I enjoyed today’s session as we were active through dancing and we were able to work with our groups. Using the dance we had created previously we added in choreographic devices and practised with the rest of the cohort.
We were looking at creative dance today when I was made aware of Theresa Purcell Cone. The Author of Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances. In the Dance Education Journal. According to Cone (2009), Dance should be fun, safe, meaningful and should be a child-led activity. Child-led learning is a reoccurring theme throughout the arts module and across different areas of the curricular. Add in evidence of child-led learning positive. Cone (2009) states “One of the most powerful experiences dance educators can offer children is the opportunity to create a dance that reflects their ideas”
I have learned more in-depth about what my role will be within creative dance as a teacher. This is to be a facilitator. This means that I should be able to relay the 10 basic dance moves.
It is also important to believe in the validity of the children’s creativity and ideas no matter how out there they are. As always it is my role to provide a safe place for learning to occur, in regard to dance this means having a suitable amount of room and ensuring children are warmed up and ready to learn.
There is an argument that can be made on the process of dance that was raised by Zara. The argument states that although the process is important to dance. Dance is an aesthetically pleasing art form and if the process is the main focus when developing a dance it may result in the final product not being aesthetically pleasing. This in turn could impact on children’s confidence and emotional wellbeing if they don’t receive good feedback from their peers resulting in children being reluctant to dance and view dance in a negative way.
However the process is still important, and dance should be a child-led activity. As my role as a facilitator of dance, I would help provide structure and encourage choreographic devices such as repetition of dance moves, Cannon (performing moves one after another, like a Mexican wave) and retrograde (performing a movement backwards, like rewinding a film) this will make the dance more aesthetically pleasing whilst keeping the dancing child-led.
I also learned how to dance in the Curriculum for Excellence was thought out. Jacqueline M. Smith-Autard, the author of The Art of dance in Education states “Children should be able to compose, perform and appreciate dance (Smith-Autard, 2002). These ideas were clearly taken on board and now the Curriculum for Excellence says, “Children should have the opportunity to create, present, appreciate and evaluate dance” (CFE,2009).
When teaching dance you are able to Bring to life and provides means for topics. A great example of using dance with meaningful topics is Diversity’s Dance on Britain’s Got Talent. I have provided the link to the dance here. This shows how dance can be used to address and raise awareness of important and current topics.
Visual arts
In today’s second input we were looking at learning through arts and design. The visual elements begin in the nursery and stay with you forever. When teaching arts you should try to use a few of the visual elements. I have also gained knowledge of the different types of Visual elements. Line, Shape, Colour, Texture, Pattern and Tone
This is some of the notes I have taken in order to develop my knowledge and my future practice
Presenting for Audiences
A point that was spoken about today was about display children’s work. This is something I hadn’t given much thought to but what Diarmuid said was very interesting and will be something I take with me when I am a teacher. Diarmuid said that if you can’t display all of the work don’t display any. This is a very interesting point but the reasoning behind it is simple. How would the children feel if others work was displayed and theirs wasn’t? How would this affect their confidence and their relationships with art? This would clearly have a negative impact on children. Furthermore how we make the display and lay them out should be child-led. In order for the children to be more involved, the children’s art should be set out on the floor with children having a discussion about how it looks and feel ascetically.
We then looked at how digital technology can be used to create art. This is something that I have recently taken an interest in and have purchased my own piece of art after learning more about art in this module. The artist uses an iPad to recreate pictures and then prints the final drawing.
Using technology encourages children to become digital natives (Prensky, 2001). A reason that this might not be seen is that teachers don’t feel comfortable using the technology themselves.
An important point that I will take forward with me is to promote the female history of art and female artists. The majority of the history of art is by white males and women’s perspective and history is lost. This provides an inclusive practice and empowers the girls in the class.
What I have taken away from this input is to use a variety of resources in order to ‘capture everyone’ so you can GET IT RIGHT FOR EVERY CHILD. Another take away I have is to try to use artists who are still alive. This is because these artists are more likely to tackle current events.
When researching I found this contemporary artist Nello Petrucci from Pompei, Italy. Who created this street art.
And this from Dutch artists Fake
References
Cone, T. (2009). Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances. Journal of Dance Education, 9(3), pp.91-89
Scottish Government, (2009) Curriculum for Excellence. Glasgow: Learning and Teaching Scotland, pp.1-317.
Smith-Autard, J.M. (2002). The Art of dance in Education. London: A. & C. Black
Prensky, M. (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Available at: https://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf
