Drama

“Through drama, learners have rich opportunities to be creative and to experience inspiration and enjoyment” (Scottish Government, 2004). Out of the various concepts we have learnt about in drama tutorials my favourite is ‘voice in the head’. This is where during a drama a specific character would step forward and speak about their thoughts, feelings […]

Integrated Arts Week 4

Visual Arts This week, we were introduced to Scottish artist Avril Paton’s 1993 painting ‘Window’s in the West’, currently on display at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Gallery. As Paton is a modern artist, we were able to view a video of her talking about the painting online. This is something that I will keep in mind in …

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Integrated Arts- Printmaking and Drama 3/10/2017

The focus of this week’s Integrated Arts module where the visual arts and drama. During the input I was able to develop a range of personable skills, as well as teaching techniques in which I will be able to implement within a classroom environment.
As part of the lecture we were given a copy of the painting ‘Windows in the West’ by Scottish artist Avril Paton. We discussed the painting and the wealth of opportunities that it can be used for within integrated arts areas of the curriculum, as well as occasions when an interdisciplinary approach can be utilised. Using an appropriate painting or drawing there are many opportunities within the curriculum to compose a narrative (relating to drama, literacy, possibly social studies and health and wellbeing). Taking a comprehensive survey of the painting ‘Windows of the West’, it is evident that within the painting there is a significant amount of activity occurring within the image. Subsequently there are many opportunities to build a drama lesson, the ‘Windows of the West’ painting represents a story behind each window of the tenement block, there many possibilities to question children such as: what are the people doing in the painting? Look at the different floors, what is happening inside each flat? What do the flats look like inside, can you create an image? Availing Rod Taylor framework of PROCESS, FORM, CONTENT and MOOD, this can be used as an aid when discussing aspects of art with children.

‘Windows of the West’
PROCESS
What materials, tools, processes and techniques did the artist use?
The artist used watercolour paints in order to create the painting. The artist also used a range of paintbrushes as the painting has a lot detail implying the artist carried the work out carefully and with accuracy.
FORM
Are there recurring shapes, lines, rhythms, forms etc. which determine the design of the piece?
The artist has created uniformity with in her painting, the shape of the windows remains constant. Likewise, the artist painted attentively due to the structure of lines.
CONTENT
Was the subject matter observed directly, remember or imagined?
Analysing the painting it look as though the artist observed the situation directly due to the volume of detail in her work. As the painting was created on Scottish street snow is quite rare.
MOOD
Does it convey feelings about life and nature?
The painting conveys the unpredictably weather in Scotland. The artist main aim perhaps was the to illustrate that behind every window there is a different story evolving.

During the first input we explored printmaking in the visual arts. To create our printmaking, we used the ‘Windows of the West’. This was the first time that I had ever attempt printmaking, in spite of having low art skills set I was able to produce work of a good quality, in which was pleasing and satisfying to myself knowing I had develop a new skill. Cox and Watts (2007, p.47) considers printmaking as “something slightly magical about the process of printmaking… making a print is a rewarding experience”. In order to create printmaking there are many processes to be carried out:
• Firstly, trace the image onto polyboard, this will leave slight idents on the board. It is best to use a ball point pen to trace back over the idents.
• Paint (range of colours) is then put onto wooden/ plastic board, using rollers to roll the paint onto the polyboard.
• Once the polyboard is covered in paint, the polyboard can be transferred and printed onto paper. We used A5 paper and coloured paper too.
• There are many opportunities to facilitate printmaking within the curriculum, children could perhaps make Christmas cards using print, or even print a piece of literacy work using printmaking.
I found the process of printmaking to be an enjoyable and a fulfilling experience. However, printmaking possesses complexities especially when teaching young children, nonetheless as long as the processes are demonstrated and explained clearly children should be able to grasp an understanding of the skills involved. Likewise, printmaking can be a messy, during the input I was able to tolerate the mess created, thinking of a classroom setting giving children wipes would minimise the mess of paint.
There are many benefits for teaching printmaking within the curriculum:
• The principle reason for teaching is the polyboard can be reused again making multiple copies. In addition, children will be able to trail their work without encountering failure. Multi-copies give teachers a chance to collect a folio of work that can be used as assessments for children art work (Cox and Watts, 2007).
• Likewise ‘aesthetic’ is explored within printmaking. Printmaking stimulates children to develop their visual literacy, when printmaking children while have little power over the outcome of their print. “A successful print is often a combination of the intentional and unintentional” (Cox and Watts, 2007, p.48).

Paint will be rolled over the tracing in order to create a print

multiple copies where made using the same colour of paint, but different coloured paper

an additional stage is adding more personal detail to the tracing. Also different colour of paint can be used.

