Reflection 8/26/10

WHAT:
As a child in elementary school, the arts were used a lot in the classroom. I actually had core classes and then specialty classes, so I was able to get a wide variety of the arts. In math we would use paper or candy to demonstrate what we were learning or even sing songs to learn the times tables etc., in english we would draw out what we were reading (draw out a story line of event type thing), in music class we sang songs and danced, in history we would draw pictures or make models of some sort demonstrating what we were learning in that chapter. A few times we even were given the task of playing out different people in the civil war, studying them in detail. These are just a few of the times I remember it being used. As I read the chapter and reflected back on past experiences, I realized just how much these art projects aided in my retention of this material.

SO WHAT:
A mentioned before, I have started making a lot of relations between information the book has been giving and my own personal life experiences. I noticed that for the most part, the things that I remember the best from elementary school are the activities that made me feel involved in the classroom, or things that I was able to make connections to; most of these were events involving the arts. The teachers that I enjoyed the most were the ones that did more than lecture and give worksheets.

My absolute favorite teacher was my 5-6 grade history teacher. She was one of the most impacting teacher for me as well as for many other students that I know of. In her class we would imagine ourselves in ancient Egypt and then draw pictures of what we thought we would have looked like if we were alive in those days. it was also in her class that we learned all of the 50 states and capitals by both songs and by drawing little rhyme books so we could make connections to remember the states to their capitals; my personal favorite activity was the civil war reenactment where we were each assigned a different person from either the union or confederates, and we had to study them and then play them at the end of the year as we went to war on the playground.

There wasn't many teachers that I didn't like in my school experience. The only thing that I really didn't like was work sheets and reciting things in class, I was a shy kid, and really enjoyed being able to do little hands on projects or group things where we could learn from each other. I want to learn fro my past experiences and be able to make learning enjoyable, there are so many kids that believe that school is boring (and lets face it, a lot of the time it is), but it doesn't have to be. I want to be that teacher that the kids enjoy going to class for and that they can walk away saying "I learned something today".

NOW WHAT:
Over the next semester and couple years before I have my own classroom, I want to learn more ways that I can integrate the arts into the classroom. I want it to be natural to be able to think of little ideas to keep the classroom flowing smoothly and effectively. I plan on talking to my friend and cousin and finding out ideas of how they have used it in their classrooms, as well as read up on the different ideas our book, or uen, or some other websites that might have ideas.