Category: Personal Goals and Reflection on Placement

Week 12 – Integrated Arts Blog

The final week of integrated arts was to highlight our progress throughout the music and dance inputs with learning rhythms and creating our dance.

Due to being off the previous week I had not felt fully confident with the dance, however from the enjoyable experience throughout the whole module and from building my confidence when dancing in front of my peers, I wanted to participate fully as I was proud of the dance I created.

We then watched back our performance to give ourselves some personal and group feedback with two stars and a wish. This a popular use of formative assessment of how a child feels about a task and what they can improve. It is good to offer this for children to get peer feedback so positive critical discussion is created and is looked and treated in a positive light. Self-Assessment gives benefits such as: “increasing self-awareness through reflective practice, making the criteria for self-evaluation explicit and improving performances to ongoing learning, it also contributes to the development of critical reviewing skills, enabling the learner to more objectively evaluate their own performance and others’, when used in conjunction with peer assessment. With peer assessment, they become more practised in giving constructive feedback, and receiving and acting on feedback received” (Academ 2017).

 

Lastly, we finished the music part of the module with discussing chords and what a fret board means and how the notes correspond with the frets. We learnt 4 chords on the Ukulele which were G, C, F and A which tied with week 10 on the organisation figure notes stickers helping to learn chords and week 11 with the Glockenspiel practice and how you can play a piece of music through 4 simple chords:

With this we played several pieces of music that focused on each chord individually and then we played all of them together to the song ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham. Music should inspire teachers to use music through subjects such as literacy to create a story and discuss the moods and feelings each part of the music brings which also ties in with health and wellbeing and letting the children talk about how they feel. Expression and emotion are two things that are valued in music and as a teacher, those values should be embedded throughout the lesson.

 

Throughout this module, I have thoroughly enjoyed the different aspects of expressive arts and it has enhanced my creativity when approaching lessons with children. The value of art was spoken throughout the module and highlighted to many people about the lack of funding and training in expressive arts and how this must change. I feel every teacher should want to teach the expressive arts in their lessons, the arts make things more enjoyable, expressive and fun for children and with the information I have been given throughout this module, I will definitely be using it in my future career.

References

• (2017). The Importance of Student Self-Assessment.Available: http://academ.com.au/importance-student-self-assessment/.

Week 11 – Integrated Arts Blog

This week, we continued practicing our movement piece and discussed the importance of dance and how creativity is achieved to give children the best opportunity to express emotions and creative ideas.

Firstly, it is discussed by Theresa Purcell Cone that creative dance does many things for children such as: “Increased confidence, increase in mental wellbeing, increase in physical wellbeing, ability to communicate and work in groups and improved self-esteem that be carried on to other curricular activities.” (Cone 2009). Our role as teachers when teaching creative dance is to also to believe in the creativity and validate children’s ideas for them to value the process and give them a safe and supportive environment for learning.  From Cone’s research, it also highlighted that a teacher’s lack of confidence can cause them to feel inexperienced and intimidated which was discussed in my dance input of the module. Our lecturer spoke about the stigma of dance and how it can be daunting for the teacher and child to perform in front of others. The aim of dance in the creative process is to offer the children the opportunity to create a dance with their own ideas and the responsibility and independence to make a piece come to life (Cone 2009).

Lastly in our music input we started on instrument work by playing the glockenspiel. We worked on 4 notes to play pieces of music that were supported with coloured stickers and shaped on the glockenspiel that was discussed in week 10 with the organisation figure notes. Studies show that Musical training develops the region of the brain responsible for verbal memory—the recall and retention of spoken words—which serves as a foundation for retaining information in all academic subjects. Music students who were tested for verbal memory showed a superior recall for words as compared to non-music students (Ho et al., 1998; 2003)

 

 

 

References

• Ho, Y., et al. (2003). Music Training Improves Verbal but Not Visual Memory: Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Explorations in Children. Neuropsychology, 17(3), 439-450.

 

• Theresa Purcell Cone (2009) Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances, Journal of Dance Education

 

Week 10 – Integrated Arts Blog

This week our inputs focused on creative partnerships and the using them to encourage learning for both the teacher and the child.

