Unit 1:Why is music important in everyone's life?

Music is important in everyone's life  It allows learners to focus on specific musical aspects.  By the age of 6 or 7 children have a vocal range of one octave.  Music can lead to higher academic achievement.  Through music, learners develop cognitively, socially, personally, and emotionally.  Socially they form new friendships and emotionally, emotions can be identified by listening to certain music.  

Unit 2: How to utilize Western Art music?

Western art has distinct from pop, folk, or jazz.  Learners enjoy dissonant harmonies of Western art music.  Western music has a rich culture and was produced in Europe.  The function of music was religious.  Two or more melodic lines are combined, using constructing moods. 

Unit 3:  Play

Through play, learners are able to develop holistically through engaging in meaningful activities. 

Advantages of play in the classroom

1.  Elements of surprise and challenges.

2.  It involves structure

3.  It reinforces societal roles. 

Bjorkvoid identifies 3 types of play:

Tradition, original and open play.  

Characteristics of play

1.  It is active.  

2.  There is meaning in play.  

3.  It is non-literal.  

4.  It has no extrinsic goals.

Children are learning new things through play and exploration.  

Unit 4:  Art integration in the Foundation Phase

The theoretical framework for arts integration:

1.  Teaching and learning about music.  

2..Teaching and learning from music.

3.  Teaching and learning on music.  

4.  Teaching and learning with music.  

5.  Teaching and learning in music.  

Songs can easily be used between activities.  

Integrating music with other subjects:

1.  Play a song and ask learners to write a story they imagine.

2.  Learners can write their own rhythmic patterns. 

Unit 5:  Lesson Planning

Include as many opportunities for elements of play and collaborative learning. 

A lesson has 3 very important phases:

1.  The introduction phase 

2.  Teaching and learning phase. 

3.  Conclusion.   

Introduction:  Start the lesson with a fun, interesting activity.  

Teaching and learning phase:  The teacher acts as the facilitator and makes learning fun.  

Conclusion phase:  The teacher must see that the lesson objectives have been achieved.  

You have to accommodate various religions in your class.  

The class has to be a safe learning space and learners must feel welcome in class.  

Assessment types:

Formal assessment:  Exams at the end of the year.  

Baseline assessment:  At the beginning of the lesson by asking questions.  

Diagnostic assessment:  What skills learners are struggling with.  

Formative assessment:  Monitor progress by observation.  

Self-assessment:  Reflect on your own learning by doing group work.  

Peer-assessment:  Learners evaluate their peers through assignments and rubrics.  

This was only a summary of units 1 to 5 to recap on the units that we did in the module.  

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When a music lesson is planned, include as many opportunities to engage actively, by including opportunities, for collaborative learning and elements of play.  

Importance when planning a music lesson:

1.  There should be music at the beginning and end of the lesson.

2.  Music should be played to reach a specific goal.

3.  Include movement, listening, singing, performing, and improvising.

4.  Learners must make sense of new concepts.

5.  Ask open-ended questions.

  What is the role of assessment in the lesson?  

A lesson has three important lesson phases.  The introduction phase, the teaching and learning phase, and the conclusion. 

Learners must engage in free movement, imitation activities, and free play.

Introductory phase:  Start the lesson with a fun activity.  Learners must link new knowledge to prior knowledge.  Learners must be actively engaged in activities that introduce the lesson theme.

Ask learners to listen to a piece of music and ask them to draw how the song makes them feel. Learners can imitate the moves of the song. They can op to the beat of the song.

Teaching and learning phase:

The teacher act as the facilitator.

Make learning fun.

Learners must be actively engaged and manipulate materials.

How does the music make you feel?

Conclusion:

The teacher must know if the learners have achieved the lesson objectives.  Learners can demonstrate their understanding by moving or singing to the song.

How can you adjust your teaching to be inclusive of diverse learner needs:

How will you accommodate learning difficulties like hearing impairments?

How will you create a safe learning space?

Do you accommodate various religions in your class?

Learners must feel welcome and safe in your class.

Assessment types and strategies:

Formal assessment:  Achievements at the end of the year by giving an exam.

Baseline assessment:  It is used at the beginning of a lesson by asking questions.

Diagnostic assessment:  To find out what skills learners are struggling with by giving them a quiz.

Formative assessment:  To monitor learner's progress by observation or checklist.

Self-assessment:  To reflect on your own learning by doing group work.

Peer assessment:  Learners evaluate their peers through assignments and rubrics.

