ART

In our first session in art class we were evaluating loads of different pictures from all different stages through-out primary school. This allowed us to see all the different ways of expressing art and how it ties into the curriculum. Art is very important in primary as it allowing children to express themselves and their feelings, it also lets them use their imagination and you cannot do this is other subjects. This workshop gave me some ideas as to how I would approach an art lessons and I would feel confident now teaching it.

We had three different stations to look at: early stage (primary 1-3), middle stage (primary 4-5) and the higher stage (primary6-7). At each station there were all different types of art work from each stage group and we were evaluating these pieces of art with our peers.

This is a picture from the early stage group and it is known as the “scribbling stage” by Lowenfield and Brittain (1987).  This is when they use their imagination and come up with whatever is on the paper at the end. Even though it might just look like scribbles, it has meaning and it can portray an important message.

This piece of art is effective as it is showing the importance of wearing a helmet.

It is important as a teacher not to just give pictures for pupils to copy, art is all about expressing themselves. The curriculum of excellence emphasises on individuality therefore using their own imagination.

 

MUSIC

We started off our first music session by listening to all different types of music and we had to guess the mood in which was portrayed. There was no right or wrong answer to this, it was your personal thoughts and feeling and this again links to the individuality in the CfE. This was an effective way to start this class as we got a insight as to what we were going to being doing over the next few weeks.

We were then given a piece of music (Shostakovich – Piano concerto No.2 ) and in groups we had to come up with a story to fit in with how we visualised the music.  Having played the violin for 10 years, music is one of the few classes in which I feel comfortable in and expressing Shostakovich work was very enjoyable. Once we had all presented  we were shown how his music was used by Disney. This task also has shown me how you can incorporate music into literacy tasks too. This made me feel more confident in teaching  music to a primary class. Integrated arts can be used in many different subjects in primary schools and having now gained more confidence I will refer to arts in more class subjects, to allow children to gain confidence and to express themselves more.

 

References  

Eisner, E. (2002) The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach. London: Yale University Press