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This weeks sustainable development lecture and workshops were based around Natural Disasters. Although this is often a sensitive subject, I think it is appropriate for this subject to be taught in the classroom as it lets the children know about how natural disasters can effect people in our world today, educate them of the different natural disasters that are happening more frequently in our world, and what we can do to help.

We were asked to focus on the preparation and actions people have to take before, during and after a natural disaster. I created 3 mind maps and uploaded this to the Padlet website which challenged my digital literacy skills as I am not familiar with Padlet. However, this is a great resource to share ideas and look at my peers work. Here are the 3 mind maps that I created :

This was a fun and creative way to summarise what I had learned about natural disasters and I would definitely use this method in the classroom. For next week we have to focus on one natural disaster and create a PowerPoint presentation to deliver to our peers. Skills such as working in a team and digital literacy skills will have to be applied for the task to be a success.

When I first heard we were going to be taking part in drama lessons at uni, my legs started to tremble and a feeling of sickness and nerves took over me. When the word drama comes to mind, I think way back to primary school and how I was really never interested in the subject. However, as I know I will have to teach drama in the classroom, I wiped away past experiences in my mind and focused on the future. I was willing to take part and be open to new experiences.

The Curriculum for Excellence (2004) states that when children take part in drama it allows children to have rich opportunities to explore themselves and to be creative.

Through our seminars we have learned many teaching techniques that are illustrated in the mind map that I have created:

Drama allows sensitive subjects such as bullying t be spoken about and put into context. It allows learners to think about thoughts and feelings of others and the learner also has the opportunity to feel what its like experiencing being in other people’s shoes.

 

As this was our first week of dance, I was very nervous and apprehensive about starting this part of the module, as I would not consider myself to be a dancer. However as the workshop went on I found myself to be really enjoying it and putting a lot of energy into the tasks we were given. During the class we were shown many interactive dance games and starter tasks which I found very useful as I will be able to use these games within the classroom/ gym hall setting when I become a teacher. Some of the tasks were good icebreaker tasks to ease the class into dancing and build confidence and therefore would be good to use in a classroom if children felt uneasy about dancing.

One of the tasks we were given was to split into groups of about five and draw round the body of the smallest person in the group. After we had drew round the person we were to mark on the drawing several different muscles, bones and organs to make us think about the different parts of the body we were using through our dance session. I felt that this was an excellent task to use in the classroom because children are getting an education and knowledge on different body parts, where they are and how we use them.

The picture shown is my groups finished task of drawing round the body and filling it in with names of muscles, bones and organs.

Music

 

Our second workshop of the day was the theory aspect to music and looking at making lesson plans on how we as trainee teachers could bring music into aspects of the children’s learning such as literacy or math’s or relate music to the IDL project the class are working on and various other curricular areas. During the lesson we looked at a paper called “The Power of Music: its impact on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people” by Susan Hallam. This paper showed me that music in the classroom is an essential part to a child’s learning and how bringing aspects of music into the lesson can capture children’s attention and focus. My group chose to look at bringing music into the various aspects of the child’s learning such as religion. For example Christianity, where the children could learn different types of hymns and listen to choirs from different churches.

 

References

 

Hallam, S (2010) The power of music: It’s impact on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people, International Journal of Music Education [Online] pp.269-289. Available: http://ijm.sage.pub.com/content/28/3/269 [Accessed: 29 October 2017]

I was unable to attend the lecture and workshops from the first week of looking at natural disasters. However, I have caught up with all the information I have missed out on and will discuss what I have learned.

A natural disaster is only classified when human society is impacted by social disruption, loss of lives and material damage. A disaster is an abrupt event which causes a community or society from being unable to function. There are a numerous number of natural diasters including: Earthquakes, Floods, Volcanic eruptions, Cyclones and Disease epidemic.

Humans have a massive impact on natural disasters. The constant growth of the urban environment has led to mass over consumption causing global warming, which leads to natural disasters.

I then made mind maps of how to prepare for a natural disaster, what to do during a natural disaster is occurring and how to recover as a community after a natural disaster has occurred.

Then we learned how to effectively teach about disasters. Teaching disasters at primary school level allows for children to get a better grasp and appreciation of the wider world. As a teacher I could practically introduce natural disasters into the classroom by showing media reports, encouraging fundraising in schools for charities and talking about what’s happening in the world and allowing children to lead with what they know already. There are also many curriculum links which relate to natural disasters. There are some listed below:

• I can describe the physical processes of a natural disaster and discuss its impact on people and the landscape. SOC 2-07b
• By exploring a natural environment different from my own, I can discover how the physical features influence the variety of living things. SOC 1-13b
• I can explain how the physical environment influences the ways in which people use land by comparing my local area with a contrasting area. SOC 2-13a

The next input focused on science investigative skills related to disasters. Investigative skills include: ask questions, carry out experiments, observe, collect measure and record experiments and present and report findings. All of these skills are important because they allow pupils to use practical experience to find out information and develop scientific literacy. Science skills will allow children to be open to new ideas and linking and applying learning. It allows pupils to think creatively and critically, make predictions, develop skills of reasoning and draw conclusions based on reliable scientific evidence.

