Music Integration Reflection

I have learned so much this semester about music integration. This course is very unique because it gave me the opportunity to learn the musical concepts and then teach what I learned to the students in PS.45. This really helped me be more confident and invested in the lessons I taught. I really enjoyed the fact that we incorporated a lot of visuals for students who are kinesthetic learners. We explored many ways to to engage students specifically, we learned about the importance of hands on materials/visuals. This class was also very unique because we learned many ways to incorporate music into different subject areas. Along with that we were informed about the benefits of music integration as well as the actual concepts. Specifically, the …show more content…
As the class learned each concept (from each chapter), the terms and concepts that we learned about the week before were needed to understand that chapters content. For example, when we learned about melody we needed to be able to remember what we learned about pitch and rhythm in order to be able to make connections. Making connections between each chapter/lesson was a frequent thing and I was engaged because the lessons were scaffolded which made it easier to learn. In class we didn’t just have a lecture or read from a textbook, we actually used instruments, and completed activities that perfectly related back to what we learned about that chapter which helped build my understanding even more. When we talked about instruments they were shown right away, when we talked about timbre we used a song to show its meaning, and when we discussed rhythmic patterns we sang them right away. Being able to make connections with what we are learning (right away) is very special an most beneficial to my learning. This could be a method I could incorporate into my future classroom as …show more content…
Due to the fact that (in class) we went over things like the types of questions we should ask to further develop student knowledge (etc.) really helped me be prepare to teach. The fact that we learned to content before teaching was great because it helped me be more confident in teaching the lesson. The fieldwork experience also helped me come to the conclusion that even though you have written a lesson plan, your central focus should be if the students understand the concept instead of trying to get through the lesson plan. People often say that if you are able to teach others about things you know you have learned and understood the concept pretty well. I believe that I was able to teach the students the Timbre and Rhythm lessons because I understood the concept of each and that gave me confidence when I taught it. If I didn’t have the subject of pedagogical I would go into that lesson clueless as to what I should do next. That’s the reason why I enjoyed this course so much we were able to teach what we