As a student that had to repeat this module, due to unforeseen circumstances, I already had some idea about the contents of the module and only had to truly study the last 2 study units for the first time. I have always valued music in itself, but before taking this module I hadn't thought too much about it in an educational context. I have used music to calm my ADHD students during class time and can often be found singing in the class and altering lyrics to correct students' behaviour. However, I never really thought about teaching music concepts to learners. Before taking this module my only experience with music as a subject was a class offered once every two weeks that was seen more as a fun period than an actual learning subject by learners. During my school years we received a mark for music on our reports, but nobody ever received a symbol lower than a C or even a B. Skills were hardly tested and I learned very little during these classes, as I took piano lessons as an extra mural.

In my opinion the blogs and the reflection needed to type my blogs were an excellent way to encourage higher order thinking and truly try to understand the content, rather than just memorising a set of facts. The blogs' guiding questions also encouraged me to try to apply the content in a meaningful way and try to come up with practical way to incorporate music and teaching not only music concepts, but utilising music as a teaching tool. As someone who is interested in remedial teaching, the blog also guided me to thinking of new ways to assess learners' understanding by making use of the arts. One challenging aspect of blogging was/is the fact that I am not the type of person that is inclined to blog, despite having created a blog for myself a few years ago (which I only posted one awkward post on). I do feel that the guiding questions included this ear did give me a better idea of what I needed to reflect on and what was expected from the blogs, from an assessment point of view.

If I could change one thing about the module it would be to include more practical examples of teaching about and through music in our class time that is already too little to accommodate the curriculum as is. This is a problem I thought of often during the course of the module and have been unable to find a solution for. It would be useful to see actual lessons or lesson plans where music is used as a teaching tool, whilst still teaching a music concept to learners in a meaningful way. I did however truly enjoy this module overall and the creative process involved in completing assignments.

As stated in the scenario many, if not most, school do not assess music in the foundation phase; some do not even offer music as a subject. This lack of assessment may be due to various reasons and as a teacher writing to the HOD on this topic I would include the various reasons stated hereunder:

1. The HOD may not recognise the importance of music as a tool in realising true holistic learning, or may not truly value the concept of holistic learning;
2. Music may be seen as a subject that has no academic value and therefore does not need to be taken seriously or may even see it as a subject they have to incorporate to some extent due to its inclusion in the CAPS document;
3. Music may be seen as only a fun subject and that learners should therefore not be given the additional anxiety that is involved in assessment and that assessment may jeopardise the mental benefits of this subject;
4. The term assessment may be seen in terms of Summative assessment, which may be seen as a waste of valuable teaching and learning time in an already time constrained curriculum. They may forget about the other forms of assessment, such as formative or continuous assessment (informal forms of assessment) which need not take too much time.

During my schooling career we only had music as a subject during Foundation Phase and only had one lesson every other week. It was therefore difficult to truly learn anything of value in this subject and if learning does not take place, there is no possibility for true assessment of skills. As there was no assessment of the skills learned, there was very little motivation to truly try to master the skills. Most students that wanted to learn more about music turned to extra-mural activities to do so.

For music teaching and learning to be effective, and to have the greatest impact, it is important to continuously assess learners' learning in order to improve the achievement of learning outcomes and teaching strategies; as is the case for all other academic subjects. Learners attention and true learning of music concepts will enable music to gift learners with the multitude of advantages that have been identified in various research articles. Assessment may be done in such a way that the assessment of music helps to reduce the anxiety caused by the summative assessments in other subjects, by showing learners that assessment activities can also be fun. Another reason assessment is important is that it may increase learners' self-confidence and grant them the opportunity to feel a sense of accomplishment and ability to achieve.

There is therefore many reasons why music should be assessed, just as any other subject is assessed.

There are 3 main choice to consider when teaching music, namely indigenous African music, Western Art music, and Contemporary commercial music. It would be ideal to use each of these types of music in the learning environment, but if I had to choose which type of music I would use in teaching music concepts, I would choose Contemporary commercial music. This is because this type of music would include songs the learners would be interested in on a social level. This interest will promote active participation and create a link between the content learned and the learners' daily lives and interests.

The examples in the study unit was fairly inclusive, but still mainly consisted of mainly English and African songs, which may all be from the same language. There were very few Afrikaans songs and those included were often paired with English songs. It would be more ideal to specify which language the music is in for indigenous African music and if a few traditional Afrikaans songs were included. 

A teacher could also diversify her musical repertoire by asking learners and parents to bring examples of their culture's music to class, preferably being able to perform it for the teacher or with a recording of somebody singing the song or playing the music. The teacher can then incorporate this music into the teaching techniques learned in this study unit.