There were then numerous examples of scientific investigative experiments which will be suitable to use in a teaching environment. For example, the baking soda and vinegar volcano experiment. The use of baking soda and vinegar creates a chemical reaction which looks similar to a volcanic eruption. This practical example allows children to get hands on with the experiment as well as expanding their knowledge on volcanos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farm Visits learning log This week was very different to a normal Friday class. This week we were off campus visiting two local farms, Strandhead and Mossgiel. Mossgiel Farm was a family business which had been passed through generations. When compared to Strandhead farm, Mossgiel was a hands on, manual labor farm. Where the workers worked long, hard days, seven days a week. The way the cows were treated in this farm was a vast difference to the way the cows were treated in Strandhead. Cows at this farm are outside for the most part of the year and only brought inside when the weather becomes horrendous in the latter months of the year. The cows are well treated and produce nature food.

Strandhead Farm is seen as a more up to date, modern farm as equipment for running the farm is very much technology based and not as much manual labor is required than Mossgiel farm. The farmer explained that these cows are always kept inside. However the barn where they are kept have no walls and so the cows were still getting to enjoy the fresh air and natural weather showing that the cows were getting as much good treatment as any other types of cows who are outdoors most of the time. As this is a very technology based farm the cows were given fresh hay daily using a machine that would go round setting down a fresh batch every so often so the cows wouldn’t go without. The cows were also milked using a machine. The farmer also explained that this machine was one where the cows were not forced to milk and that they could choose whenever they wanted to go and use the machine.

This weeks session was very engaging and enjoyable. This trip showed me that it would be useful and beneficial to take children on a school trip to a farm like these to show how different farms can be and the different aspects to each one. It would also be a good learning point to show the how dairy products are made naturally.

This week’s sustainable development learning log is derived on interdependence, we acquired knowledge of this topic in a diverse method than what we normally do, firstly by participating in farm visits and secondly, we worked in groups to produce an infographic in relation to maintaining a sustainable ocean.
I found the farm visits to be rather fascinating and insightful. We visited two very divergent farms, both of which were dairy farms. The first farm that we went to was a high tech, this farm had technology for every aspect of cow farming. All of the cows had electronic tagging, that would enable the farmers to check for any problems or illnesses that an individual cow have. The cows could freely milk when they wished due to their electronic tracking how much there are milking. Likewise, the technology would pick and concrete the diet correctly for the cows depending of the time of year. The second farm was a traditional dairy farm, the cows would get milk weekly, but the difference was this farm was organic implying that in the cow’s diet there are no chemicals in the food they eat. I was intrigue by how both farm looked after the baby calves, at the high tech farm the baby calves were separated from their mother and others in an individual pen, whereas at the organic farm the baby calves were in individual pens but beside the adults’ cows, when these calves got to about 5 months they would be moved into a large pen with other calf’s and to allow interacted. This was the first time that I have ever visited a farm, but in fact I enjoyed the visits and think it would be a great idea to take future primary classes on these visits. It would allow a different dynamic of learning, making it engaging and enjoyable, likewise the children would be able to contextual were a lot of the food they eat comes from and the efforts of the farmers to ensure we have access to farm based foods and produced.

Once we can back from the farm visit I engaged with the online lecture that looked more in depth in regards to what we saw at the farms and the term interdependency. Interdependency can be defined as ‘when two or more things depend on each other in order to grow and maintain health’ (Oxford). This term has been circulating for centuries and from early culture individuals understood the importance of counting on their environment for resources, food/ water and other needs, however what they gathered was we should respect our environment in order to maintain our resources for centuries. In today’s society there are three sectors being;
• Economic interdependence
• Social interdependence
• Environmental interdependence

The follow up workshop of interdependency was rather different from usually, we worked in groups, researched sustainable oceans and created an infographic. This was a great activity as we were able to explore a range of academic reading as well as government or well establish websites, this enabled us to extract appropriate information. Initially I found creating the infographic to be challenging and rather complex, but after trailing with infographic I seen realised it was not too hard and is a great way to display information along with images. This could be an application that could be use in the upper primary, perhaps primary 7, this could be used along with ICT and another curricular area. Relating to CFE outcomes and experiences;
“I can create, develop and evaluate computing solutions in response to a design challenge”
TCH 2-15a
Overall, I enjoyed the interdependency inputs, the farm visits where great and allowed me to see how a farm worked and enabled me to consider the fantastic opportunities that farm visits would have for children. I felt I have been able to develop and consolidate my understanding of the term interdependcy and the underpinning factors this can have on the world. Likewise exploring sustainable oceans, I was able to understand the different issues our oceans are encountering, in particularly in regards to climate change.

