Week Eleven

5/23/2019

This lecture gave me the opportunity to reflect upon myself as a music teacher and how my own beliefs about music education have changed as a result of what I’ve learned throughout this semester through this unit, the readings provided and my own research. The reading this week and my experiences over the semester have indicated the importance of learning by doing. In the case of Orff music, children are encouraged to learn music by making music, while Rowley highlights the importance of real world experiences in educating tertiary music students and assisting them in the transition between student and professional. Furthermore, she emphasises the importance of ePortifolios and their role in assisting students to reflect on their learning and develop critical thinking skills. I think this has emphasised the importance of this ePortfolio in my own learning as I think it will help me not only track my progress and growth as a music educator, but allow me to reflect more thoroughly on what I am learning throughout my degree. Rowley, J (2019). The musician as teacher: Early career experiences of music teaching and leadership explored through an ePortfolio learning space. Leadership of Pedagogy and Curriculum in Higher Music Education. DOI: 9780367077334 ​ Skills every music teacher needs - primary and high school | insidethismusicbox. (2019, Jan 11) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpxyvRVvbvc&feature=share

Week Eight

5/16/2019

I observed that the teaching styles between Balinese Gamelan and Orff Schulwerk had many similarities, in particular their use of melodic chunking, ostinati, repetition and learning all parts. We learned the decorative line initially (the hardest line) which we learned through observing, chunking and repeating. Though the process of learning was the same, I thought it was interesting that we started with the hardest harmonic line, while Orff usually teaches the melodic line first and builds on it with harmonic lines. We learned the remaining three lines continuing to move from hardest to easiest, and continuing with the pattern of repetition and echoing. It was interesting to see that aspects of Orff Teaching are applicable not only in school teaching but in music across different cultures as well.

Week Seven

4/11/2019

This week we revisited the key elements of Orff Schulwerk as we learned a 12-16th century court dance called a Clog Bronie. Belinda taught us the dance initially through having us imitate hand actions. She nodded her head to indicate a beat as she taught these actions, which allowed us to better understand the timing of them, and then more easily transfer the hand actions to our feet, which became the foundation of the dance once we added the music. Through this process we also revised the use of repetition and chunking, and incorporated compositional activities by creating our own dances in smaller groups. Furthermore, we used the dance to highlight and understand the structure of the piece, similarly to the activity we did with The First Circle last week, which further affirmed in my mind the ability for Orff teaching to help students understand more complex musical concepts.