Blog Post: Study Unit 2

What a week this has been. Together with a heavy workload, approaching due dates and experiencing so many technical difficulties with Efundi, I think it is fair to say that this week has been tough.

Study unit two has been packed with so much information and new knowledge, it took me some time to take in everything. The content has been mostly interesting and my musical knowledge is growing immensely. Going through the work made me realize how little I actually do know about music and musical education. I am definitely learning as I’m going and finding myself truly interested in trying not only to grasp the content but truly make it my own to become comfortable and confident in my own musical knowledge and skills.

Musical education is filled with fun and joy. The possibilities are endless and need not much to make every lesson a great one. The videos included in the study material serve as such a great reference and really aids in understanding the content. The musical elements and different instruments and their groupings were very interesting and enjoyable to learn about.

Prior to this module I knew that music offer the opportunity for holistic development in young children and that it can incorporate many other skills through movement activities and even subjects such as mathematics and languages can be promoted through music. This made me realize how important it is to properly plan for music lessons and the module gave me practical as well as theoretical guidance on how to do effective lesson planning. There were two topics that stood out for me and which was quite significant.

The first topic was music education approaches placing emphasis on music and movement. The approach of Carl Orff was the one approach which felt more familiar and I could see myself following and implementing it in my future classroom. The four developmental stages fits within my idea of how to go about teaching music and movement as it seems to be a natural progression and I would also feel comfortable in executing it. The musical instruments noted in the creative Orff processes are also more readily available in classrooms, and where not available can be provided through improvisation with other everyday items or self-made instruments.

Lesson understandably need to be adapted to the learners’ ability and can gradually expand in difficulty by adding more complex movements, body percussion patterns or accompaniment.

The second topic that was significant to me was the value of body percussion activities. I was aware of the generally known benefits of movement activities, such as body percussions, to improve coordination and concentration skills but I was surprised at how limited my understanding of the benefits was. Body percussion allows children to use their whole body and to be creative. They can improvise to create their own or follow percussion patterns and can write them down using iconic notation. This allows the development of critical thinking skills and problem-solving which are beneficial for mathematics and higher order cognitive development. They become more self-aware and self-regulated by being able to be comfortable and confident within their own bodies and by practicing accepted social behaviour through peer engagements learning to control their emotions in an acceptable manner.

Body percussion also allows for physical development within the safe environment of the classroom. Learners develop gross-motor skills, balance and visual-spatial awareness all while having fun.

I enjoyed the learning material and I appreciated the inclusiveness of the learning content. My knowledge on African musical instruments and songs are very lacking, almost to the extent that I am ashamed that as an African myself, I know so little about all the instruments, indigenous songs and rhymes, etc. To ensure I am able to provide an inclusive classroom environment I must make an effort in equipping myself with the knowledge of different music and not only those familiar to me, as I believe that in the Foundation Phase classroom everyone and all types of music ought to be represented.

I know media providing authentic indigenous music, songs and rhymes are limited and less documented, which makes it difficult to obtain and utilise in the study material of this subject. I think the Faculty could and should tap on the resources such as the knowledge of their students to create such media that is authentic and representative of all languages and cultures. This could build a proper database of resources for future teachers.