Journal #1

Natalie Grote
Reflection Journal: #1
9/20/09
In this first unit, we learned about rhythm which is defined as a combination of short, long, and silent sounds. In rhythm there is also something called the steady beat which is the same notes which doesn’t really change a lot in a song. We also learned what melody of a song is. Melody is defined as a combination of pitches and pitches are the highness and lowness of a note. In order to add rhythm we had to learn the types of notes. We learned whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note, and sixteenth note (these are put in order of longest notes to the shortest notes).
We learned these things by learning the welcome song called “Hello Everybody”. In class we used a very easy cut down for this song. By putting the words into boxes we were able to identify the notes that went along with the words in this song. Including the notes that are in this song we learned some of the other common notes that are used in other pieces of music. We also learned the names of the all the students in the class while having fun.
This was very important to learn because this understanding of music is the building block which all music is built on. I have been in music classes since sixth grade so a lot of this is a review but a good way for me to help others and get a review of the concepts. Learning notes will help us to understand the making of any musical thing. This also gives us ideas about different ways of teaching students which maybe a better way of learning than others.
It is important for students in elementary school to learn the different parts of music because when learning different types and parts of music there is many other skills to be learned. In songs students can learn math skills by songs that count like in the song that we sang in class called “Tideo”. These different skills can be used in the regular classrooms to help students remember important information needed to for the rest of their life. In music this also gives the children a chance to express themselves in a way that other things may not be able to.