Month: September 2018

Integrated Arts Week 3

This week in integrated arts the lecture was focused on the use of stimuli to engage with the arts. We talked about how over the years is composers often using poems and/or pictures to help create their work. One example of this is the poem Tam O’Shanter by Robert Burns lead to the composition by Malcolm Arnold, we listened to this in the lecture and you could follow the generally story by the changes in tone and speed of the music, we could get the idea of what was going on throughout the poem. This shows that music can be cross curricular it connects to literacy in terms of the writing of the poems also art as the series of paintings or drawing that can follow a piece of music or the poem depending on what order the class goes through the topic.

In the music workshop we started off by listening to five different pieces of music and we all wrote down one word to describe how we felt while listening to them. Most of the class had the same general reaction  to most of the pieces of music but there were a few in the class that had surprising feelings towards music. The piece of music I found sad and heart-breaking another in the class felt it was more of a romantic feel to it. Another was a song that was very cheerful and said happy in it, but a few felt it was annoying because of the whistling and snapping though it. It makes you think that different people can’t have different reactions and feeling towards the same music. This is why different people have different tastes in music and as long as everyone respects everyone else’s opinions then it doesn’t matter. After we did this and discussed our answers we then listened to a long piece of music and  was told to make a story board that had eight pictures and make them follow the tone and changes in the music. Our story was about a scuba diver and a whale. With the chase scene going along with a speed up in the music, and the decent of the music as if the scuba diver was being swallowed and going down the whale’s throat. I feel like our story board followed the music well and showed all the changes. i think that this experience and outcome links well to the first task we completed today showing our feelings towards a piece of music, ” can respond to music by describing my thoughts and feelings about my own and others’ work. EXA 0-19a.”  I have attached a photo of our story board bellow.

In the Visual arts workshop we went back to our painting we had done the week before with our handmade paintbrushes. We went back over our paintings with pastels to try and improve this was to show us that a piece of art work doesn’t have to be done after one input you can go back in and back over a piece of work to improve. My painting drastically improved when I used the pastels, I have attaches bellow picture before and after this workshop and also a short video of me talking about the drawing. My painting improved as I was able to put more detail and depth into it with the pastels than I was able to with the homemade paintbrush which made generic strokes. This also makes me remember when I was younger, and you aren’t very specific with art and then as you get older you start to add more detail and depth. This is explained in McAuliffe (2007)  “children’s artwork tends to progressively demonstrate closer attention to detail … the base line disappears, and depth is represented by a variety of more complex methods, including the overlapping of form.”

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References

• McAuliffe, D (2007) Foundation and Primary Settings. In Teaching Art and Design 3-11 (Edited by Sue Cox, Robert Watts, Judy Grahame, Steven Herne and Diarmuid McAuliffe) London: Continuum.
• Education Scotland (2004) – Curriculum for Excellence; Experiences and Outcomes [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/scottish-education-system/policy-for-scottish-education/policy-drivers/cfe-(building-from-the-statement-appendix-incl-btc1-5)/Experiences%20and%20outcomes [Accessed: 28th September 2018]

Integrated Arts Week 2

This week integrated arts lecture was based on creativity. We spoke about how creativity is essential in a good school environment, but also the opinion that schools are killing creativity by not doing enough of the arts in classes and in lessons. Ken Robinson in his TED talk said, “we are educating people out of their creativity.” This is a very strong statement but in many ways is true, as schools put across academic subjects such as maths and literacy as having a greater importance than the arts this teaches children to dampen their creativity and to focus on their other subjects. We also spoke about how having bright and full walls can be a distracting to children in class when they are trying to focus and work. Csikszentmihalyi (1996) effectively says this in his book. “But constant busyness is not a good prescription for creativity.” We finally looked at the WALT and WILF that in a lot of schools have became common practice before and after every lesson to refer to. WALT is useful as it tells the learn what they are meant to be achieving throughout the lesson whereas the WILF can be subjective and is more useful in other subjects not particularly the arts as everyone’s interpretation and creativity in the arts is different so it is hard for the teacher to specify what they are looking for from the whole class as it could damped the child’s imagination. I feel that this is true and that in arts lessons the WILF shouldn’t be used and only use the WALT if it is practised in the school.

In the music workshop today, we mainly just explored the Charanga website and then participated in some of the activities you can do with classes. We got a chance to look at some of the lesson plans and games that can be helpful if you are not the most confident teacher for music. I don’t play any instrument and aren’t musical at all, so I feel this website will be very helpful for when it comes to me teaching music in schools. One of the activities we did was improvisation on the glockenspiel to a backing music. First, we too off all the f’s and b’s as when these are removed the remaining letters all play in tune with each other. I was very nervous at the start but once I had heard a few peoples I realised that no matter what you played it sounded okay and that most people in the class were in the same boat feeling self-conscious I felt okay and my turn didn’t go as bad as I thought it was going to.

