During today’s class, Jessica, Madi, Hailey, Emma and I taught our lesson on integrating music and movement (physical education) into the classroom. Collectively, we set out to develop a lesson where afterwards the student would be able to understand the value of quarter rests, quarter, half, dotted half, and whole notes through performing actions for the correct amount of beats. Additionally, students would also be able to demonstrate fundamental movement skills such as axial rotations, jumping, and static balance as evidenced by their ability to use proper form and technique. Referring back to the filmed video of our lesson, the students were able to understand the value of each note and rest, as well as perform the various fundamental movement skills with little to no difficulty. I wish we were in the other classroom because there was definitely a space issue which made doing the spins and conga line difficult at times. We also used the modification where by if students were unable to perform the fundamental movements, they were invited to keep the beat with Hailey and myself. We, as a group, came up with the movements to Johnny Cash’s “You are my Sunshine” and the scaffolding process of how we would introduce each movement, followed by practicing each line individually, which would build up to performing all four lines, and finally adding in music. From there we divided the workload; I was responsible for the hook and the conclusion. I feel both my hook and conclusion were relevant to the main objectives of our lesson and additionally provided background information of what we would be working on (hook) and what students will take away from this (conclusion). The First Peoples Principle of Learning that best fit our lesson was how learning involves patience and time. As the students were learning each movement, I felt that we, as teachers, did a good job on not rushing through the piece. We took our time building student understanding of how to execute each movement properly and by going through the song line by line we incorporated repetition, therefore making both the movements and lyrics of the song easy to remember. Additionally, we planned out the lesson by allotting time for each aspect of “You are my Sunshine” in a way that would neither hinder student learning or dwell too much on one aspect making the activity tiresome. A professional goal I made for myself was to use this experience to improve my presentation skills in order to make my part of the lesson clear, concise, and entertaining. I let my nerves get the best of me at the beginning of the lesson as evidenced by the video, which showed me that I rushed through my explanation of quarter rests quite quickly. However, I was able to find the time to reiterate the value of a quarter rest in a clear, concise way. Personally, I feel that my enthusiasm, energy, and confidence in the material made my teaching portion of the lesson successful. It was clear from watching the video that I knew my material and that my enthusiasm was present as evidenced by my modelling of the various movements. Overall I am proud of the progress I have made relating to public speaking and I will continue to work on it moving forward. I enjoyed creating this lesson with my group as it was a great way to collaborate our ideas in an informative, interactive setting.

 

Photo by John Matychuk on Unsplash