Creative partnerships are something that can tackle barriers or challenges when teaching an expressive arts programme. Barriers such as lack of parent involvement, a child’s behaviour or lack of knowledge and funding in the arts can cause creativity to not be involved in education. Theorists such as Walter Humes describes children’s behaviour and the negative judgement if a child demonstrates: “Flair and distinctiveness is seen as showing off, a form of self-indulgence which ought to be supressed.” (Walter Humes 2011). The role of the teacher is that you should always show the appreciation of a child’s creativity and expressing your ideas, always letting each voice be heard and promoting positive individuality and nurturing creativity. Creative partnerships can be staff, outside school organisations, visiting specialists and even parents.

When looking at expressive arts, if you feel unexperienced or a child in your class may show behaviours that can harness that behaviour and use it positively in expressive arts, giving that child and their parents information to school or community expressive art clubs can be a way to tackle this barrier as you are showing to the child you see their potential and encourage them to express it through extracurricular activities.

Using creative partnerships can also help children solve the barrier of not having parent involvement with creativity and giving them the motivation from home to realise their potential. When using creative partnerships, it can help children who face complex and multiple challenges and it gives them the opportunity to express their emotions in school, giving them a more rounded experience with social aspects and building a community with them and a positive teacher pupil relationship (CCE.org 2008). This lecture opened my eyes to the variety of opportunities for teachers to improve their expressive art training by getting help from other professionals to give your class the best opportunity of experience in expressive arts.

 

Our first input this week was music which incorporated creative partnerships as the lecturer gave us material we could use when teaching children with ASN and to help children read music and musical notations. Material we were given and discussed was an organisation called figurenotes.org which provides children support with stickers in colours and shapes to help play music and read notations such as rhythm, playing chords, progression and sharps and flats (figurenotes.org 2010). This was then highlighted with its support from a case study on the BBC that showed a 17-year-old boy Jamie improving in his piano lessons significantly with the help of colours and shapes from figure notes, it is conveyed by Pete sparks the artistic director that: “It’s designed to give people a feeling of success early on, and because it’s very simple at first, the chances of getting that success are high.” (Joanne Macaulay 2010). Organisations like this can give children who struggle with music or children with ASN the opportunity to succeed in the expressive arts and give them the confidence and motivation in different levels to work together in groups and get the support all children deserve.

 

Our second input was Dance which we continued the discussion on cone and following the child’s lead in movement and discussion. The teacher started our dance by showing us our part collectively we would be performing together but also gave us a part we would create in a group of 6 that highlighted some of the skills we learnt the previous week. As a teacher when teaching dance, you should provide an open-ended task, encouraged multiple responses and a structure for the dance. Throughout offered suggestions, demonstrate ideas but also listen to what the children offer so their creativity is not dismissed. It is important that the children express their individual identity and collectively cooperate to find a way to recognize everyone’s needs (Cone 2009). Giving us this freedom to create our own part of the dance promotes critical thinking, team work and time management. When teaching a dance, no matter the music, we all took it differently as each group parts were different. This experience confirms that we all take away our own meaning from a dance whether we are the choreographer, the dancer, or the audience.

 

Both inputs link as in any subject of expressive arts we should harness creative behaviour in children and let them express it freely in music and dance.

 

References

• Creativity Culture and Education. (2008). CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS PROGRAMME Inspiring Teaching and Learning.Available: https://www.creativitycultureeducation.org/programme/creative-partnerships/.
• Figure Notes. (2010). What is Figurenotes?Available: https://www.figurenotes.org/what-is-figurenotes/.
• Humes, W. (2011, in press) Probing the limits of collaboration: professional identity and institutional power. In Forbes, J. & Watson, C. eds., The transformation of children’s services: examining and debating the complexities of inter-professional working (London, Routledge).
• Joanne Macaulay. (2010). Colours and shapes are helping people to read music.Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8579853.stm.
• Theresa Purcell Cone (2009) Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances, Journal of Dance Education

Week 9 – Integrated Arts Blog

This week both inputs focused on the children’s role and learning from them as a teacher. Our first input was with children from Bellsbank school to play string instruments and learn from this with strategies and techniques they have used to raise attainment in their school and get children more enthusiastic about music.  We had string lessons with them about how to hold the bow, play conducting games and from this we saw the confidence in these children when taking charge of a lesson. The enthusiasm they had for learning music was obvious as they explained to us the importance of music for them as a creative outlet and how music permeates throughout their school.

