Reflection #5: Dance

What:  I'll be honest, dance is not my cup of tea.  I was not born with coordination at all, so doing dance is not something I really look forward to.  Doing this unit helped me see that dance isn't necessarily about coordination and looking good all the day.  Well, it does look good, but not in the way I always thought.  I learned that it is a lot more creative dance then it is dance moves, so it allows students to express themselves, rather then performing a movement someone else created.  I think this can be a really good way for students to express themselves, and incorporate movement.  It really teaches how you can depict emotion through movement.

So What: For me, incorporating dance is going to be a lot more work because it's not something that comes naturally to me.  Doing this unit has helped me see that even though it's not my cup of tea, it will help students, so it's something that I need to learn to incorporate.  In field, we are doing a unit on American Indians, and this would be a perfect opportunity to incorporate dance into our teaching in field.

Now What:  In order to incorporate this into practice, I'm going to need to make sure it's something I know. I can look up videos on line, or just try and incorporate what we learned in class about creative movement and applying it to books or poems.  I also liked that we learned the traditional dance in class, so it'd be cool to learn an Indian Dance that I could teach.


And:  For our group, we decided to divide up the pages and each come up with what we would do for the dance.  We then all met together and tied it together, and helped each other with any ideas we needed and put in our suggestions for other parts.  It was fun working with lots of different personalities in the group because some of the members were more outgoing, and that helped me be more outgoing while dancing.

Reflection #4: Music

Music is an important part of the world, and it can be a really helpful tool in education.  Music makes things fun, entertaining, and it can make it easier to learn difficult subjects or a good way to memorize something (like the states).  I really liked learning about how to incorporate music into the classroom, especially with how to teach the song using the 4 rules.  I thought it was so cool that we would take about 15 minutes in our presentations and yet at the end of the day, I knew 5 new songs.  I would probably need more practice with them, but it's so cool how fast they can be learned.  I learned, from the presentation, that the best songs are short and simple.  We tried to fit a lot of information into our songs, and that made it a little more complex to teach, and to understand.  I think the more simple the better.
Now that I have learned this technique I'm going to incorporate music into my curriculum as much as I can.  I'll try to find songs, or even write songs that I can use.  I also think it would be fun to have the students write their own songs about what they are learning.  I think this can be an even more effective tool because students will have to be coming up with the information and applying what they learned to a tune.  It's important to teach music in school because music can really help the brain.  I really think that other subjects can be improved if music is taught, or at least incorporated.
As a teacher, I will prepare to use this and incorporate this into my classroom by trying to incorporate songs into my lesson plans now.  Or if I come across a song that I will be able to use in the classroom I will get a copy.


I'm glad we got to do this group project, mostly just for the experience it brought.  As a group I wish we would've spent a little more time on it, but think that overall we came up with a really cool song.  I contributed to the team by coming up with things we could do to teach the song, and how to apply the different things like sing not say, or whole to part.  I've learned that working in groups can bring lots of good ideas to the table, things that sometimes can't be thought of on your own.  I personally don't like working in groups as much as we do in most of our classes, because life is busy and it's hard to find a time to meet when everyone can.  But I think group work is very useful in elementary school if it's something done in the classroom, or for a few projects through the year.  I think it can build communication skills and help students collaborate and work with others.