Also, this week we had our first drama input of the module. At primary school I have limited experience of drama, I only got taught drama in primary 7 and was part of the World War Two topic that my class was studying, the drama narrative was based on a primary school teacher and her class being evacuated to the countryside, within the drama I portrayed the main character. Being part of this production, I gained a lot of confidence and self-esteem and extremely enjoyed drama. When I transitioned to secondary school I did not studied drama and as I have grown older I feel rather uneased at the prospective to teaching drama, due to the little exposure I have had to drama. Reflecting back on the input I feel significant more comfortable and less apprehensive. During the input we were introduced to a number of drama conventions that can used within a primary school drama lesson:
• Teacher in role-
• Freeze-frame
• Though tunnel
• Improvisations
• Thought tracking
Young children have the opportunity to participate in drama, this is usually conveyed in ‘let’s pretend’ element of play. Bloomfield (2000, p.27) establishes that children create pretend play by “observing people around them, imitating their actions or mode of speech, pretending to be characters in stories they have read or from television programmes they have seen, that children entre an inner world of practical realism or romantic fantasy”. When teaching drama, it is important to consider the individual ability of each child, some children may not be confident to participate in a drama lesson, it is therefore pivotal to adapt the lesson to ensure that all children are included in the drama in some way.
I believe I have acquired a significant amount of understanding of different approaches to painting, through printmaking and it is an approach that I would certainly implement within the classroom. Likewise, this week I have been able to develop my knowledge of drama and considering the number of means I can teach drama to pupils.

References
Bloomfield, A. (2000) Teaching Integrated Arts in the Primary School. Oxon: David Fulton
Cox, S, Watts, R (2007) Teaching Art and Design 3-11. New York. Continuum International.
Taylor, R, Andrews, G. (2012) The Arts in the Primary School. Oxon: Routledge

Print in the making

The arts can be integrated into multiple areas of the curriculum and this was made evident during the seminars I attended on the 3rd of October 2017. The visual arts section focused on the painting; Windows in the West (1993) by Avril Paton. This painting was created using watercolours and paper. Paton (2017) took inspiration from a personal memory […]

Session 10 – 29/11/16

Today we had inputs of Music and Drama. Music Today we were learning the basics of how to play the ukelele. We learned the main 4 chords to play on a ukelele which was useful as this is what most songs are made up of which is highlighted by the song ‘4 Chords’ by the […]

Today we had inputs of Music and Drama.

Music

Today we were learning the basics of how to play the ukelele.

We learned the main 4 chords to play on a ukelele which was useful as this is what most songs are made up of which is highlighted by the song ‘4 Chords’ by the Axis of Awesome. This was a really fun lesson as we had the chance to practice the basic skills we had picked up by playing along to the song ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham. It was very useful as the ukelele is becoming a popular instrument within primary schools and something we will most likely encounter throughout our careers.

Drama

Today we continued with the other half of the class’s micro teaching of their particular children’s book.

This week it was my groups turn to deliver the lesson. The book we chose to use was ‘A squash and a squeeze’.

We read this story to the class and used the drama conventions role in the wall and thought tunnel. This was good to gain the experience of how to deliver a drama lesson and understand what would go well and what would require improvement. It was helpful in increasing my confidence in teaching drama.

Session 8 – 8/11/16

Today there was no lecture so we went straight to our inputs of drama and music. Drama Today half of the class, in groups, delivered a drama lesson. Each group had chosen a different children’s story to teach drama from. The groups would read the story or give a brief summary of it and then […]

Today there was no lecture so we went straight to our inputs of drama and music.

Drama

Today half of the class, in groups, delivered a drama lesson. Each group had chosen a different children’s story to teach drama from. The groups would read the story or give a brief summary of it and then go on to getting us to participate in many different drama conventions such as thought tunnels or role in the wall

This was a useful task as it allowed us to reflect on what went well and what could be improved on each of the groups lessons. It was good to see the different approach each group took also. Being in the situation of the pupil being taught it allowed me to understand how the pupil would think and feel which was also very beneficial.

Music

Today we were in the mac lab of the university using ‘Garage Band’. This software allowed us to create our own pieces adding in different instruments and beats. We could adjust the timing, pitch etc to create our own unique tracks. This is useful as it would allow children to express their creativity and find enjoyment through creating their own track and experiment by adding different sounds together and hearing how they can fit together, be in time and be altered.

This is a great tool to use as the use of technology is rapidly increasing and this gives way for it to be incorporated into the classroom. The children would find it relevant and would create a more effective learning experience for them. It is a great way to integrate ICT and music.

We then had a plenary focussing on the Sue Hallam article ‘The power of music’. We reflected on our thoughts and created mind maps which we then presented to the class.

creativity-2

Session 7 – 1/11/16

In todays lecture we were focussing on why music matters. Through this we were encouraged to consider our own musical experiences, how we can participate with music, how we discover music, our musical awareness and the power of music. All of these things have strong links in the curriculum relating to the experiences and outcomes. It was good to think about these things and reflect on how music is a powerful thing in each of our lives. This would be important for children to consider to realise why music matters and allow them to be more interested in it as a subject and become fully engaged.