Testing

All schools are discovering the power of arts when it is integrated into the curriculum.  It is about methodology and a philosophical approach that creates connections and added depth in the classroom, through the inquiry-based process of teaching and learning.  

Benefits of an interactive approach:

1.  It connects visualization with reading comprehension

2.  It contextualizes math.  

3.  It brings an experiential context to the classroom.

4.  It can assist students in understanding and applying skills to standardized exams.  

5.  Focus and concentration can be developed through different learning styles, for example visual,           linguistic, or kinesthetic thinking. 

6.  Students perform at a higher level. 

Critical links between learning in the arts and academic and social skills and motivations in 6 major areas. 

1.  Reading and Language Development

      Basic Reading Skills

      Certain forms of arts instruction enhance basic reading instruction.  It helps with associating letters, words, and phrases with sound, sentences, and meanings. 

.  Literacy

It helps to read with comprehension,  story understanding, and the ability to read new resources that they have not read before.  In dance and drama, they develop expressive reflective skills that enhance writing proficiency. 

2.  Mathematics

Learning keyboard skills develops spatial reasoning and spatial-temporal reasoning skills, which are fundamental to understanding and using mathematical ideas and concepts. 

3.  Fundamental Cognitive Skills and Capacities

Learning individual art forms as well as multi-arts strengthens cognitive capacities as concentration, memory, spatial reasoning, conditional reasoning, problem-solving and creative thinking. 

4.  Motivation to learn

Learning in the arts includes active engagement, disciplined and sustained attention, risk-taking and persistence, and educational aspirations.  

5.  Effective Social Behaviour 

It shows student growth in self-confidence, self-control, and self-identity. 

6.  School Environment

A school must provide a positive environment for learning.  Arts help to foster teacher innovation, a positive culture, community engagement, and student attendance.

Champions of Change (1999)

This document demonstrates through research that arts can play a powerful role in student learning. In-depth case studies were done.

When young children are involved with arts, something changes in their lives. 

Learners can attain higher levels of achievement through their engagement with the arts. It can help children from disadvantaged circumstances.  

Why does art change the learning experience?

The arts provide authentic learning experiences that engage their minds, hearts, and bodies.  The learning experiences are real and meaningful for them.  

Another consensus has been made:

Arts reach students who are not otherwise being reached.

It connects students to themselves .

It transforms the environment for learning

It provides learning opportunities for adults in the lives of young people.

It provides new challenges. 

The Theoretical framework for arts integration in the Foundation Phase 

1.  Teaching and learning about music.  

2.  Teaching and learning from music.  

3.  Teaching and learning on music.  

4.  Teaching and learning with music.  

5.  Teaching and learning in music.  

6.  Teaching and learning through music.

Examples for art integration strategies:

Ask the learners to create their own songs about certain maths concepts which offer opportunities for learners to incorporate which relate to music.  Learning must be fun and foster creativity and problem-solving skills.  

Strategies for including throughout the day:  

Songs can easily be used between activities.

Sing specific songs during daily routines about washing hands, standing in a line and about waiting your turn to answer the teacher.  

Clap a pattern after playtime.  

Play calming music when learners are getting restless.

Strategies for integrating music with other subjects:

Learners can write their own rhythmic patterns by using the names of certain fruit based on the theme.  

Play a song and ask learners to write a story that they imagine without lyrics.  

Ask learners to choreograph a dance that shows the meaning of the song.  

Draw attention to the relation between music and maths.  Learners can demonstrate their understanding of rotation through movement.  

Vibration and sound waves can be explained and demonstrated by looking at the ways in which instruments produce sound.  

I am ending my blog by emphasizing that arts must be integrated with other subjects for optimal learning.   

 The importance of play regards holistic development in the foundation phase.: 

They are able to develop holistically through engaging in meaningful activities.  They develop cognitively by developing problem-solving skills and learn about cause and effect and growing cognitively, classifying, identifying, observing and sequencing.  Learners develop skills to think outside the box and solve different problems.  By finding props they develop creativity and imagination.  When learners engage in play, they have to draw on prior knowledge and real-life experiences. 

Advantages of play in the classroom:  

1.  Children have a sense of belonging.  

2.  It creates individual discipline a playful environment, if the rules are broken, the game cannot               work.  

3.  Play facilitate imagination and is therapeutic.  

4.  Children develop performance competencies, singing, playing instruments, and dancing.  

5.  Skills are developed through play through the performance of rhythmic patterns, improvision and       immition.  

There are 7 elements of play: 

1.  It involves disposition.

2.  It contains elements of surprise and challenges.  

3.  It involves attitude and structure.  

4.  It is a voluntary and unifying forming part of the socializing process.  

5.  It involves aesthetic quality judgment by participants.  

6.  It creates informal space for socio-historical comment.  

7.  It reinforces societal roles.  

Bjorkvold identifies 3 types of play:  

1.  Tradition  -This form of play is fixed. 

2.  Open  -It indicates that there are rules and they can be changed. 

3.  Original-   Based on curiosity and it is creative. 

Children communicate, compete through play.  Play reflects attitudes towards life.  

