Chapter 5 Points of Interest

#1. I found myself at a disadvantage in this chapter. I read the section about the male voice in its relation to children's voices. I am not a singer by any means and have trouble even in my own limited range. Now that I have learned that children will try to alter their natural voice to match my bass voice I really need to be careful on how I sing with students.

#2 Another point of interest came at the end of the chapter on helping children to think musically. I have always thought that teaching students certain things would help them to think musically. I believe that there is a natural path to thinking musically; I never really noticed how much instruction and guidance is needed to make children think in a musical manner.

The paragraph states many strategies that can be used to help kids on their way to think musically. Singing, moving, playing, listening, reading and creating. The next sentence says that discussion and reflection is key in the process to thinking like a good musician. I also appreciate the statement how the strategies must be carefully selected over time. The road to thinking musically is long and does not happen overnight.

#3. The last point of interest that hit me was the perception of children in relation to pitch. I never actually realized (although I should have) that a keyboard is not a great way to teach pitch. When a child visualizes a keyboard, or sees one in real life, it is on a horizontal plain. The fact that pitches sound 'higher' and lower' than one another is lost on a child looking at a keyboard. Because higher and lower denote a vertical plane, showing pitch on a horizontal plane is not a good idea at all.

Reading this section has made me more aware of some of the mistakes that I have made with children. I now have an idea as to why some of the concepts I like children to get, they do not. They have not reached the appropriate stage for me to be teaching them concepts the way I did. Thankfully I changed the concepts to match; although I did so thinking that my students were a bit slower than normal. It will now remain in my mind that students must have reached an appropriate developmental level before I start mixing and matching concepts together.