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Week 12

For the final week of this module we had our last dance and music workshops. We rounded off both arts with a performance of our choreography and a performance of Last Christmas on the Ukulele.

In dance, after rehearsing our group routines and full section choreography, we filmed our dance. I believe this went well but was a nerve-wrecking experience for most of the class. With my dance background, I did not have trouble with the routine or the performance but I understand why this could be a difficult thing to do for the pupils in my class. Performing dance is part of the curriculum and should be enjoyable but this aspect of dance can bring a lot of nerves, especially for the pupils in my class that have not performed before.

After performing, we learned how to evaluate dance and how this could be done in school. We used the three stars and a wish method of evaluation to note down three things we think we had done well and one thing we could improve upon. Evaluating is important as it allows you to be self-aware of things that went well and how to progress and improve (Cassady, 2004). Choreographic devices used and musicality are two of the things that could be the focus of our evaluations.

In music, we concluded our learning of instruments with the ukulele. After learning the history of the instrument, we got a chance to learn 6 chords and play along to a few little songs. We then played the four chords required to play along to Last Christmas.

This was an enjoyable experience and I can see how this could be done in schools. As a ukulele is a similar price to a good quality recorder it can be an alternative for the class instrument. After finding an interest in the ukulele, I will continue with my playing of and improve myself in the hopes of playing with my class and teaching them through resources like Charanga.

This module has been extremely insightful and has changed my perspective of the arts in Scottish education. I believe they should be valued as much as Maths and English currently are and not pushed aside. I will aim to ensure my class get to experience, practice and enjoy the expressive arts at school as much as I have had the opportunity to during this module. I will also strive to ensure my pupils get to experience creativity as creativity is a skill of great importance and one that can be developed in schools through teaching the expressive arts (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996).

Cassady H. (2004) Experiencing evaluation: a case study of girls’ dance. Journal of Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy.  [Abstract, Online] Vol.9(1), Available: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1740898042000208106 [Accessed: 26 November 2019].

Week 11

This week’s lecture focused on creativity in dance. We talked about the importance of letting our class lead the learning as well as the benefits dance brings. When teaching dance, it is not a bad thing to let the more experienced in dance child in the class teach the warm up, or getting help from a primary 7 who is known for their dancing, but it is important that we learn from these people to help better ourselves as teachers and improve our own dance teaching skills. As a teacher of dance, my role would be to never discourage a child’s idea or try to limit their creativity, this could be damaging and lead to them not believing in themselves and a lack of confidence (PRCVIR, n.d.). Dance brings many health benefits like improved mental and physical well-being. Dance also brings benefits within the classroom. In one evaluation, teachers said dance brought her class together and the pupils became more cooperative and collaborative (Robinson and Aronica, 2018).

Dance in primary schools should be fun and creative and pupils should be able to compose and perform, in order to appreciate dance (Smith-Autard, 2002). This Curriculum for Excellence also views these components to be of value when teaching dance in schools (Education Scotland, n.d.).

We were introduced to the midway model for dance in schools (Smith-Autard, 2002) which connects the professional dance aspects with the creative educational approach. This is something I will continue to look at as a teacher and ensure I am teaching dance with close reference to this model.

In dance, we continued working on our choreography and created a full section routine with the theme of Scotland featuring the 10 movements. We added choreographic devices into our group dances to add depth and technique.

In the music workshop, we continued our work on the glockenspiel and reading music. We played a handful of songs which included nearly all the notes on a stave. This was a difficult task for me at first as I do not currently play a musical instrument but the workshop last week instilled confidence in me about my music reading skills. Progressing on to this notation taught me the importance of working up to something which is a valuable life skill in itself. With children, this could be a very rewarding experience as, like myself, working up from having no musical ability to being able to read sheet music and perform is an achievement and something to be proud of. We also completed an improvisation task individually using a pentatonic scale. This scale is a 5 note per octave scale in which all the notes play well together, meaning no matter what note is played it will sound in place. This was a great experience as each of us got to play the ‘verse’ of Hit The Road Jack.

This task could be completed with early level, as only the notes needed could be distributed on the chime bars, for example. As this task is so broad in age range, any song’s backing track could be found on YouTube to play along with or if my musical skills are advanced enough, played along to myself on the piano.

With reflection on my creativity today, I think I was challenged in both workshops but found them both enjoyable and productive and experienced tasks that I could use in future expressive art lessons.

 

Education Scotland (n.d.) Curriculum for Excellence: Expressive Arts Principles and Practice. [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-pp.pdf [Accessed: 19 November 2019].

Education Scotland (2010) Curriculum for Excellence: Expressive Arts Experiences and Outcomes. [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-eo.pdf  [Accessed: 19 November 2019].

How To Be Inspired To Believe In Yourself. (n.d.) [Online] Available: https://prcvir.com/blog/inspiring-to-believe-in-yourself/  [Accessed: 19 November 2019].

Robinson, K. and Aronica, L. (2 April 2018) Why Dance Is Just As Important As Math In School. [Blog, Online] Ted-Ed Blog. Available: https://blog.ed.ted.com/2018/04/02/why-dance-is-just-as-important-as-math-in-school/ [Accessed: 19 November 2019]

Smith-Autard, J. (2002) The Art of Dance in Education. London: Methuen Drama.

Week 10

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].

Week 9

In  integrated arts today, we had our first dance workshop with Zara. This was a very practical lesson and had the whole section moving! In music today, we were joined by Primary 7 from a local primary school. The pupils taught us how to play their string instruments. Today has been the most practical and hands on day of integrated arts so far, it was extremely enjoyable and I learned a lot about teaching the subjects of dance and music in schools.