Expression and emotion are two things that are valued in music and as a teacher, those values should be embedded throughout a lesson by giving them a voice and using different tools like in the input with visual aid with teddies which represented different rhythms to pluck on the string instrument. From this first input is conveyed to me how important it is to let children lead their learning as this promotes independence and gives them an opportunity to see their progress by being able to teach others.

 

We then started our first dance input and discussed the important of children learning through experience and how that can give them the best opportunities, especially in dance. When reflecting on this class I realised the daunting aspect of dancing in front of your peers and how for a child it could be daunting too. However, the lecturer discussed about the negative perspectives of dance and set the expectations that everyone was comfortable with which should be done when you are teaching dance to children also. This makes sure that the creative process is effective and everyone’s opinions are heard and perhaps can be changed so that the children’s potential is met fully. We then did activities with warm ups getting people to demonstrate their knowledge of a stretch on a body part and what that can do to help your body. An activity we did which can be cross curricular with health and wellbeing was our diagrams of the human body and each part of it and its importance:

 

We also did other warmup activities such as literacy and numeracy games that highlighted the use of the cross curricular strategy and what dance can offer for children when learning about the alphabet or shapes. Lastly, we did 10 basic skills of dance and what we can incorporate in dances for children: Balance, gesture, hop, jump, kick, reach, roll, slide, turn and twist. It is also important as a teacher to show children how warming up helps your body and keeps you safe when dancing as it is easy to pull or strain a muscle if you are not responsible. Theresa Purcell Cone discusses the important of dance as it is a physical expression that can give children confidence to show creativity and ideas through movement: “One of the most powerful experiences dance educators can offer children is the opportunity to create a dance that reflects their ideas.” (Cone 2009)

Both inputs linked as they conveyed that giving children the opportunity to demonstrate their own knowledge of music and dance can provide them the independence and motivation to reach their full potential in creativity.

References

• Theresa Purcell Cone (2009) Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances, Journal of Dance Education

Week 8 – Integrated Arts Blog

This week we focused on creativity across learning and the benefits and challenges of teaching the expressive arts. Teaching creativity in the classroom can supercharge children’s lives, it can fill them with many useful life skills such as critical thinking, analysing, problem solving and imagination. This is supported by B. Lucas who defines creativity as: “Creativity is a state of mind in which all of our intelligences are working together. It involves seeing, thinking and innovating. Although it is often found in the creative arts, creativity can be demonstrated in any subject at school or in any aspect of life” (B. Lucas 2001). It is essential to empower children and put their aspirations into reality and giving them creativity in their education can enhance that. Creativity can vary in many ways and can be involved in every subject. However, teachers can look at creativity sometimes as messy or disruptive, giving a child the independence in a lesson can be daunting and is a risk due to not having structure. However, throughout this module I have learnt of the different ways to have structure but let the children’s voices be heard.

Theorists such as Walter Humes describes children’s behaviour and the negative judgement if a child demonstrates: “Flair and distinctiveness is seen as showing off, a form of self-indulgence which ought to be supressed.” (Walter Humes 2011). The role of the teacher is that you should always show the appreciation of a child’s creativity and expressing your ideas, always letting each voice be heard and promoting positive individuality and nurturing creativity. A child that may show these behaviours can harness that behaviour and use it positively in expressive arts, giving that child and their parents information to school or community expressive art clubs can be a way to tackle this barrier as you are showing to the child you see their potential and encourage them to express it through extracurricular activities.

Teachers feeling a lack of creativity or being confident enough to teach the expressive arts can be supported by many creative partnerships like CAPE UK. CAPE UK offers to: “to develop the creative potential and capacities of young people, to transform teaching and learning by placing creativity at the heart of the curriculum and to develop approaches to leadership and management which support creativity.” (weareive.org 1997). Our role as teachers is to be able to look for sources of information or guidance in agencies such as CAPE UK and seeking other professionals in your school to get ideas to achieve creativity in all aspects of expressive arts, this is so you can achieve creative opportunities for yourself and your class and feel more confident with expressive arts.

In the inputs, we focused on asking ourselves questions about creativity and why we want creativity to better our schools, our children and ourselves. Creativity is not a personality trait, it is innate in all of us. Creativity can be a different experience for different individuals depending on factors such as environment, confidence, support and encouragement. As teachers, we should inhabit these traits and make children feel like your classroom is an environment to express all these emotions, this can be through positive relationships, style, enthusiasm, interests, knowledge and your own approach. Our creativity in practice should look at the innovative approaches to teaching and the curriculum delivery when making cross curricular decisions and wider links. This then provides exciting and memorable lessons for the class and achieves the curriculum for excellence. It can also provoke questions, identify problems and open lines of enquiry about the existing curriculum.

