For our first lecture in Visual Arts we had to connect the Arts and Literacy together as they are both very important components to the Curriculum. We were given out an extract from a passage and firstly we had to read it and then we had to draw over the writing as to what we thought the words meant but just in a more creative way.  I found this task pretty difficult to start off with as I couldn’t really think of what I wanted to draw but once we looked at some examples from children and seeing how good and creative theirs were I really tried hard to at least get something drawn on the page. Once I put my pen to the page and just tried to not think so much about it I think it was a really effective and important lesson to get children to look at literacy in a more creative and interesting way.

During the Visual Arts seminar we got the chance to look through art work created by primary school children from the different levels of the curriculum: early, middle and upper. I thought it was really interesting how we could see the visible differences between the ages that made the work. While the early years were much more creative, the older years work was very structured and thought out and it looked like some of the imagination had been taken out of it throughout the years. This gave me an interesting look at how the arts are taught in school and how teachers limit creativity by trying to stick to the curriculum and try to cram in as many outcomes as they can.

Due to this input I feel that I have gotten more insight in how to teach the arts to children and that I have to be very encouraging and try to not limit their creativity.