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Though our group came prepared to teaching more lessons about the seasons (summer), Emilio Ricci had a separate activity planned for us to teach. This was because the school had their retired music instructor come in to work with our 5th grade classrooms. Instead of our seasons activity, we accompanied Italian teachers in a 1st grade classroom for about two hours and then observed the music classes occurring upstairs. I came to this table without introducing myself and started looking at the coloring pencils. I could tell the students did not immediately accept me into their coloring circle. Instead of introducing myself, I grabbed my own coloring sheet and sang an improvised melody in major tonality. Next, I pointed to a student's page and sang a different melody in minor tonality. Slowly, they began to trust me more and more and smiled when I sang their melody for them. I followed this same strategy in the next classroom. For the boy sitting to my right in the picture, I sang a melody in major tonality, and for the girl next to him I assigned a minor melody. However, at the end of the melody I followed a V7-1 cadence (Ti-Sol-Do) and hi-fived the student on Do. Then, I took the resolution (Do) away and noticed they still rose their hand for a hi-five. After some time with the melody, the girl even hummed along with her melody. I want to further explore the relationship between a child's trust of an adult and the assigning of improvised melody. To me, it is as if music acts as a shared medium allowing an adult to enter their private world of play (even despite a language barrier), and allowing an adult to quickly add something to a child's play environment (musical exploration). Exploring this topic over the course of multiple classes using the same melodies but adding activities throughout the research could yield interesting results.
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AuthorHello and welcome to my blog page! My name is Nicholas and I am a music education major with a minor in philosophy, my primary instrument is percussion, and my dream is to someday teach elementary general music. Through this program, I hope to increase my pedagogical repertoire and empathy when working with English language learners, to learn about myself as an individual, and to make an impact in the lives of the children in Torremaggiore, Italy. Feel free to browse through and return to my blog as I update it with my pedagogical and travel adventures! Archives
February 2020
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