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].