During the art workshop we were put in the place of the child and were instructed to make a paint brush out of some of the random materials provided to us. We then discussed why this would be effective in the class, as children will be more excited and motivated to paint when they are using their own paint brushes with all the different textures for bristles than what they would be if they are provided with a standard store-bought paint brush. We were then not given a picture to work from for our painting. The lecturer described a photograph and we were to take notes and paint it as what we saw. This encourages children to use their memory and their imagination rather than just trying to copy a picture which most children will be able to do successfully. We were then to paint it with our paint brush that we had made. This encouraged us to not be too bothered about the tiny details and about the painting being perfect as it wasn’t possible with the brush I had made from string and plastic. Then we noticed the positives and negatives to the paint brushes we had made my string side was too long and then my plastic side worked well to put texture on the picture. Many of the class’s paintbrushes broke and fell apart which shows that they weren’t as malleable as we thought they would be. I have attached below a picture of my paint brush and my painting. I consider myself to be quite good at art but when faced with this task I found it hard as I wanted my paining to be good and have fine detail that wasn’t achievable with the brush I had made so it encouraged me to not look at the finer detail and just focus on the main shapes and colours which is what small children do when they are drawing and painting. This was very insightful into the way children work and see their art work when they are doing it because even after I had finished mine I could see where certain things are when other couldn’t see it.

Overall the main theme between art and music is creativity and building children’s confidence in areas that they do not feel that they do so well in. when I was in school we did hardly any music which is why I am so unconfident in it. In terms of art we did hardy any of that in school either but when I went to secondary school I chose it and I got more experience and confidence in the subject and in myself. I feel that Piaget’s quote explains the way arts are seen in schools more these days “The principle goal of education is to create men [and women] who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done – men [and women] who are creative, inventive and discoverers.” This explains that education is not only trying to teach children what maths and literacy they need to know to pass exams but are trying to create creative individuals.

References

• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996) Creativity – Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, New York: Harper Collins
• Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
• Ken Robinson TED Talks 2006

Integrated Arts Week 1

Today’s classes were mainly an introductory session to the module as it was our first day. During this we spoke about the importance of the arts such as visual arts and music in education and how it is often brushed over. This gave us the insight into why we were doing this module and the types of things we will be learning about in the coming weeks. The arts are often avoided in primary schools as they can take awhile for the children to start to get the hang of it and it can take several weeks for there to be a piece of work completed in these areas. Also, it can be because the teacher doesn’t feel comfortable or confident in these areas so choose not to teach it in depth. Another reason can be because they don’t see it in as much of an importance as other subjects such as mathematics and literacy, so they choose to spend most of their teaching time focused on them.

The first workshop we had was on why music matters. We discussed some of the ways we thought music is beneficial to children. One being that some children may not excel in areas of school such as maths, but they may come to discover by learning about music that their strong point is music, and this can improve their concentration and their confidence in the class. It can also lead them onto making music part of their life and make a career out of it in the future. As a result, teachers that choose to brush over music as a subject in school rather than a fun afternoon playing around with the instruments may result in a child missing out finding their calling in school and after. We also spoke about some of the experiences and outcomes liked to music education such as “I can use my voice, musical instruments and music technology, to experiment with sound, pitch, melody, rhythm, timbre and dynamics” EXA 2-17a. We also tried an exercise ourselves that could be used to introduce pulse and rhythm to early years children that included using the shapes circle and square to instruct the children whether to use one beat or two.

The second workshop we had today focussed on art in education. This was very similar to the music in the reasons why it isn’t taught in schools and the reasons why it should be. Children may find they excel in art but don’t get the chance to in school. We looked at pieces of art work from early years, middle school and upper school so we could compare the levels children are at in art at different stages. I noticed that in the early year’s children were mainly free to draw whatever they wanted and let their imagination go free whereas when you get further up the school we noticed that the art work seemed to be more of an add on to other subjects and very teacher lead. For example, most of the art work linked to a topic they would have been doing in class at that time. I Have attached pictures at the bottom to show this and show the progress children make throughout the years in terms of their art work. Even though you can see a link between the stage and the progression every child’s art is different and some progress quicker than others which is why they must constantly be encouraged to keep their confidence up. Although children helping one another is incredibly beneficial to them, in some circumstances some children may compare their work and become dissatisfied in their own work and lose confidence in their art abilities (McAuliffe, 2007). This extract explains why and shows the importance of encouragement while doing art in classes. Another link between the music and visual arts was the creativity that the children can adopt while participating in these subjects which can engage the children further and you can see an increased concentration within the classroom when children enjoy what they are doing.

Overall there are many links between all the arts in school such as creativity and engagement. But also, in the reasons why teachers don’t tend to have a focus on them in their lesson plans and why this should change.

References

• Education Scotland (2004) – Curriculum for Excellence; Experiences and Outcomes [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/scottish-education-system/policy-for-scottish-education/policy-drivers/cfe-(building-from-the-statement-appendix-incl-btc1-5)/Experiences%20and%20outcomes [Accessed: 11th September 2018]
• McAuliffe, D (2007) Foundation and Primary Settings. In Teaching Art and Design 3-11 (Edited by Sue Cox, Robert Watts, Judy Grahame, Steven Herne and Diarmuid McAuliffe) London: Continuum.