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Campbell, D.M. et al. (1997). How to develop a professional portfolio: A manual for teachers. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.] |
| During high school, I helped a young lady learn to play
xylophone. This doesnât seem like a significant feat; however,
this young lady is mildly autistic. I was asked to help her because
I have had experience with autistic children all of my life because a close
family relative is autistic. When I was asked to help this girl, I jumped
at the chance because this really interested me. While I worked with
her, we developed our own notational system. She had difficulty understanding
standard western notation; so we use a system of colors and shapes because
this was something she felt very comfortable with. Starting out, we
assigned each note on the staff a symbol and color and the same with the
bars on her xylophone. We began by writing in the corresponding color
and symbol under the western notation the other students were reading.
As she became comfortable with the system we developed, she also learned the
western notation. Eventually we were able to slowly remove some of
the writing in her music. However, we were not able to do this with
all of her music. This process took quite a bit of time because she
had difficulty in areas students her age understood quite well. The
one thing I was taught and have found to work is to find the one thing an
autistic student enjoys and excels at. This can be a key and an enormous
help when it comes to teaching new things. If you can relate new topics
to the one thing they understand, things can become easier. In Elementary General Music 2, we focused mainly on the methods of teaching music and how to implement them in our classroom. We were given multiple opportunities to teach mini-lessons to our peers on the methods and approaches that we were learning about. Throughout the semester, I found a poem that I really like. After finding this poem, I created a lesson for an early elementary class that allowed them to explore rhythms and movements along with recognizing repeated sections of the poem. During another assignment, I use the same poem but create the start of a different lesson. In this lesson, the students were going to create musical representations of the obstacles the reader faces while on the Bear Hunt. In Elementary General Music class, a lady and a gentleman came to speak with us about Very Special Arts which can almost be compared to the Special Olymics but for the Arts. They spoke with us about how we can adapt our lessons and our classrooms to include all children in our classes, even special needs students. This was a very interesting topic to me because I have had experience with speical students and have enjoyed working with them. This is an area of my education that I would really like to further my studies in because it is very important to me. I think it is vital that we provide experiences for all students; and that these experiences are positive for them. In Choral Literature class, we talked a lot about the development of children and what to look for in literature for each specific age level. Look at just the ranges is not enough to consider. Texts, language appropraiteness, voicings are just a few other things that need to be considered. As teachers, we need to be aware of our students abilities and disabilities when we choose music. It is our job to give the students a positive experience in music and that can begin with picking appropriate literature. I taught a lesson in MUSED200 on Tchaikovsky's "March" from the Nutcracker Suite to a small group of students. This lesson was directed towards a kindergarten or first grade classroom. Because most of these students probably do not read music, I used a contour worksheet with the students. They were asked to follow along with their page and not only notice but also somehow mark differences they heard in the music. Obviously this is not a lesson that I would do with a high school group because typically more studentscan read music. This lesson allowed them to use their own notational devises since some of them might not be able to write words yet. Also their attention spans are less than older students so we used crayons and markers to keep them interested in what was going on. |