I realized I have missed the past two reflections which is weird because I write them on a doc during one of my lectures every week. I must have just forgot to upload them after that. I got them submitted this morning which makes me feel better, and I have been improving piano wise. I am slowly getting the tempo down and feel confident playing hands together. I think I will submit a video of my progress in in the next reflection so I can talk a bit about that process. Overall, I am getting excited but anxious because I would like to finish this song before the end of this course, but it will definently take a bit of motivation to get the last few sections down!
Month: March 2026
I have struggled a bit this week. The second portion of the song (the chorus) requires quick hand movements where I am stretching my hand very far. It is difficult to play this section without pressing other keys, missing a cord, or keeping up with the fast pace. I am trying to work through this bump but it is difficult to find motivation when I keep messing up. I hoep next week goes a bit smoother!
I have been learning another song ontop of the main song I have been practicing. The new song is called Closer by the Chainsmokers. I actually learnt this back in grade 7 when I played piano a little more regularly. It has been fun getting back into the groove and learning new songs again. However, I do struggle to find motivation when I get stuck on a cord or portion of the song. This is primarily because I don’t have anyone who can help me or let me know if I have been playing something wrong, it is up to me to catch those mistakes and learn from them, but I think that is also part of the learning process.
I realized I submitted my Inquiry in my weekly dropbox. So this will be my Weekly reflection here. Sorry!
This week I worked with my group to get our project done. We are pretty close to finishing up, but there is a few more final touches left. I found it interesting learning about the dangers of social media especially on young kids. It is crazy how much social media has taken over out everyday lives, me included and it really makes you think about how harmful it is when you take a minute to just think about the impacts it has on us. I enjoyed our previous class, it was laid back and we spent time collaborating with our peers and talking about how technology is incoorperated into our pracitcum schools. Being in Tanzania for my practicum, it has been difficult trying to gather information about my school. However, it seems as though we will be very limited on resources, including all form of technology. I have been informed by staff the only materials we are given while being their is chalk and a chalk board. I am excited to see how creative I will get while teaching there!
This week I polished up a bit of my song, trying to make it sound smoother and flow better. The last bit of the song I haven’t filmed yet, I am still trying to catch up that part with the rest of cords. I am proud of my progress and find myself getting better and better each day. I am a little frustrated though because everytime I went to film myself playing this song, I kept messing up. I think it took about 20 tries before I could get one mediocre clip. So I do feel that this video does not represent the progress i have made so far, but it does show a bit of an imporvement from the last clip I attached.
This week I caught back up on my work for this class and spent some time organizing my work load. I found the guest lecture super helpful, the ways you can incorperate minecraft into lessons is so interesting and something I can totally see students loving. As someone who grew up playing Minecraft I would have loved to do a lesson on it in class. Minecraft allows students to be creative and can easily be incorperated into many lessons. There were even preprepared lessons available for teachers access that they can use anytime.
This week I was a little stressed with school, which caused me to fall a bit off track in my other classes. However, I really enjoyed Friday’s class, especially the activity where we got to work with our peers and create alternate lesson plan. I feel like my group worked really well together and we created a lesson that followed the SMAR criteria perfectly. This is definetly something I would like to introduce into my future classes one day.