Hello again everyone! I hope everyone is still doing well. I am feeling amazing just thinking that this semester is coming to an end and that our second year of studies is almost complete. I honestly cannot believe how fast this year has gone by. My baby boy has been learning how to walk and has been all over the place, so keeping up with him has been something else. I just keep on reminding myself that it only goes up from here.

Study unit 5 is such an interesting unit. It was definitely fun going through this unit. Lesson planning was the highlight of this unit, and I became a lot more aware of how to identify and evaluate appropriate assessment strategies for music as part of life skills in foundation phase. I also learnt how to evaluate and apply different teaching methods when planning a music lesson and how to demonstrate an in-depth understanding of the basic structure of a well-planned lesson, as well as what to keep in mind when planning a lesson. After reading through this study unit, I feel confident in my skills to be able to formulate and draw out lesson plans that will be beneficial to both teachers and learners.

When referring to the question, a lot comes to mind. The variety of reasons why assessments are neglected in the Performing Arts and Foundation Phase, these are the reasons that specifically come to mind:

• Teachers often do not have enough time to prepare a lesson plan for performing arts and music classes.
• Teachers are not fully equipped and educated on performing arts and music integration.
• Teachers are under the impression that music and art integration activities are too time consuming.
• Teachers may have low confidence, as they see music and art as a daunting task, as they may lack the skills to facilitate and execute art and music activities.
• Schools are faced with the challenge of performing arts should not even be an option, because statistics prove that very few learners actually pursue a career in music and/or performing arts.

Explain how you would advocate for and heighten awareness about the importance of assessment when speaking with you HOD about your concerns in this regard:

• I will have proof that art and music integration in schoolswould allow major benefits such as socialisation and communication skills, better retention memorisation statistics.
• I will provide information on how music provides benefits in terms of languages and mathematic skills.
• I will present the life skills CAPS documents, where it states that performing arts and music is actually considered an important prerequisite especially in the foundation phase.
• I would suggest that the HOD communicates with the principle to address the issue of neglect in terms of music and performing arts, and slot in a period that is allocated to these components, with this implementation, teachers would not be able to say that music and performing arts are too time consuming.

That will be all from my side on this study unit. I hope everyone had as good as a time going through this study unit as I did. This unit was very eye-opening to me and I hope that everyone was able to learn as much as I was able to.

Until next time!