Using expressive arts throughout your lessons can encourage pupils to develop a range of thinking skills, intelligences and learning styles. It can also encourage them to critique their own work and to accept constructive ideas and criticism from others.

 

Our inputs also focused on visual learning and emotional literacy. We looked at images, picking one between 2, ours was a child holding a jug and a plastic container. From this we were to discuss the representation of the image and what we thought it discussed. Our image we thought it represented receiving something good and nourishing. The plastic container might suggest a less satisfying experience.  An example of this is Rod Taylor’s model of assessment and the 4 types of models used to promote visual learning which are. mood, content, form and process:

Our image in the 4 models:

 

Mood – The two metaphors capture a variety of feelings and emotions for the viewer. Perhaps regret, sadness or happiness.

 

Content – The image surfaces deep or immediate meanings eg. Metaphorically, showing giving and receiving

 

Form – Arranged in a photograph and has a black and white colour scheme. Gives a harmonised contrast which gives the viewer different interpretations

 

Process – Using physical representation, choosing what represents giving and receiving and how that makes the viewer feel

 

This input was giving us the opportunity to explore visual learning and art and the photograph was to provoke thoughts and feelings to an experience whether that is positive or negative. It also tests tolerance for ambiguity and you can do this in a class as it can be used cross curricular with literacy or health and wellbeing. Both inputs highlight the role we as a teacher should give in creativity to provoke thought and also provoke our own ideas by reaching out to other professionals.

 

References

• CAPE UK. (1997). About us.Available: https://weareive.org/.Theresa Purcell Cone (2009) Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances, Journal of Dance Education
• Humes, W. (2011, in press) Probing the limits of collaboration: professional identity and institutional powe In Forbes, J. & Watson, C.
• Lucas, Bill. 2001. Creative teaching, teaching creativity and creative learning. In Creativity in education, ed. A.  Craft, B.  Jeffrey, and M.  Leibling, 35–44.

Week 7 – Integrated Arts Blogs

This week we looked at the expression of land art and being able to use all resources both inside and outside of a classroom. It was to look at the Northern Perspectives with artic art education and the positive interventions we can make from land and a picture. Artists such as Andy Goldsworthy were mentioned on being inspired by nature and creating art using natural materials. As a teacher, you can use Goldsworthy’s work to inspire children when building art using his images and video clips to provoke discussion and inspiration. Ask how his work can identify the lines and shapes using natural materials and what inspires them. Pointing out these different examples help the class understand the different inspirations that an artist and they can use when looking at expressive art. This can be contrasting colours or different textures (Jordan Dewilde 2019).

My intervention of using outside resources was a wall of twigs to make a scenic frame of nature:

This input gave me an insight and conveyed to me that visual art is accessible in schools inside and out and show to us the barrier can be removed by not just relying on resources within the school for creativity to work. The role of the teacher is being able to use all resources of creativity in and outside of school and having imagination to use different perceptions of art that are not just a pen, paintbrush and paper and can be used in several parts of the curriculum.

 

Our second input was using technology in the expressive arts to create a piece of music with the autumnal theme of both inputs. The lecturer showed us how to create, cut, add and move sounds and what technology in music can offer children for free to learning different ways of creating music:

 

“Music has a power of forming the character and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young.” – Aristotle (Cited in Department for Education 2011)

 

The wide range of music technology available enables pupils to work in a variety of contexts that encourages imaginative thought, reflection and engagement in the musical process. Technology should be integrated within such activities to enhance and support teaching, without becoming a barrier or a distraction to music making. It also is used to: “inspire, motivate and stretch pupils, including those reluctant to engage with music; help extend musical experiences; and help children with additional needs to further engage in music making. It complements other music teaching, while encouraging wider communication and collaboration with other pupils.”(Department for Education 2011)

 

References

 

• Department For education. (2011). Music Technology. The Importance of Music A National Plan for Music Education. 1 (Annex 2), p36.
• Jordan DeWilde. (2019). How to Inspire Your Students with Artist Andy Goldsworthy.Available: https://theartofeducation.edu/2019/05/31/how-to-inspire-your-students-with-artist-andy-goldsworthy/.

