Reflection #9

What?: During this experience I feel that I was learning the entire time. I didn't realize how tough it can be to create lyrics. However, I was very proud of myself when I did create my own! During the presentation my group learned that we really need to realize how many words we put into a sentence because smashing too many in can be really hard for everyone to learn. I was glad that we could just choose one lyric to teach because teaching all four of them would have been really tough.

SO WHAT?: I think that as a teacher it is very important for me to always remember that lyrics cannot have way too many words scrunched in them. I think that was my biggest problem. Also, I was kind of nervous to get in front of the class and sing, but it was really easy to do it once we got going. I need to remember that if I act nervous to sing that my class will not feel very comfortable singing either. I need to make it a fun environment so that way students in my classroom can have many opportunities to experience music. I think that music can really help children learn and comprehend lessons so much more, because it can fun and memorable.

NOW WHAT?: In my classroom I know that it is very important to integrate music, because I know that the songs I learned really did help my emphasis on the subjects that they were teaching. I know that if I give my class the opportunity to experience music that they will have fun with it, just like we did in class. I need to make sure I practice music so that way I do feel more comfortable integrating it into my classroom. I think that if we, as teachers, switch up our classrooms and teach lessons in these new ways we are obtaining we are going to make our students have a GREAT learning experience. I know that after class on Thursday I was wishing that as a student in elementary school I wish that I would have gotten more opportunities to experience music in my classrooms. If I would have gotten more chances maybe I would be more comfortable with it today. I don't want my students to feel this way. I want to make sure they learn new things, especially music, because I feel like that is one area that if people are not comfortable with they will just not do it. I want to feel comfortable with it so I can integrate music into my classroom!

Reflection #8

WHAT?: Music is when you get to sing, make beats, and rhythms. It is the sounds produced by singers or musical instruments. I believe that integrating music in the classroom is very important because I think that it is something very fun and enjoyable for the students in the classroom. In the text book it says that integrating music is very correlated with academic performance and character traits. It boosts character traits which results in higher test scores. I know that all of us, as teachers, are interested in having our students excel academically especially with test scores.

SO WHAT?: I believe that as a teacher we should make learning as enjoyable as possible for our students. If we make it fun for them they will be willing to learn. I think that integrating music with lessons in the classroom it will help the children comprehend and keep the information longer. Children are able to remember things better if they are able to correlate it with something fun and enjoyable to them. I want to make my classroom enjoyable and fun for my students to help them excel academically.

NOW WHAT?: I think that is is very important as a future teacher to always be looking for new, creative ideas to use in the classroom. There are many, many ideas out there in the world on how to use music in the classroom. In class last week we learned many fun ideas to help the children learn more. I also believe that if I am going to teach and integrate music in my classroom I need to be very familiar with music myself. I need to be able to have many ideas to use for my students that way I am not always using the same things because the students will get bored of that. I am so excited to learn a lot of ideas on how to integrate music into my classroom not only to make my classroom fun, but to help my students excel academically.

Reflection #7

WHAT?: This week was so fun to see every one's different ideas for the dance presentation. I think it was so neat to see how we could incorporate dance into so many different subjects and lesson plans. I never really thought that dance could be used for all subjects and today I learned so many great ways on how to integrate it into my classroom. I think that dance is so important for the students to participate in especially if you are using it to reinforce a lesson, because I believe that what the students learn in the dance will stick so much better in their mind. Having something fun or memorable to reinforce learning helps so much to remember it!

SO WHAT?: I think that in class today we learned so many great and different ideas from each group. There are so many lesson ideas that you could twist and turn and make them work perfectly for you and your classroom. Without these ideas from the other students I would have no idea on a variety of dance ideas. I know that I will take many ideas, subjects, lesson plans, and dance moves from the presentations we seen in class today. I cannot wait to use them in my classroom even in field especially cause the video we watched today explained how many good things come from integrating the arts/dance into the classrooms. I think even, as the teacher, it is important for you to dance with your students that way they feel more comfortable to start dancing with the whole class. There are some things on the lessons from today that I am sure, as teachers, we will have to adjust to make it work just right for our own class but overall the ideas were wonderful and very helpful.

NOW WHAT?: From everything we learned today I plan on using dance so much more, because I actually feel more comfortable with the ideas and different dance moves we learned today. I feel that without doing these presentations in class that we all would not be near as comfortable with dance as we are after we have seen the whole class present their different ideas. I think in order to integrate dance into my classroom with multiple subjects I would have to experiment different dance ideas and lessons to see what worked and what doesn't work. I think that it would take a lot of trial and error; however, I believe that dance would be a major hit with the classroom because the kids would think it was so much fun just like the class did today! There are so many ways to use dance in the classroom it would just take some research to see where, as a teacher, you think it would work best. I know now that I am going to start integrating dance a lot more into my lesson plans. It makes learning so much more fun and comprehendable. I plan on teaching my future class many things with dance now because I seen so many different areas where you could apply it to!

Reflection #6

WHAT?: I am going to be honest I never thought about how and why to integrate dance into my classroom until this week. I guess I just did not realize how important it really was, and how much fun it could be for the students. They get to learn/experience lessons/books in a whole different dimension when they are danced out. At the dance workshop I attented we learned many differen lessons based upon different subjects that we were able to dance out. Each lesson followed core standards of different grades. I was so surprised about how much information I was able to retain by dancing it out to rememeber rather than reading it out of a book. I believe that dancing in the classroom to teach different things is SO important. Although, dancing is very fun for the children I think that, as the teacher, we need to be very clear on what we are expecting out of the children, because if not with all the students running around the room things can get out of control very fast! We just need to be aware of what/how we want things to happen and what objective we want the children to get out of the activity.

SO WHAT?: I think that before this week I would have no idea on how to incorporate dance along with a book or lesson. Now I have so many great ideas on how and what to do with the presentation in class. Like I said above though, as a group, we need to make sure we are clear on what we expect out of the audience. It is very important that the children are getting something out of the dancing, and not that they are just dancing. I mean the dancing part is very important, but if we are teaching an objective we need to make sure that the children are really pulling the objective out of the dance and understanding it enough to retain the information being taught.

NOW WHAT?: I think that in order to be able to integrate dance into my classroom I really need to have a lot of ideas under my belt, just in case one idea doesn't worked as well as I had planned it to. However, as a teacher I think it is so imporant to incorporate this into my classroom. I think that learning the ideas and completing the activities we did in class I learned so much on how to integrate dance into all kinds of subjects and lessons. I never, ever thought it was possible to incorporate dance with say a science lesson. Then when we actually did an example of this at the workshop I was so surprised on how much information I retained and remembered. This is very helpful for children, and so important for them to learn in multiple ways. Not the same boring book every single time! However, the book is necessary sometimes!