This week’s integrated arts workshops were practical and had us doing two very different activities. During the lecture today we looked at how we can read extracts and visualise them to see images. We read the article and illustrated the imagery and any other visualisations we had when reading . This exercise was challenging as the text was of a high level of academics but it was clear to see how this could be done within the classroom with an easier piece of text and what the children could learn from this. This task could be done with books or even song lyrics printed. It taught me that art can be taught through literacy and literacy can provide inspiration for art. This is an important realisation as many lessons can stem from this and could even be a topic in art for a number of lessons. I enjoyed this task as it was not something I had ever done before and was a valuable learning experience.

Being inspired wasn’t just the focus in the first lecture, both the art and drama workshops that followed also had this at the center. During art, we used black ink and black pens along with our hands and fingers to make marks on paper.

We then looked at these marks and focused in on what we saw, from there we added details with pen to create the artwork. This was influenced by the third lesson that the arts teach by Elliot Eisner (2002), in which he says that children see and interpret arts in different ways and can have multiple perspectives on one piece of art.  This exercise made me see how this lesson comes into play when completing a piece of art. This task, although messy, could easily be completed in primary schools as long as precautions were taken regarding washing hands afterwards and protecting uniforms with aprons.  Reflecting on this task today, it has changed by view of art always being a set task to end with a classroom full of very similar art pieces. Today, I realised that art is unpredictable even with everyone following the same brief. No two sheets of  paper after the workshop today looked the same as everyone made their own marks and took different inspirations from each, even though the whole section used the same few resources

After the drama workshop today I am already seeing improvements in my confidence when performing. I hope this same development of confidence would be present in my pupils when continuing drama lessons in school.

The workshops and and lectures today taught me the importance of looking at the work in front of me and taking creative inspirations to create new pieces of art which is something I hope to teach my class and allow them to experience this in the expressive arts.

Eisner, E. (2002) The Arts and the Creation of Mind. Conneticut: Yale University Press.

I walked into my first Integrated Arts lecture with an open mind and not much background information on what to expect for the day or the module.  We had a lecture followed by two workshops, the first workshop in visual arts and the second in drama. The first major thing I learned today is that it is extremely important to build a tolerance to ambiguity. This means, as a teacher, I need to be comfortable with things not always going to plan and being what I had expected or prepared for as things can often be unpredictable in the arts. This is a necessity in teaching as it is not always possible to plan to each second in the school day on how things will go.  On reflection of my previous experience, I think this tolerance  is something I will need to build on and hopefully increase over the module so  I can take it into school on placements as well as a qualified teacher in my career. My tolerance to ambiguity is yet to be tested as I have not yet experienced planning and carrying out a lesson of any sort. Once I start this planning and teaching, my tolerance to ambiguity will be developed and hopefully improved upon as I experience more in schools.

This tolerance began to be developed in our workshops. Our workshops today differed highly, drama was much more practical  whereas visual art had a focus on reflection of other people’s work.

It is important as a teacher to value every pupil’s work and show interest in it to ensure there is no discouragement of creativity (McAuliffe, 2007) which was explained to us in both art and drama today.  Encouraging pupils to be creative not only improves creativity in the expressive arts but has also been shown to help attainment in other subjects. Developing the skills of creativity from experiencing the creative arts has been seen to improve maths skills like problem solving and finding new ways to complete mathematic tasks (Nadjafikhaha, Yaftianb and Bakhshalizadehc, 2011) and has also seen improvements in literacy with advances in creative writing skills (Safford and Barrs, 2005).  Pupils need encouragement and guidance in all subjects and without this, in these expressive subjects, things might not progress as quickly as they would in a subject with lots of teacher direction and motivation (Anning and Ring, 2004). This shows that the teacher plays a role in encouraging the expressive arts and creativity in her class and can be the difference between a lesson where a lot of knowledge was learned and a lesson with not a lot Education Scotland (n.d.).

As an actress today, I struggled with confidence as it was a group of people who I have not worked with or performed in front of before. This struggle will hopefully be something I overcome by the last drama input as an increase in drama knowledge will bring an increase of confidence performing. This struggle with confidence is something that pupils in my future classes may face (Kokx, 2017) and is something I, as a teacher, will need to find ways of improving and developing within my class. When speaking to peers, they told me that they also struggled with confidence in today’s drama workshop as it is new territory for most of us. This is something I will keep in mind when planning drama lessons for my class as they may need encouragement to perform and get involved if they have not done drama before.

After today, I am looking forward to learning more about the expressive arts in primary schools and the benefits studying them can bring to pupils. The expressive arts are not a subject I experienced a lot of in primary school so my knowledge of primary school expressive arts is minor. Today’s lecture and workshops have made me look forward to learning more about how to teach and let the children experience the arts in school.

Anning, A. and Ring, K. (2004) Making Sense of Children’s Drawings.  Buckingham: Open University Press.

Education Scotland (n.d.) Curriculum for Excellence: Expressive Arts Principles and Practice. [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-pp.pdf [Accessed: 10 September 2019].

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

McAuliffe, D. (2007) Foundation and Primary Settings. In Teaching Art and Design 3-11. London: Continuum.

Nadjafikhaha, M., Yaftianb, N. and Bakhshalizadehc, S. (2011) Mathematical Creativity: Some Definitions and Characteristics. [Online] Available: https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/277811/1-s2.0-S1877042811X00241/1-s2.0-S1877042811029855/main.pdf [Accessed: 10 September 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: 10 September 2019].