Week 8

This week’s focus in Integrated Arts was creativity and reflectivity. We looked closely in the lecture at the works of Csikszentmihalyi on creativity and flow and discussed how creativity was once looked upon. Creativity and being unique used to be seen as showing off (Humes, 2005), now it is hoped that being creative and having your own way of things is encouraged in school. Curriculum for Excellence aims to encourage children to find their own ways of completing tasks and learning in a creative way. The experiences and outcomes for the expressive arts aim to notice, cherish and develop creativity in the pupils (Education Scotland, 2010).

We looked further at building a tolerance for ambiguity in the art workshop today by looking at an image in pairs and using Taylor’s Model of Assessment to analyse the image.

The majority of the  images were metaphors and had a deeper meaning. We chose a question from each heading (process, form, content and mood)  and answered them in the video to have a deeper understanding of the metaphor shown to us.

This task could be done with children using similar images in the future to deeply discuss and interrogate art work. This would build upon the pupils’ analysis and evaluation skills. The task of filming and narrating the image could also be used as an art and I.T. project. It is clear to see the learning from this task and it encourages to think about the image in depth and study it further as well as seeing the deeper meaning and understanding it.

In our music workshop today, we looked at the online resource of Charanga. This is an online database of music resources that cover all things music in school – from lesson plans and instrument workbooks to materials of full productions of school shows. We looked at how we could use this as part of our weekly music lessons and tried the tasks ourselves. This resource is full of wonderful materials that could be used in a class and I hope I will have access to this site when I graduate. As a teacher, it is clear to see the benefits Charanga can bring to my class along with how it can help me teach music. Music is not a subject area I feel confident with and this will be a great help to ensure my class do not miss out of music lessons. This is a  challenge faced by teachers when teaching the arts. If a teacher does not feel confident in their own expressive arts skills, they may not feel comfortable teaching the arts to their class and shy away from the curricular area (Clement, 1994).

A section on Charanga shows how to play instruments and can help teach the children how to play phantom instruments before handing them the real instrument. We tried this today with playing along to Mamma Mia on the ‘recorder’, we played the notes of A an G and mimicked the fingers we would use.

Hopefully I will use Charanga whilst on placement this year and hope to use it in coming years. Along with this resource, I hope to complete the image analysis task with my class as I feel it gave me more knowledge on the image and could benefit a class when looking into the meaning behind art.

Clement, R. (1994) The Readiness of Primary Schools to Teach the National Curriculum in Art and Design. [Online] Available: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1476-8070.1994.tb00353.x [Accessed: 29 October 2019].

Education Scotland (2010) Curriculum for Excellence: Expressive Arts Experiences and Outcomes. [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-eo.pdf  [Accessed: 29 October 2019].

Humes, W. (2005) Barriers to creativity in the classroom. Times Educational Supplement. [Online] 29 October, non-paginated. Available: https://www.tes.com/news/barriers-creativity-classroom [Accessed: 29 October 2019].

Week 7

This week in Integrated Arts we were joined by four Norwegian  students that are studying Primary Education. They spoke to us about the school system in their country as well as the course they are studying at university.

We learned from them the involvement of the arts in the primary schools of Norway. They told us that drama is rarely taught as a subject in itself and is normally integrated into the teaching of other subject areas like social studies or health and well-being. This is a similar concept to what was discussed in our drama workshop during week 3. They told us that if a teacher isn’t a creative person the (compulsory) art lessons may be boring and simple. Art lessons in Norwegian schools are often taught outside and use materials or inspirations they find around them. In art today, inspired by this and the work of artists like Andy Goldworthy, we went outside to create pieces of artwork with the autumn materials we found. Below shows a collection of Andy Goldworthy’s outdoor art creations.

My group decided to illustrate the issue of global warming and climate change by creating a clock face with a gradient of leaves to indicate time running out to make changes. 

Making art this way would be a lesson that can be changed to suit different levels in primary schools and is a lesson I will use during my career to teach about different art forms and how art can be made from the many materials that are available to us.

The students also told us of a dance that happens yearly that most  primary schools get involved with. All pupils are taught the same dance and is performed and filmed simultaneously across the country at a set time and date. The students said this was a great project that happens in Norway as most children get heavily involved and love the experience. Below is a video of Norwegian primary school children performing a song and dance in school.

In music today, we used an app called Garage Band to create a track of our own using the sounds and instruments offered to us.

Garage Band is available for free on apple products like iPads.  We also used an online page called Dirpy to download sounds from YouTube videos. A lot of schools now have iPads available to use and most have a full class set. Using this software with children is a great way to explore creativity and show them how music can be made. A video of the song I created can be found below.

 

The music and art workshops today, along with our lecture, were extremely interesting. As I had never used that software before and was unaware of the great teaching that it can bring, I . I enjoyed hearing from the Norwegian students about their education system at home as well as their opinion on it.

Week 6

For this week in integrated arts our workshops were in music and art. I thoroughly enjoyed today’s workshops and I can draw clear teaching points and example lessons from both.

In music with Julie, we used a planned lesson for early/first level along with a second level lesson to explore using drumsticks and beaters in the classroom for music. We played along to different rhythms within pieces of music embedded in the power-point. This was an extremely enjoyable yet fairly challenging task. I could clearly see how this could be a number of weeks worth of music lessons or even a whole term. There was a lot of background learning to build up to using musical notes like quavers and crochets. The first step of this we used with circles and squares as they are shapes all children should recognise and know the syllables in each word, each syllable required a tap of the drumsticks or beaters.  This use of literacy helped me to understand the process and as a future teacher I can see how simplifying the musical notes to an object seen regularly and known well can help increase understanding within the class when introducing music in this way. I would use these lessons in my class as I am a beginner with music and this was a great introduction that was easy to follow and understand. It was clear to see the next steps and progression through the slides.

In art, we also looked at how literacy can be linked in with expressive arts and other subject areas. We studied the style of Bob and Roberta Smith and created our own prints inspired by him.

This integration of art and literacy helps to enhance the learning and knowledge of both subjects (Marshall, 2014).  This would be a useful lesson when not only teaching about current artists but also when teaching the art of printing and how things were done before the massive technological shift. This was an insightful lesson as I was impressed by the work done in the group before me and had no idea how these pieces were created. It was easy to see how a simpler task could be done using the same resources with younger levels in the school by simplifying the brief or completing the steps with the children rather than the class working independently like we did today.

Overall, both workshops today were very hands on and showed us how these lessons could be used in the future with our own classes. The music workshop taught me the basis of music reading which is a valuable skill I did not have before and I learned of printing methods I did not know of.

Marshall, J. (2014) Transdisciplinarity and Art Integration: Toward a NewUnderstanding of Art-Based Learning across the Curriculum, Studies in Art Education. London: Routledge. [Online] Available at: https://moodle.uws.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/36842/mod_resource/content/1/Transdisciplinarity%20And%20Art%20Integration%20highlighted.pdf [Accessed: 15 October 2019].

Week 5

Today we had our first music lecture and workshop along with our last drama workshop. In the lecture we focused on how music can benefit people in many ways and how important music education is. The government recognise how enriching music education can be for pupils in schools (Michael Gove, 2011) and this was shown to us today through the knowledge passed on. We learned of programmes, both free and fee paying, running that we could get our classes and schools involved with when we are qualified and the benefits and joy these would bring to our pupils and colleagues. These programmes have greatly benefited many schools and due to these, huge improvements of skills have been shown.

In drama we participated in the other groups’ micro-teaching presentations. This was a great way of consolidating what we have learned over the past weeks as over all the groups we covered all the drama conventions we have learned about in this module. This was hugely beneficial as a learner as it acted as revision of the conventions. We then studied one final convention called role on the wall. This involves drawing a figure and writing inside the drawing what the pupils think the character thinks of themselves whilst around the edges has words describing what other characters think about them. We did this exercise today based on a children’s book.  

