Yesterday in integrated arts we were focusing on music and drama. We attended our morning music workshop where we were concentrating on voice. The voice is important in any profession as we use it to communicate but it as a teacher it is our most important teaching tool as we also use it to direct, focus and encourage pupils and to explain, discipline, and manage the classroom (General Teaching Council, 2007). Therefore, it is important we warm up our voice to avoid strain or losing our voice altogether. The first part of the workshop involved this; warming up our voices using small exercises. After this we were looking at Choonbaboon and Charanga which both have vast resources to assist teachers who don’t feel confident teaching music. For the second part of the workshop we were using instruments. In groups we created a grid with 25 squares to create our own tune and we used instruments to demonstrate sounds associated with the theme Haunted House, for example: using a tambourine as chains. I feel much more confident with teaching music which is a subject I have never been good at. I definitely use the resources on Choonbaboon and Charanga.

The second workshop was drama. Continuing on from the last drama input, we were introduced to four more drama conventions: flash forward, flashback, narration and slow motion. Using Teacher in Role, Andrew set us the scene of an old house which no one would buy due to an ‘incident’ sometime prior which fit in well with the them ‘Halloween’. In groups we acted out a scene where we were entering the house and planning to stay the night. The scene had to include a portion which was slow motion. We also acted out a flashback and a flash forward scene which included a narration. This was interesting as although we had all been given the same scenario and information; each group did something different. this would be a good lesson to use with children as it allows them to enhance their creative skills, use their imagination to explore new possibilities and make the lesson more meaningful (Education Scotland, 2013).

References

Education Scotland (2013) Creativity Across learning 3-18 [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/improvement/Documents/Creativity/CRE1_WhatAreCreativitySkills/Creativity3to18.pdf [Accessed: 4 November 2017]

General Teaching Council (2007)  [Online] Available: https://www.gtcs.org.uk/ [Accessed: 1 November 2017]