Field Experience

I am excited to be able to integrate art into my teaching in the future. This class has provided me with so many ideas, both simple and elaborate, on how to use art effectively in a classroom. In my field experience, I noticed my teacher using visual art, music, and drama quite often. The class completed a artist study that they learned all that they could about a famous artist and then they created a piece of artwork that was similar to their artists style. (Similar to what we did in class.) I really enjoyed seeing something that we did, put to work in an actual class. Each month they also memorize poems or songs that go along with what they are learning about in different subjects. While I was in the classroom, the teacher started a reader's theater with the guided reading groups as well. Each activity was fun, simple, effective, and the kids loved it. In class, I really enjoyed listening to and seeing other groups' presentations and ideas. Everyone perceives things a little differently than someone else might, so it was a good learning experience for me to be able to see how other individuals saw each aspect of art. I have seen drama, music, and of course visual art in classes. But I had never before seen or really thought about using dance in a class. I love dance, so the use of it in my classroom makes me really excited about new integration ideas and possibilities. In the future, I want to pay better attention to little things teachers do. I didn't realize how often even little bits of art get integrated into nearly every lesson. As I pay closer attention, I want to become better at using arts in different lessons throughout the day. I would also like to plan more art lessons to use during my pre-service experiences. My art/health lesson that I planned, was probably the one I had the most fun with (as far as planning goes that is).

Reflection #5- Music

Music is an excellent tool to use in the classroom. It is fun, innovative, and effective. Songs can be used in original text or common ones can easily be revamped to fit different subject matter. Changing lyrics in songs to fit the core is an excellent way to remember and review learned material. Unlike notes, this is something they will always have with them. The song is memorized and will be with them when they come across that difficult problem on the end-of-levels or even just unit assessments.
I would love to use this tool in my class. I learned a lot just by listening to the groups present in class, so I can imagine how effective it would be. In high school, I took a class that required memorization of specific passages. These were easily memorized and remembered when they were put into a song format. I can still remember quite a few of them today. It is often just something that no matter how hard you try to get rid of it, you will always have it with you.
I think it is important to allow students to learn the song along with you. Repetition and actively engaging with the music seems like it would be the best way to learn songs. I enjoyed using the different techniques and instruments while learning all of the songs during class. I think by adding in little things, the lyrics just come easier.
I plan to use this in many ways. It would be a fun review but also a fun introduction to a subject. By knowing a song about a subject, the knowledge is able to be more concrete for the students. They almost always have the previous knowledge of the tune, so there is no need to start from scratch. Using something that they already know and adding upon it, just adds so many more connections and even simple understandings.
This project was really fun to come up with. I love to change lyrics into songs just messing around so I was excited when we got to do it for a purpose. Our group worked well together and were able to build off of one anothers ideas. We all got a say in how we would go about preparing and presenting our project.
I have enjoyed working with groups for each presentation this semester. I think it would be awesome to be able to work like this with other teachers teaching the same grade level. I like working with others because it opens up so many unseen doors and allows for so much more learning, exploration, and understanding to come into affect.
I think it is important to allow students to work with those they feel comfortable with as well as those who they don't feel as comfortable with. For the first two presentations, we were able to choose our groups. The groups I choose were people I had worked with in the past and I knew their working habits. For the last two when we worked with individuals in our grade level, it took me a little outside of my comfort zone. I enjoyed working with everyone that I got a chance to work with this semester and the things that were taught/learned through our collaboration.

I have always loved dancing, so naturally movement (kinestetic) is my favorite way to learn. In my personal experience dance has helped me a lot through my learning, and that is with dance outside of a school setting. From that, I can see how useful and productive it would be to use dance in a classroom setting.
I was unable to see the presentaions in class, but from watching the dvd and the one other group that presented today, I was able to get some good ideas of effectively integrating dance into lessons.
I can see how even simple integration of dance can help with so many different learning things. Sequencing, memorization, and concentration are effected so much through dance. I would like to find a way to add the dance into one of my lessons through out field. It would be interesting to see first hand how it works.
In our group, we had a hard time finding a fun book that we could tie easily into the core that had potential for movement. Once we found our objective and a fitting book the rest fell into place. When we asked the class how they thought the book efected how we are presently living. We had really only considered 2-3 ways ourselves. It was good to see other individual understandings. Personal connections were made and when they were shared, they helped with both student learning and teacher understanding.

Reflection #3

I had never thought about the use of drama being incorporated into a book like we did for our presentations. I think that using this aspect of art will be easy to integrate. Students love to get read to and to be able to do an activity with it would be even more fun. I liked the role playing that can be used. There are a lot of the ideas that allow the students to get up and get physically involved in the story being read.
I like that drama can be used for almost every subject in one way or another. It is just a matter of fitting it in, and then it will help with our lessons.
Integrated drama is important because it allows for movement, creativity, socializing, as well as knowledge to be shown and produced. Using creative drama in a classroom would make the subjects more fun and interactive for the student rather than just lecture after lecture.
It was fun to develop our process drama. We each took a part and contributed to the whole project. There were some ideas that when I was looking over them, didn't seem that fun. But as my group members and other groups incorporated them into the presentations I was able to see how fun and useful they really could be.
We all worked really well together, and we each took responsibility for our individual parts.

Reflection #2

I have never thought about all of the different parts in visual arts. As we worked on our projects in class it made sense, but I had never really considered all of the possibilities. It was neat to be able to change the value of the colors, and to create the secondary colors with our own personal vibe in it.
As a teacher, I want to let students see what I saw. I was excited to see the colors change and shapes start to form into different objects. I would like to use the visual arts as much as possible. It seems like it would be the most universal form of the arts to integrate into many lesson plans and activities.
Working on this project has been good. Last week in class we divided up the different things we needed for the project. The rest of the group emailed me their information and I have loaded it all into one document. One thing I learned is to set a definate date to have our individual information in. We were able to talk in class this week to remind eachother to email, but it would have been nice to start working on it last weekend.

Reflection #1

I am not good with the picture, drawing, painting, etc. aspect of art. I do love to dance though. I have danced since I was 3 and I love expressing myself through music and movement. As I reflect back to my elementary experience, the biggest art influence that I can remember during school hours was music. Each class had their own music time with Mrs. Jones, we would sing and even help her play bits and pieces on the piano. I still remember many of the songs that would fill the hallways of our small school and the lessons taught by them. I remember coloring and drawing a lot in every class but I remember it being for fun, rather than tied to the core. I am sure it was tied because it always had a purpose. There were assignments in math, in reading, in science, and just for fun. They helped to make the assignments more meaningful and fun to complete.
I had never thought about how learning about artists individually would help general learning for students. After reading about it in our book, I can see how it would help. Artists have a lot of ups and downs in their work and by studying their lives and stories, students can find that even through their ups and downs they can be amazing. Art can teach students a lot about themselves and helps to provide a window for others to learn about them as well.
Both of my siblings are amazing artists so I have been able to be around it my entire life. My family listens to a lot of music and as I mentioned before I love dancing. The impact has been tremendous, and makes me want to be better in art areas.
I hope to become better acquainted with the arts through this semester. I want my classroom to be one that will allow students to freely express themselves and I believe one of the best ways to do that is through the arts.