The integrated arts lecture today focused on creative partnerships and working with others to increase the learning of our pupils and ourselves. Creative partnerships help bring the creative arts into the ‘typical’ school day and promote the arts’ benefits (National Foundation for Creative Research, 2006) and enhance the learning experience. These partnerships can not only enrich my class’ arts experience through many opportunities that would not be available without them but also enrich my own teaching skills by Continuing Professional Development courses. Through these CPD courses I can ensure I am furthering my teaching ability and constantly ensuring my class are getting the best education I can give them. Attending workshops and classes to do with the arts will not only raise the knowledge of the subject to improve the lessons being taught but will also increase my awareness of the value of the expressive arts and creativity in schools (Institute of Training and Occupational Learning, n.d.).
Creative partnerships could be at schools or local authority level and could be with parents of children or other school staff members who specialise in a creative art. It could also be area wide attainment challenge officers or arts development officers. Many people can help enhance and enrich the teaching and practise of creative subjects and I will do my best as a teacher to be aware of this. We learned of the Creative Learning Network, in which the Scottish Government gives a small amount of money to help upskill teaching staff in creative subjects. The creative Learning Network helps to make teachers aware of creative opportunities and can also help with funding for creative trips and experiences.
We got to hear about Drake Scotland in the lecture briefly, Drake Scotland is a charity based in Edinburgh that work with children with additional support needs to allow them the experience of working with music. Later in the workshop, we got to try the teaching technique Drake focus on which is figurenotes. Figurenotes is a notation of music which is easier to teach to those who need support or just need an easier way into playing and reading music. It uses colour and shape to show the information needed to play. Figurenotes can progress into standard notation of music and can be an easier way of understanding and getting started.
Today, we got to experience playing music with figurenotes on the glockenspiel to a range of songs including some ABBA and Christmas songs.
As a teacher I can see how this could be a much easier way to introduce the reading of music to my class as I found it a lot easier and clearer to understand than standard notation. This is something I hope to use with my class in the future. I have found I enjoy things more when I understand and I believe that if I taught my class using figurenotes more children would have an interest as they can play along without a struggle.
In dance today, we worked on the ten basic movements and joined them together to create a piece of choreography. This task could easily be done in a primary school setting and can even be taught to link in with the class topic. We also looked at a range of warm up cardio games that could be played in school as well as how to link dance into other subject areas, for example, maths. We completed a sheet with 10 equations to give us different answers. Each answer had an associated movement and when following the order of the equation sheet, it gave us another piece of choreography. 
Next, we took inspiration from Scottish landmark pictures (as we have been focusing on the topic of Scotland) to create a movement. My group were given the Forth Rail Bridge and the Duke of Wellington statue.
We chose to do a move to represent a train and to gallop like a horse with our hands above our heads in a triangle like the cone. This was an enjoyable experience which could also be linked with other subjects like art. Children could create a piece of artwork of the landmark and then take inspiration from that art for the dance moves.
I learned a lot today about helping further the understanding and knowledge of the arts in my pupils and how I could do that through my own teaching as well as making the most of people’s skills who are willing and able to help me teach the creative arts.
Institute of Training and Occupational Learning (n.d.) Continuing Professional Development. [Online] Available: https://www.itol.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/ITOL-GUIDE-to-CPD.pdf [Accessed: 12 November 2019].
National Foundation for Creative Research (2006) National Evaluation of Creative Partnerships. [Online] Available: https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/CPS01/CPS01.pdf [Accessed: 12 November 2019].
