Music and Movement

           Our first peer teaching  was about music. It was assigned before we went on with our Christmas vacation. First, we brought books and chose among the titles we had. We had to consider the length and the content. We wanted to find a book wherein we could easily apply music and movement. Luckily, we had a book that already incorporated a song in it. So we chose that one. The only thing left to do was implement it.

           We divided our parts for this peer teaching demo. Cess was in charge of the story telling. Iya was in charge of the visual aid. While I was in charge of the musical aspect of the demo. To an extent, I think it worked since we based our parts on our strengths and resources. We would have also added movement in our activity but we didn’t have time to coordinate about that since we were still hung over from vacation.

          What I learned in this activity is that when it comes to visual aids, peeling off is easier than putting up. It seems very simple and logical but not everyone realizes that. I always see people doing demos and reports by putting up visual aids that wouldn’t stay up.

          It also helps to plan your materials vary carefully and if possible try them out before actually using the with kids. Our problem with the song lyrics wouldn’t have happened had we tried actually running through the book while putting the words up. It was practically impossible. If we found that out, maybe we would have gone for  a powerpoint presentation instead. To sum that up, anything that you will use in teaching, try it out first.

          If there is one thing that I learned from this demo that didn’t come from a mistake, it would be that you should know your strengths and weaknesses as a teacher. If you have talents and interests that you could relate to the lesson, use it to your advantage. Both Iya and I play the ukulele so we thought that we might as well use that since the topic is music and movement. One thing about the ukulele though and all other musical instrument is that kids get easily distracted by it. They would want to try it out. So if you are going to use it in the classroom, you should establish well what you would do or else the kids might see it as a toy.

          Lastly, I realized that there are a lot of ways that you could tell a story. Incorporating music and movement in story telling is a very good way to captivate the attention of children. Maybe in the future, I would use this approach to tell stories more.