Week 6 – Integrated Arts Blog

“Music helps you think by activating and synchronizing neural firing patterns that connect multiple brain sites.” (Eric Jensen 2001 p20-21). Music is shown to help perceptual and language skills, literacy, numeracy, creativity and confidence for children and helps the teacher and student engage in collection, enquiry and exploration in the creative process of music through visual learning with rhythm and instrument use which we explored in our first input.

The lecturer spoke about the importance of rhythm in music and the different layers of music being like a cake. This can be a strategy to help children learn that the bottom of the cake is the pulse, the middle being the rhythm with the short and long sounds that create the music and the instrument being the top that you use to create the main tune or sound. These strategies give the children an opportunity to explore musical notations and musical expression with songs, this can help the children understand the thoughts and feelings of a character through the tone, pitch or speed of music.  Giving children the opportunity of discussion about the music also helps them to be creative with their peers and promotes critical thinking and peer assessment which highlights Jean Piaget’s theory that creativity gives them qualities children can develop and use in the future (Jean Piaget 1953).

Jean Piaget’s theory I can highlight with my own experience of playing an instrument and the thought provoking lessons it has taught me in discussion with myself and my peers in class when using music throughout education.

 

In our first input of music, we used the drums as an instrument to follow rhythms on a screen and discover the different patterns the instrument may have. We worked through some simple rhythm patterns such as beats and then discussed quavers and crotchets and clapped along with the lecturer to show our knowledge of remembering how many beats each one had. The teacher throughout would ask for feedback on how everyone is feeling about the lesson which is a key aspect a teacher should do when asking the children what they are grasping, feeling confident in or are confused about.

 

Our next input focused on visual art with Norwegian artists and the inspiration we can get from them. We came up with a statement about something relevant within our current topics in society, for example; climate change, equality and racism. We then created our own printed literacy art based from two artists; Edvard Munch (bottom) and Roberta Smith (top) and how they link with things such as mental health and human rights:

 

I created an art piece about equality in the work place with the inspiration from Roberta Smith:

Using both these paintings can unlock feelings for children they have not discussed in a classroom environment and every child can look at a painting differently. Doing art like this in an expressive arts lesson for children can promote effective communication and expression about world issues. Both inputs expressed the layers of expressive arts and true meanings behind music and art with emotion and musical notations with beats.

 

References

• Eric Jensen. (2001). Music at ages 10 or over. In: Arts with the Brain in Mind. London: ASCD. p20-21.
• Jean Piaget. (1953). Piaget and his theory about Learning.Available: https://exploringyourmind.com/piaget-and-his-theory-about-learning/.

 

Week 5 – Integrated Arts Blog

This week we focused on the music aspect of expressive arts which I was interested to further explore in this module. This was because I played the Oboe throughout primary school and high school and did my higher and advanced higher music, so I felt my previous knowledge of this would be useful.

Firstly, we discussed in our lecture about the positive effect of playing an instrument and the mentally stimulating effects it has that link with the Mozart effect. The Mozart effect is the idea that if children or even babies listen to music composed by Mozart they will become more intelligent. The effect on students who listened to Mozart did ‘better at tasks where they had to create shapes in their minds as they were more mentally focused and calm because of the music’ (Claudia Hammond 2013).

The lecturer then discussed the amount of resources music has for teachers and highlighted some that we did not know. Examples of this were the RSNO open rehearsals children can observe or the Scottish opera to pay to see a show.  Doing these activities with your class, it is helping children discover different types of music, composition and understanding different music from different cultures.

Music for everyone can be an escape and a great way of expression, studies say that music gives advantages to the brain such as it ‘enhances the process of learning. The systems it nourishes, which include our integrated sensory, attention, cognitive, emotional and motor capacities, are shown to be the driving forces behind all other learning’ (Sabrina Barekzai 2016). As a teacher involving children in music whether that is playing music when they come into class in the morning, when they are working or at the end of the day, involving children in a variety of music and musical notations can stimulate their minds and allow their creativity to flow and become more confident, social and effective contributors.

 

Our first input we started with discussing ‘moods’ around music and how pieces of music change your mood depending on the pace, tone or pitch. We listened to 5 different short clips of music, each with different moods to help us discuss emotion and provoke thought and critical thinking. Doing this for children is vital as they may not feel comfortable to express their emotions at home and making your class a safe and comfortable environment for them can be the key to them opening up and being confident when learning in all aspects of expressive arts and all learning. We should also let music help our children thrive, expressing individuality and nurturing creativity.