Music

Today we were fortunate to have children from the Greenmill Primary School string project visiting us. The children displayed their talent by playing us one of their musical pieces. They then went on to show us some of the musical games they often play. We then had the chance to sit with some of the pupils as they taught us about their musical instruments. The pupil i was with played the violin, she described to me what the different parts of the violin were called and what there purpose was, she showed me how to correctly hold the violin and gave me the opportunity to give it a go myself.

Being taught by the children was good as it gave us the opportunity to see how much they have learned and how passionate they are about music. It was amazing to see how being part of the orchestra had brought to many benefits to these children due to being part of a team they were all very polite, well behaved and friendly and truly did show the impact music can have.

It was insightful to see this type of thing happening in schools and show us what we could help to initiate in our own schools in the future.

Drama

Today we continued on with the story of the dragon focussing on hot seating and improvisation considering how these conventions would would in the classroom.

Our lecturer then read us the first part of the story entitled ‘The Tunnel’. From this we participated in one of the drama conventions ‘role on the wall’ whereby you draw a character from the story. On the inside of the character you write the feelings that they would have and on the outside, the feelings you would have. We then heard the rest of the story and reflected on our previous feelings which had completely changed.

We then split into groups and chose a scene from the story to portray through narration. This was useful as it showed the different ways to teach drama through the one book.

Session 5 – 18/10/16

In todays lecture we were lucky enough to have guest speaker Isobel Laird from South Lanarkshire council who spoke about teaching the primary art & design curriculum. Isobel discussed her own experiences with teaching Art in primary schools and showed us various pieces of art from pupils. Our inputs today were Art and Drama. Art […]

Art

Our art input today was led by guest speaker Isobel Laird. She took us through various different stages of producing a piece of artwork. Firstly, we were given the task of drawing a washing line with pieces of clothing without lifting our pen from the paper. This activity is engaging from the outset as it straight away poses a challenge and as a student teacher I can clearly see how pupils would enjoy this.

We then used watercolour to give colour to the clothes we had drawn on the washing line before cutting it out.

On separate piece of paper we painted a brick wall and were given the freedom to create the bricks to look whatever way we wanted them too.

Lastly, we used watercolours again to paint a sunset for the background of our picture, once this had dried we ripped this piece of paper in strips in order to stick them back down in a different order to give a wave like effect and put our brick wall with our washing line on top. Each piece of work had originality which was great.

This was an extremely beneficial lesson as it filled me with ideas on how to make a lesson interesting. Instead of simply painting a picture straight onto one piece of paper there are various ways to make it more unique and enjoyable.

Drama

In todays drama input we were progressing from the prior session by looking more in depth at drama in the curriculum and the dramatic conventions.

We also covered improvisation coming up with our own drama skits continuing on from a story about a man who was returning to his hometown from jail. This showed how pupils can have the freedom to be imaginative and come up with their own ideas to continue a story.

Session 3 – 4/10/16

In todays lecture we were learning about Interdisciplinary learning – dance in the context of topics. This was beneficial as it showed how dance can be integrated. We thought about what creative dance is, what the role of the teacher is in regards to create dance and why we should embrace it and most importantly […]

Dance

This week we expanded on ideas from the previous session. We started by doing warm up games, each group came up with their own games and taught it to the rest of the class to play, this was good as it gave an insight into what it would be like to teach the games and provided an opportunity to reflect on what went well and how to improve in the future.

Continuing on from the 10 skills of dance each skill was given a number, we were then given sums using these numbers with the answers representing a different skill/dance move which could be put together to create a routine. This showed how you can incorporate numeracy into dance.

Due to the time of year with it being halloween, each group was given a different picture in relation to this e.g. spiders, witches, zombies etc. We had to come up with a dance move to represent the picture. This showed how you can link dance sessions to relevant topics and would really engage children.

Drama

This week was our first input of drama, to begin we discussed what drama is and looked at the experiences and outcomes for it.

“Through drama, learners have rich opportunities to be creative and to experience inspiration and enjoyment.” (LTS, 2009).

At this point I would not feel comfortable teaching drama as I would not know how to. We were shown that there are many different drama conventions such as hot seating, teacher in role, thought tunnels, still images etc. It is important that drama is not all about script reading & simply only being taught by school plays, nativity’s etc as this limits pupils imagination and creativity.

“Drama is the act of crossing into world of story… storying provides students with a natural human process for finding essential meanings in the experiences of themselves and others.” (Booth, 1995).

Our lecturer explained and demonstrated the convention of teacher in role through a story about a dragon which gave us the opportunity to brainstorm and narrate the story. It showed how various themes can be addressed through drama, in particular this story of the dragon highlighted loneliness and isolation.

This is important as it can put these themes in a different context and address them alternatively. As a student teacher it was very useful to experience this convention in action to see how it would work. Again, it was enjoyable and beneficial to be on the pupils side of the situation and I already feel slightly more confidence with teaching drama.

References:

LTS (2009) Expressive arts: Experiences and outcomes. Available at: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/Images/expressive_arts_experiences_outcomes_tcm4-539863.pdf (Accessed: 4th October 2016).