Field work-Happy Thanksgiving!

This week one of the things my supervising teacher did was teaching about music. She taught the students about different types of music and different instruments and what catagories they go in. Miss Kelley gave each student a picture of a musical instrument and had them put them in categories. At the end of the lesson she showed a movie of Peter and the Wolf which has many different instruments playing as characters in the story.



The students really enjoyed interacting and learning about music. Miss Kelley used watching the movie as a reward for participating in the discussion. It seems like any time she turns on a movie the children are engrossed. She used the whole lesson to prepare the students to go to a performance by the Utah Valley Symphony. I think it gave the students a good background about the instruments and the type of music that would be played.



I would love to use technology like movies in the future as a teacher. It's good to use movies sparingly so the students are excited about them and really pay attention. Miss Kelley has bought a lot of materials like movies herself. She said she first tried using an audio tape of Peter and the Wolf but the students didn't pay attention that much. I'm sure it will take time as a teacher to figure out which lessons work and to collect books, movies, and things for class use.

I watched a video on Teachertube about James Otis and the subject of taxation without representation. This was a fun video of a man in period costume telling the story of James Otis. Otis was a man who was hired to argue against the ritz of assistance but instead argued for it. Otis is famous for the quote taxation without representation is tyranny. The people of the US smuggled ingredients to make rum from the Spanish Dutch and French when they couldn't obtain enough ingredients through England. Otis had a sad and tragic life but he was a revolutionary man who fought for his beliefs. This would be a fun and worthwhile video to share with students.