Our next part of the input was using literacy through music and writing our own story based off a piece of music. The music varied in pace, pitch and tone and we worked in groups to create ideas of what the story could be about. Our story was about a mouse and throughout his adventure he met several creatures who were trying to attack his land, this was created as the high pitch was like a mouse squeak and the fast pace we connected with a fight as he fought the dragon at the end of the story:

Giving children an opportunity to write a story from music creates team working skills, imagination and critical thinking. Research carried out by James Carter from teachprimary.com highlighted that when giving children music when writing, the children: ‘Took more risks, writing more freely and openly, seemed less inhibited and more creative.’ (James Carter 2012). Giving a child this process of listening to music and coming up with their own story gives them the stimulus to be more outgoing with their imagination and create something they are proud of.

 

Our next drama input continued the micro teaching, which conveyed more different conventions of drama and expressed the variety of approaches when teaching which I found extremely interesting. It was then discussed how the micro teaching helped us as trainee teachers and a lot of people said it improved their confidence of teaching drama and really enjoyed planning it. As teachers, I think micro teaching should be a compulsory teaching method for the expressive arts to give teachers the opportunity to get ideas of other professionals and work together to give children the best expressive arts experience.

 

Both inputs link as both expressive art topics are able to help teach children to express their emotions and how they may feel about themselves and other things around them whether that is playing music or a making a scene in story.

 

References

• Claudia Hammond. (2013). Does listening to Mozart really boost your brainpower?Available: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130107-can-mozart-boost-brainpower.
• Sabrina Barekzai . (2016). The Power of Music Education.Available: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2016/01/the-power-of-music-education.html
• James Carter (2012). Music for creative writing Author.Available: https://www.teachprimary.com/learning_resources/view/music-for-creative-writing.

Week 4 – Integrated Arts Blog

This week we focused on micro-teaching in one of our inputs to provide evidence of knowledge on the strategies and drama concepts we have learnt from the first few weeks. We were given the freedom to choose a topic of our choice so we could choose one we felt confident with and gave us the best opportunity of expression. Our topic we designed a lesson around the Titanic. As a group, we structured the lesson by splitting it into parts and giving each person a role to contribute to the micro-teaching lesson. Each group was completely different for example, a group did a children’s story to discuss life lessons of being more kind to others and used conventions such as hot seating. Our group gave the opportunity to the class by having each group freeze frame so everyone’s voice was heard:

This conveyed the positive ideas of each groups micro teaching and presenting in front of others to give a good opportunity of using different conventions and how to structure a lesson with clear learning intentions and success criteria. We also got given feedback from peers and the lecturer about our micro teaching task, with what we did well and what we had to improve. Using this micro-teaching lesson gave us a first-hand example of how to teach this to a class as we were conscious to teach it as if our peers were children. From our feedback, we were told not to address the class as ‘guys’ as that was informal and not an equal word to use with a class of mixed genders.

Getting this form of assessment at the end of a lesson could work well with children as getting feedback from peers or the teacher is essential for them to progress in their learning. I found this input very beneficial and microteaching has many advantages such as: “Elasticity of practice, confidence booster, budget oriented, more learning less damage, improves attitude, instant feedback and masters your skills” (Chitra Reddy 2019)

 

Our next input explored expressive arts and taking art away from linear writing and expressing emotions through words using dry mediums such as chalk and crayons. The art was based from a memory we had of the highlands whether that was a holiday or a hill walk, using singular words such as peaceful or family. When looking at instructing a lesson on creativity and the arts, the theorist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi states: “The first step towards a creative life, is the cultivation of curiosity and interest” (Csikszentmihalyi, M (2013 p346). In this input, it was like the work of ‘Room 13’ and gave us the freedom to use our own memories and choice of how we would express our outlook of the highlands. I thought of a memory I had with my family when we were in the hill walking club and the many beautiful mountains we climbed so this was easy for me to think of words as it is a fond memory of mine so that gave me curiosity and interest as it was something I had personally experienced:

We then looked at our peer’s art and I saw the variety of work with the highlands being perceived in many ways with poems, drawings and words like mine:

 