Free play is when children have choices and they are free to play with any materials.  

Guided play refers to the teacher that chooses specific material to play with.  

Directed play involves the teacher instructing learners how to accomplish a given task by singing songs or dramatizing.  

Characteristics of play:

1.  It is active.

2.  It is non-literal.

3.  It has no extrinsic goals.  

4.  There is meaning in play.  

Levels of Social Play: 

1.  Solitary play

2.  Onlooker play

3.  Parallel play

4.  Associative play

5.  Cooperative play

Sociodramatic play:  

Involves a small group of participants playing defined roles that they have chosen, called fantasy play.  They may also play mandone parts.  Such as how to shop for groceries.  Paley believes that sociodramatic play is the foundation of early childhood education. 

Vygotsky believes that play is extremely important in a child's development in 3 ways:  

1.  It creates the child's zone of proximal development. m 

2.  It facilitates the separation of thought from actions and objects. 

3.  It facilitates the development of self-regulation. 

The value of play:   

1.  It involves dance, storytelling, structured movement and musical instruments.  

2. It's a fundamental way of learning.  

3.  It requires a state of certain willingness. 

4.  The educational aim of play is to teach children morals and values.

5.  Children are learning new things through play and exploration. 

6.  Through play learners develop emotional regulation and improve their vocabularies.  

6.  Play is important for holistic development.  

1)  As a Foundation Phase teacher, I will definitely utilize Western Art music.  It has distinct from pop, folk, or jazz.  Western art music has dissonant harmonies, which children enjoy, complex rhythms, creates percussion using instruments, such as bass, strings as well as woodwind, which produce pure magical sound.  Western music was produced in Europe and has a rich culture.  The function of music was religious.  Two or more melodic lines are combined using contrasting moods.  It's important to build on culture and religion.  

2)  I think it was very inclusive, we learned a lot about the difference in pitch of the tone, the intensity of tone, quality of tone, duration of the tone.  We also learned about beat and rhythm and types of music activities.  Learners can also use body percussion or percussion instruments.  

3)  I don't think it is necessary to change a lot of content.  Teachers can use more hand gestures and facial expressions whilst singing a song.  For blind learners, the teacher can teach songs using braille.   

I enjoyed Study Unit 2 a lot.   

Hi, my name is Stephanie Coleske, I live in Uitenhage, and I am very excited to do this module.  Music is very important in everyone's everyday life. 

Study unit 1:  

Cognitive development:

By the time a child enters school, they have developed the ability to selectively listen.  It allows children to focus on specific musical aspects.  In terms of skills, children's sense of tonality increases, along with the ability to more accurately pitch.  Singing abilities improve dramatically during the middle childhood years, in both range and accuracy noted.  By the age of 6 or 7, children have a vocal range of one octave.  The ability to play certain instruments, especially simple melodic instruments, such as the xylophone or keyboard can increase gross motor control.  An increasing number of modalities, including clapping, tapping, moving, and chanting can develop music reading and coordination.  At the age of 5, children develop the ability to associate a sound with symbols.  Research suggests that children prefer playing instruments above all other musical activities during this period.  Music education enhances attentiveness, multitasking and promotes literacy skills and numeracy skills while playing on musical instruments .  They expand their vocabulary by learning new words in their mother tongue.  Learners learn to solve problems and think creatively by creating their own body percussion patterns.  They develop reading and listening skills by using graphic and iconic notation.  Music can lead to higher academic achievement and it promotes higher-order thinking, logical and abstract thinking.  

Social development:

When learners make music with their classmates, they have opportunities to engage in social interaction.  Music activities such as singing in groups, moving together, and playing together can foster relationships and form new friendships.  

Personal development

By engaging in music, and specifically listening to and speaking about the feeling that music provokes, learners, learn more about themselves, their likes and dislikes.  

Emotional development:

When learners experience music with various moods, they identify various emotions.  By moving freely according to how music makes them feel.  They also learn to express their emotions through music.   The teacher can use music for mood management by listening to certain types of songs, according to how they are feeling at a given time.