ENLIGHTENMENT//
Ukulele!!!!! A ukulele is a small musical instrument, similar to a guitar or a violin. It has 4 strings; G-C-E-A. It is plucked in chords, and with different construction from every other instrument, it has a very distinct sound. It is super fun to learn and to play! I have decided I am going to play 3 songs: "Safe and Sound" By: Taylor Swift, "House of Gold" By: Twenty One Pilots, and "I Don't Know My Name" By: Grace VanderWaal. My final project will be performing to the class either through video or live performance.
I have learned a lot this term, playing the ukulele. I have had to learn several important skills. I have had to make important decisions, learn perseverance to keep working on my music, and how to learn the ukulele. Some important decisions included picking my music, how to spend my time in and outside of class and what I would do to add musicality and fun to what I was playing. I took a lot of time to pick my songs. I wanted them to be fun and I wanted you to like them. Picking my songs also included if I was going to drop any chosen songs. I had to drop the song, "Safe and Sound", because the chords that I was playing, were not correctly written. I trued to find chords that did work, but could not. I decided to drop this piece. I also liked that it gave me more time to perfect and make my other pieces sound better. I also had to learn about time management. I think I did pretty well. I gave myself enough time to learn the songs in class. There were also some times that I practiced at home because chords weren't transitioning correctly ans because I wanted to practice. I was able to decide what I was going to do musically, towards the end. I decided I was going to have fun playing my songs. I want to show my audience that I love what I do, which is play music. Learning a new instrument take an incredible amount of self- discipline. I know this from playing and learning several other instruments. Ukulele is a very unique instrument. It's not like a guitar or a violin (both of which I play). It was cool to learn new chords and how they sounded different from others. It was sometimes hard to learn a new chord or experiment with the song, but I pushed through. Learning the ukulele was very fun. I am always looking to expand my horizons, especially in music. I'm glad I had the opportunity in school to learn how to play my new instrument.
Habits of Mind:
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Critical Thinking: I think I should be graded on Critical Thinking because I had to use all the steps written out in the rubric. I had to ask questions that were crucial to my learning as well as my final presentation . I knew from the beginning that I would be playing in front of the class, so while I was picking songs, I kept my audience in mind. I also had to ask questions from my classmates, family and Ms. Tunink on their opinions about everything through the learning process. As for “Acquiring Information” and “Analyzing Information”, I looked on many different sources for ukulele songs to play (Ukutabs.com, ukulele-tabs.com, liveukulele.com, and more). I finally chose ukutabs.com because it was the easiest to understand and play the music from. You could transpose the music (which means to make it easier or harder) and used this feature to figure out some of the songs. As you can see, I can also argue my source and why I used it.
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Problem Solving: I think I should be graded on “Problem Solving” because I had to work through many problems through this project. For Example: “Safe and Sound” did not have the correct chords. I tried to solve my problem by changing chords, transposing it, and trying to find different versions but it was in vain. I ended up deciding that it was better to drop it to make the other songs better. I also had to work through what I was going to present for my final project. Learning ukulele and making a presentation that shows your learning and keeps the audience engaged is hard. I came up with many ideas (teach classmates, online, app, and more) and talked to many people in an attempt to find an idea. After about a week and a half, I was consulting my family and some friends and they gave me the idea to have the audience sing along with my playing. I then used that to organize the rest of my project.
21st Century Skills:
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Problem Solving: As you have seen above, I have had to ask lots of questions and make plans. I didn’t have the plan for my project set out. I had lots of failure. I took this in stride, even if it was frustrating, and worked with it to become better.
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Resiliency: Similar to Problem Solving, I have had to be accepting of problems throughout the learning process. I faced the huge challenge of learning a new instrument in 9 weeks. And I achieved this goal. I grew in every way possible musically.