This is a very useful exercise as it helps get into the characters feelings and I can see myself using this convention in the future in my teaching of a drama class. This convention makes the participants think deeply about the character which can be beneficial for the pupils in my class if they are going to be playing or working with the character to fully get into the mindset of the character.

In music, we discussed how music can make us feel and how it can change the way we are feeling. This is a topic that could be discussed with pupils to link with health and well-being and emotions.  We then listened to a song and had to write a story and make a storyboard inspired by the song. My group heard the song as an adventure and wrote a story about a cat.

This was a creative task that could easily be done in schools with perhaps a shorter song for younger ages. This lesson made me think about how a sound can influence the images you see in your head. I enjoyed using my imagination to picture the story to the piece of music. It made me realise that all children should have access to an education that contains music as music can have a positive effect on not only mental but also physical health (All Party Parliamentary Group for Music Education, 2019). This incorporation of music and creativity into writing and literacy again shows the links with other curricular areas and how beneficial music education can be (Safford and Barrs, 2005).

Both of the tasks completed today in the workshops could be adapted to suit primary school pupils and are tasks I would consider incorporating in my lessons of the expressive arts in the future.

 

 

All Party Parliamentary Group for Music Education (2019) Music Education: State of the Nation. [Online] Available: https://www.ism.org/images/files/State-of-the-Nation-Music-Education-WEB.pdf [Accessed: 8 October 2019]

Department for Education and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2011) Music Education in England: A Review by Darren Henley. [Online] Available: https://assets. publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/175432/DFE-00011-2011.pdf [Accessed: 8 October 2019]

Safford, K. and Barrs, M. (2005) Creativity and Literacy: Many Routes to Meaning. [Online] Available: https://clpe.org.uk/sites/default/files/Many%20routes%20to%20meaning%20childrens%20language%20and%20literacy%20learning%20in%20creative%20arts%20work_0.pdf [Accessed: 08 October 2019].

Week 4

This week, due to a lack of communication, the year missed the lecture in the morning. Due to this, I have struggled with reflecting on today as I am sure the information that was missed this morning would have helped with linking the workshops of the day.

The focus in the drama workshop today was micro-teaching. Over the past week we have been working in groups of around 6 people on a 15 minute drama lesson that was to be taught to the class today. In my group’s presentation we focused on 4 drama conventions and had the class try them out through the story of ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’. This was an interesting experience as it is the first time I have had the opportunity to teach a class. Teaching my first drama lesson was the first time I have had an insight in what it feels like to teach the expressive arts. I enjoyed having the support of a group beside me as it was an intimidating task to be set due to not being fully confident in the subject I was teaching. On reflection of my own teaching today, I think I did well to judge how long to give the class for each task as we managed to fit our presentation into the time frame along with having time to see each group perform and share at least two of the four convention tasks set each. The class seemed interested in our topic and story and all engaged well which shows that our judgement of difficulty level was accurate as well as it being enjoyable for all taking part.

As done in drama, we also shared our work with each other in art.

We added another level to our artwork of the Scottish Highlands, that we had created last week, in today’s art workshop. This added a new dynamic to my piece as it gave more to look at and think about within the artwork. I opted to add my own poem around the edge of my  arched window which contains the view of the land. Additionally, I chose to use a colour of pen that matched the colour of paint used in the area closest to that part of the poem. Adding these words to our art gave a novelty which Csikszentmihayi says  stems creativity (1996). This additional level of integrating literacy into the arts helps to show the links between other areas of the curriculum and the expressive arts and demonstrates to me as a future teacher how these subjects can be linked. This learning experience has reiterated the benefits that creativity can bring to pupils.

Today after teaching my first lesson in drama I feel much more confident in my abilities to teach the expressive arts. This experience has made me excited to get the opportunity to teach the other arts whereas before today, I felt nervous at the prospect. I feel now that I am building on my knowledge in both art and drama and day by day I am feeling more prepared to teach the arts.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996) Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. [Online] Available: https://moodle.uws.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/36806/mod_resource/content/1/creativity-by-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi.pdf [Accessed: 1 October 2019].