As informatization and globalization progress, modern society has been changing more rapidly. The interest areas of children are also changing as quickly as our society. The teaching methods of music class, accordingly, should make continuous changes ...
As informatization and globalization progress, modern society has been changing more rapidly. The interest areas of children are also changing as quickly as our society. The teaching methods of music class, accordingly, should make continuous changes in a way that keep abreast of such changes in children''s interests. Therefore, necessary is the research on teaching methods of music which can not only draw attention from children but also induce children to study.As a teaching method, game activities in music class are proposed in this research. Since musical game activity is not clearly defined yet, I like to define it as an inclusion of game activities in musicalcurriculum. Compared with the current 'music play,' the music play is mostly designedfor pre-schoolers and lower graders in elementary school, playing with each other while musical game activity is more about decidingwinners and losers designed for upper graders. Thus, musical game activities evoke competitive spirits from students, making them to proactively participate in music class and to develop cooperation through playing games in small groups.To develop musical game activities for fourth graders in elementary school, teacher have to find out what students need to study by analyzing music textbooks by sections and to determine factors that can be applied or modified for musical game activities. With theses factors found, teacher develops game activities for music class which are amusing to students. teacher needs to be sure not to focus just on fun or winning but to induce students to cooperate each other in small groups, enabling cooperative study in class.The scope of research is limited to music education for fourth graders in elementary school. The first and second graders in elementary school are excluded from this research since music class for first and second graders is not separated but integrated with otherclasses such as art and physical education. For the record, an independent and separate music class begins from the third grade in elementary school. Especially, fourth graders are the most appropriate subject in this research to find out whether musical game activities are effective for upper graders or not because they just enter the upper grader out of lower graders.The Research method used in this study was to elicit factors that can be developed into musical game activities by analyzing the current curriculum. Then, musical game activities were developed, which include the music curriculum of fourth graders. Finally, the game activities were used in a model class and the responses from students were examined.As a result, this research found that students increasingly grew their interests in music class and proactively participated in the class. In addition, through observation and interview, it is revealed that their musical creativity and exposure to music in daily life have improved.Through this research, I expect that musical game activities are used in music class in school as a way of new teaching methods. Furthermore, I hope an increasing number of teachers take interest in musical game activities and game activities with diverse musical factors will be developed in the future.