.

On Wednesday, we sang the song, "What Do We Do with the Drunken Sailors" and applied the same rhythm to the book, "What Shall We Do with the Boo-Hoo Baby?"  The children would learn a lot about animal sounds from this book.  They also learn about a baby as well from reading this story.  They learn something from the singing, I can't remember what exactly Ms. Wang said in class though.  I don't remember as well how this relates to "Student-centered" learning.  This is what we did on Wednesday afternoon.

I overall got a lot of knowledge from class this week.  I never got the chance to practice reading a story to an entire class until this week and now know how it is like to read in front of a class.  Learning a child's perspective from story-telling is very good to know as well; you can tell if they understood and you taught the meanings right.  Then we just really learned a new note on our recorder and about our 2 projects we have to start working on.  This is what I learned this week in Music 373.

Journal 8

This week in Music 373, we learned about creativity in child development.  First, there are quite a few benefits to teaching children in a creative way and is important as well.  There is a certain way we can help children learn through the creative learning practice we did in class this week.  Lastly, for the multicultural project, I have thought of 3 cultures to talk about, the Filipino, Vietnamese, or Japanese culture, and I have finally made my decision on what I will officially talk about.  We learned a lot about being creative in class this week that will help for our future in teaching.

Teaching kids in a creative way not only helps increase their imagination, it is a much easier way for kids to be able to understand material when they can relate to it.  The basic idea we learned from reading chapter 5 is how to use instruments in a way that could help the children learn.  They would learn about the difference in dynamics, pitch, and melody through the music they make from the instruments.  Having the children play sounds at a certain time in a certain way, they can use the sounds in their imagination and relate it to the story being told and that should teach them things such as loudness in sounds or softness in sounds in certain situations.  This is why teaching children in a creative way helps develop their learning skills a lot better.

The lesson we learned in class can be very helpful with having the kids develop in their creativity levels.  To start off with, we started by telling a story.  Then we had more people join in by making sound effects that related to the underlined words.  When someone said "at the bottom," that person would made really low sounding sound effects because the word "bottom" sounds like it would relate to a really low voice and not a high voice.  The same would go for "climbing up the hill"; the other person that makes sounds for this line would make an ascending sound effect because it says "climbing up," so it would be starting off low and becoming a very high sound effect.  When we do this, children can start to relate sounds and words together due to this creative way of learning.

At first I was able to think of three possible cultures to talk about because I can relate to all 3 in some sort of way.  I am taking Japanese at NIU right now and have been interested in it since 7th grade.  Vietnamese I'm interested in because I am part of the Vietnamese Student Association on campus so I know a little about the culture, but would like to know more.  Finally, I was considering learning about the Filipino  culture cause i know barely anything about it and my girlfriend plus a few other close friends are from there.  In the end, I decided to go with the Japanese culture; I really want to go to Japan someday, and if I ever decided to teach there, knowing more about their culture would be the most beneficial.