In this week’s input, we explored the use of both music and drama as a means of expressing emotions.

Music
Music has a unique ability to stimulate thoughts and emotions that are not directly related to memories (Mohana, 2018). In our music workshop, we took time to listen to pieces of music and jot down one word to describe how they made us feel. We then used the emotions provoked by ‘Piano Concerto No. 2’ by Dmitri Shostakovich to make up our own stories. We listened to the piece once on our own to reflect on our personal emotions and responses to the music. Then, we split up into groups and came up with our own story boards based on the stories we had created in response to the music. I found this extremely interesting as although the music provoked very similar emotions from each individual, all of the stories were completely different! In conjunction with the UWS Graduate Attributes, this task allowed us to develop our collaborative working skills (UWS, 2018).

Children would thoroughly enjoy the creative freedom of this task. Not only does it allow them to develop their appreciation of and connections with music, it also, simultaneously, gives them the opportunity to explore aspects of visual arts and creative writing. Children would also love comparing their stories to their classmates’ and the short film ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’ created by Disney artists which is based on the same piece of music (see below).

Drama
In this week’s drama input, we saw the last of our section’s micro-teaching lessons. Similarly to last week’s input, the majority of these lessons used children’s storybooks as a stimulus for what was being taught. One group’s lesson involved the book ‘The Day the Crayons Quit’ (Daywalt, 2014). The book tells the story of a box of crayons writing letters to their owner, Duncan, to explain that some colours are tired and overused, whilst others are bored because they have not been used in months. At the end of the book, the letters have inspired Duncan to create a very colourful and creative drawing that uses every colour in his crayon box (see below). As such, this book would be a very effective classroom tool for encouraging children to be creative in their use of colour.

This group used the story to further explore the concept of emotion. Initially, we were split into three groups and each group was given a colour. We were then tasked with using a thought-tunnel to explore the emotions that that colour reminded us of. For example, the colour red has connotations of love and passion but also anger and frustration. We then had to create a freeze frame that depicted one of these emotions.

Andrew then taught us a new drama convention named ‘Role in the Wall’ using the storybook ‘The Tunnel’ (Browne, 2008). This involved drawing the outline of a character and writing on the outside of the drawing other people’s thoughts and feelings towards the character and then, inside the drawing writing the character’s personal thoughts and feelings.

Under the Curriculum for Excellence the Scottish government have stressed the importance of health and wellbeing as a core curricular area alongside the traditional literacy and numeracy (Education Scotland, 2018). One of the most important aspects of this is emotional literacy. Children must be able to express themselves effectively and articulate their feelings beyond the simple ‘sad’ and ‘happy.’ As such, as a future practitioner, I understand the importance of developing my pupils’ emotional literacy. Through lessons like the ones described above the arts can be connected to this aspect of health and wellbeing. They will allow children to develop the traditional skills associated with dramatic and musical performance as well as building their knowledge of their own thoughts, feelings and emotions and effective ways of expressing these. By thinking about emotions as a whole concept or exploring the feelings of characters that they are playing, children can develop their own emotional wellbeing. Keeping with the UWS Graduate Attributes, in the same way that these tasks can develop children’s mental wellbeing, they also helped us build our emotional intelligence (UWS, 2018).

The primary school where I completed my first year placement was in the process of constructing a new Health and Wellbeing policy that aimed to improve pupils’ emotional literacy. As such, I already knew that many schools had acknowledged the importance of emotional literacy and understood the need for me to ensure I tackled issues surrounding feelings and emotions in my classroom. However, these inputs have given me specific ideas on how to teach this through expressive arts.

Reference List
Browne, A. (2008) The Tunnel. London: Walker.

Daywalt, D. (2014) The Day the Crayons Quit. New York: HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks.

Education Scotland. (2018) What is Curriculum for Excellence? [Online] Available:  https://education.gov.scot/scottish-education-system/policy-for-scottish-education/policy-drivers/cfe-(building-from-the-statement-appendix-incl-btc1-5)/What%20is%20Curriculum%20for%20Excellence [Accessed: 13 October 2019]

Mohana, M. (2018) Music and How It Impacts Your Brain, Emotions. [Online] Available: https://psychcentral.com/lib/music-how-it-impacts-your-brain-emotions/ [Accessed: 15 October 2019]

University of the West of Scotland (UWS). (2018) UWS Graduate Attributes. [Online] Available: https://www.uws.ac.uk/current-students/your-graduate-attributes/ [Accessed: 15 October 2019]