Both inputs link as they would be both be good to use in a lesson, it gives a chance for the children to use their own imagination, voice and crossing both literacy drama and art together showing that art can be used across the curriculum. Merging the two important disciplines of visual arts, micro teaching and literacy gives children the chance to look at the world in unique ways and Arts literacies help students develop design-thinking, creativity and critical thinking, all skills said to be important for the future workforce (A. Lemieux, G. Barton, J.C. Chabanne 2018)

 

 

References

• Chitra Reddy. (2019). Micro Teaching: Principles, Procedures, Benefits & Limitations.Available: https://content.wisestep.com/micro-teaching-principles-procedures-benefits-limitations/.
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. (2013). Chapter 14. In: Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention. London: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition. p346.
• Amélie Lemieux, Georgina Barton, Jean-Charles Chabanne. (2018). ‘Invisible’ literacies are literacies for the future. What are they? Why is teaching them vital?Available: https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?tag=arts-based-teaching-of-literacy.

Week 3 – Integrated Arts Blog

This week we looked at the movement and international network of ‘Room 13’ and the effect it has had on expressive arts in primary education curriculum.

Firstly Room 13 began in 1994 by a group of young artists in Fort William, Scotland. The aim of room 13 was to show the global uprising of creative and entrepreneurial children who are responsible for a growing international network of student organised art (Claire Gibb 2012). The representation of art conveys how it does not matter what age you are, you are responsible for your creativity and creativity is endless. The lectures aim was to show how as teachers, if we are always using structured restricted expressive art lessons we are denying our children the opportunity to express and show individuality. An example of this was shown on our lecture power point but I also saw in my classroom at placement as well:

Room 13 also represented the positives of mess and how giving children jobs when cleaning up can give the children responsibilities and structure, helping both the teacher and the child when carrying out an art lesson.

 

This was conveyed through our first input which looked at art and discussed the positive aspects around children’s variety of art but also the pressures of art when using a paintbrush. The paintbrush is a classic tool of arts and crafts and can sometimes restrict children’s way of thinking by giving them pressure of not doing it right, so our input was to design our own paintbrush and use it to create a piece about a memory we had in the highlands:

We were given a structured picture to draw from, however were given the freedom to use our tool to draw what we thought our highland memory would look like:

As shown from the picture above, all pictures are different and have different colour schemes and different concepts of the same picture. This conveys that when using this technique with children it can give them the opportunity to be expressive and create a unique painting of their own despite what the teacher is showing them. The aim of the input was to show the pupils voice and that visual art does not have to be the same as it can be perceived differently to every child.

 

Our second input looked at history and more concepts to engage children in learning about the past and how to express their emotions through several new concepts such as mime, slow motion and voices in the head. When teaching history to children, the rawness of it can be controversial or too serious for children with subjects such as WW1/WW2, immigration, free speech and the me-too movement. Theorists such as Cecily O’Neill focused on techniques such as improvised creativity and process theatre that helps show children history in a levelled way as she states: “In drama, teachers and students are engaged in collective enquiry and exploration.” (O’Neill 1987 cited in Booth 2012)

 

During our first role play, we focused on voices in head and the funeral around the Grenfell tower with each person at the funeral conveying how they felt losing a loved one, whether that was sadness, anger or no remorse. Voices in head focusing on how the person is feeling in that moment and is conveying emotions or thoughts they are thinking inside their head and cannot say out loud. Giving children opposing views can be very powerful and acting out scenarios helped us and can help children understand how things truly happened or how it would have felt for the people involved to get a deeper understanding of current life issues and empathy to others and what we as a society can do to change it:

Both inputs connect as we as teachers should give children the opportunity to explore the expressive arts no matter the subject, the expressive arts play a central role in shaping our sense of our personal, social and cultural identity. Learning in the expressive arts also plays an important role in supporting children and young people to recognise and value the variety and vitality of culture locally, nationally and globally (HMIe 2019)

 

 

 

References

• Booth, D. (2012) Drama research: International journal of drama in education testimony reconsidering Dorothy Heathcote’s educational legacy. [Online]. Available: http://www.nationaldrama.org.uk/journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/Testimony.pdf
• Claire Gibb (2012). Room 13: The Movement and International Network. London: Blackwell Publishing
• (2019). Curriculum for Excellence – Expressive Arts . Expressive arts Principles and practice What can learning in the expressive arts achieve for children and young people? p1.