With Zara, we first discussed the role dance has in primary schools. It is an important part of the curriculum and has experience and outcomes at all levels. Dance in primary schools focuses mostly on creating and performing as well as improving physical fitness. Dance allows pupils to experience inspiration and creativity as well as developing their technical skills and quality of movements as well as developing their imagination (Scottish Government, 2010).

We talked about how dance can be incorporated into other subject areas. For example, if the class topic is India, some Bollywood dance moves could be taught, this could link into experience and outcome EXA 2-10a : “I have taken part in dance from a range of styles and cultures, demonstrating my awareness of the dance features.”

After discussing where important organs, muscles and bones were and indicating where these were on a drawn body,

we moved on to warming up the important muscles the children would use in a dance lesson at school. We also learned that it was important to do cardio before warming up the muscles, this could be through a game of tig. This is important for me to remember as a teacher to ensure no muscles are pulled in my class. We also looked at the 10 key components of movement in dance in primary schools and in groups made up our own variations of the moves. I performed our moves in the video below.

Having the chance to play the cello and learn from a primary 7 was very insightful and a great opportunity. The children are involved in an East Ayrshire program along with 18 other primary schools. The program teaches every child in the class to play an instrument from primary 4 until leaving in primary 7. Not only does this give the children knowledge of music and playing an instrument, but it has also been said to improve the health of the pupils. Studies show that music can have a positive impact on mental and physical health (Mandel el al., 2007). The pupil I learned from performed a song on his cello for me.

Overall, I learned a lot of teaching points from today. It is important to not forget about music and dance when I qualify as all subject areas are just as important. I also learned today that music and dance can be incorporated into other subjects like maths and social studies. Learning from these pupils today inspired me as they were all enthusiastic and seemed to be enjoying their opportunity to learn an instrument. It is important for teachers to encourage their pupils’ creativity in class and ensure the class is given opportunities to explore the creative process (Sharp, 2004).

Education Scotland (2010) Curriculum for Excellence: Expressive Arts Experiences and Outcomes. [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-eo.pdf  [Accessed: 5 November 2019].

Mandel S.E., Hanser S.B., Secic M., Davis, B.A. (2007) Effects of Music Therapy on Health-Related Outcomes in Cardiac Rehabilitation: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Journal of Music Therapy. [Abstract, Online] Vol.44(3), pp.176-197. Available: https://academic.oup.com/jmt/article-abstract/44/3/176/954996 [Accessed: 5 November 2019].

Sharp, C. (2004) Developing Young Children’s Creativity: What Can We Learn From Research? National Foundation for Educational Research. Vol.32. [Online] Available: https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/55502/55502.pdf [Accessed: 5 November 2019].

 

 

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].

 

 

Week 3

This week, we focused on Room 13 and alternative approaches to arts education in schools. This was particularly interesting as art when I was in primary school was taught in the traditional way of all pupils having the same end goal and usually the ‘best’ piece of art was the piece that looked the most like the stimulus or brief. This is different now as children in schools are encouraged to create their own images and ideas of how they think their art should look. This way, learners have complete control of their work, this gives the child more sense of purpose and more pride in their work (Adams et al, 2008). This pride in their work encourages them and motivates them to continue with art and create more pieces (Ibid).

In our lecture, we discussed the Room 13 approach to art and creativity. This is a room in a school that has a specialist resident art teacher who helps the children create. This is also an entrepreneurial approach to art within schools as it works as a business and money making system within the school. This is a project that has been ongoing since 1994 in a Scottish school. It has proved as a successful alternative to the traditional approach to arts education (Claire Gibb, 2012).  This sounds like a fantastic idea and I would like to introduce this to my school as I progress through my career, if allowed. This nontraditional approach encourages creativity within schools as well as allowing for children to experience the creative process (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). The development of the skill of being creative is necessary as this is seen to be a valuable skill to have in terms of employability (Moeran and Christensen, 2013).

In the art workshop, we used materials around us to create paint brushes to use for our paintings of the Scottish Highlands. Below is a picture of my artwork and paint brush.

On reflection, this was a very clever way to ensure that all paintings are unique and different due to being created with such different tools. Every person had a different looking piece of work as everyone had used an individually created brush.  This demonstrated to me how a simple thing such as spending ten minutes creating our own tools to work with can drastically change the creativity and differences in the class’ work. This is a task that children would enjoy and allow their minds to be creative in ways to produce an instrument that will allow them to continue with their creativity on paper. Materials for this task would not cost a lot as any materials already available within the school or outdoor area can be used to creative the tool.

In drama we discussed and demonstrated how drama classes can be used to teach difficult subjects and social justice issues. This was helpful as it showed another way to teach these lessons in my career without just standing in front of a class talking at my pupils. Getting them involved in drama activities surrounding the topic will allow for a better understanding and engagement in learning (Kokx, 2017).

Overall, integrated arts today was very insightful and taught me how to use these subjects in ways different from how I have experienced in the past. It has also taught me that other subjects like technology or health and wellbeing can be integrated into the expressive arts.

 

Adams, J (et al) (2008) Teaching Through Contemporary Art: Report on Innovative Practices in the Classroom, London: Tate Publishing.

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: 24 September 2019].

Gibbs, C. (2012)  Room 13: The Movement and International Network :Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Kokx, K. (2017) Effects of Musical Theater Education on the Self Esteem of Middle School Students. Ed.D. Dissertations, Concordia University – Portland.

Moeran, B. and Christensen, B.T. (2013) Exploring Creativity: Evaluative Practices in Innovation, Design, and the Arts. [Online] Available: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1b1aCgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR8&dq=arts+development+of+creativity&ots=3xWpFb_Yl5&sig=l0cpGjy-iqKIuEv5QIgGoFl_-Dk#v=onepage&q&f=false [Accessed: 24 September 2019].