When children create dances using their ideas, they are empowered to explore their thoughts, feelings, and perspectives (Cone, 2011).

It is crucial that children have the opportunity to dance freely to express themselves. As I was a dancer my whole childhood, I think that it is very important that we incorpate dance into every day life and through out the children’s school life. As a student teacher, I think it is important that we let children feel empowered by creativity letting them know that there is no right or wrong answer through dance which may be the case in numeracy or literacy.

During today’s dance session, again we had the opportunity to be the learner however, we also had the chance to create our own moves. We were split up into groups to create a move to fit in with this weeks theme Halloween. The move we were to create was inspired by a printed out picture of a mummy. This gave us inspiration to create the dance move.

After creating a move, the whole class came together and we put all moves together creating a mini dance routine. I really enjoyed this workshop as it showed me how I can use easy stratigies in the classroom to create a dance. It also helped me to understand that not everyone is very confident with dance, so giving them a visual can really help to get the creative mind flowing and a visual can act as a stimulus to create a simple dance move.

Drama 

This weeks drama session was based around a book named “The Tunnel” by Anthony Brown. The book allowed us to explore drama and learn new conventions such as voice in the head, mime, role on the wall, vox pop and thought tracking. I found the convention voice in the head a great tool as the children will be able to step out of the drama, while still in character and discuss how they are feeling through someone elses shoes. It allows the children to think deeper into how others are feeling and not just themselves. As the weeks go on, I feel like I am getting more confident at acting infront of my peers. The class seems like they are enjoying it more and more each week as we are starting to feel comfortable with acting infront of one another as it becomes more enjoyable.

Overall I think it is very important that we allow children to experience experessive arts.

Today in the drama workshop we looked at the story called ‘The Tunnel” which was introduced by the lecturer. The workshop started off by the lecture reading us part of this story, about a bother and sister who were so different and did not get alone well at all due to this. The brother loved to go out and play with his friends whereas the sister would stay in and read alone. In our groups we were introduced into the next five drama conventions we would be using in our workshop.

The first drama convention we done in our workshop was Role on the Wall in this we had to draw the outline of both the boy and the girl character from the story. We then had to write on the outside of the outline what me though about each character and on the inside of the drawing what the character through of themselves.

After this activity we then continued on reading and discover the brother and sister arguing with one another not getting along. So the mother sends them out to play with one another where they discover a tunnel. The brother wants to go through but the sister is unsure and scared.

The second drama convention we looked at in the workshop was mime. For this in our groups we had to act of what we thought would happen next in the story. If the sister decided to follow her brother through the tunnel or did she stay where she was because she was too scared.

We then continued on to look at the third drama convention, which was thought tracking. For this drama convention we had act out why we through both brother and sister act the way they do. Then two people from each group had to stand forward and discuss their reasons for this.

Finally we moved onto our last drama convention being vox pop. For the we had to interview brother and sister before they entered the tunnel and after they entered the tunnel to see how they had changed and grown to like one another. This allows children to “express emotions and communicate with others” (McAuliffe 2007 p27).

In today’s dance workshop it started off with games such as tig, splat and the number game were all students had to link different body parts. From this we then moved onto different stretches so no one would get hurt. Continuing on in the workshop we then told the theme of our workshop would be Halloween. In the groups we worked in the previous dance workshop we were given a picture to use as a stimulus to create a dance move. In my group we were given a picture of a ghost.

Using the dances created in our groups from the previous dance workshop we then went and added different formats to make the dance slightly different than before. The full section then came together to create a full then all groups had the opportunity to showcase the dance they created.

Both workshop linked together it allowed us all to take part in active activities to express oneself and build upon individuals confidence. Both workshops today would work as lesson ideas, which would be engaging for pupils. As dance is “one of the most powerful experiences dance educators can offer children is opportunity to create a dance that reflects their ideas” (Cone 2009).

Reference:

Cone (2009) Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances

McAuliffe, D (2007) Foundation and Primary Settings. In Teaching Art and Design 3-11. (Edited by Sue Cox, Robert Watts, Judy Grahame, Steve Herne and Diarmuid McAuliffe). London: Continuum.