Month: October 2017

Drama

Continuing our learning of using drama in the curriculum,  the lesson had the same structure as previous weeks of learning new drama conventions. This week we learned how to use flash forward, flashback, slow motion and narration. Narration allows the children to fully understand what is happening in the story, Booth (1985, page 1) suggests “children’s ability to make sense of the messages that flood them is often beyond their ability or willingness to communicate their understanding of those messages”. This can be applied to the convention use of narration as it provides children with the help to easily comprehend the thoughts of the characters and the meaning of the story. Flash back and flash forward provides an insight to different periods of time out with the story’s time period. This can teach children all about how events and people progress to be what they are at present and how those people and events can affect the future. A valuable lesson of showing how actions have consequences is highly useful in a classroom. Finally using slow motion in drama scenes lets the children explore in detail how their character would feel and react to something in the story and how it would be represented at a very slow pace.

We incorporated all of our new learned drama conventions into our own halloween-themed story. Using teacher in role, we all created a story about a haunted house that none of townspeople dared to enter. Each group within the class then made up their version of the story using the drama conventions, to which each performed in front of the class. For example, my group acted out a tale of trick-or-treaters wanting to knock on the door of the haunted house where they came across an evil witch who froze children to stone. After three session of learning about drama, I am confident in saying I have overcome my inhibitions about performing in front of an audience. I think one of the main reasons for this was the entire class grew more comfortable with engaging with the acting and sharing their abilities. Group drama really made a difference when beginning to act scenes in front of others. By my group members putting in their best effort I felt I would be motivated to do the same. I believe this would take place in a primary classroom as well , according to Baldwin (2009) children soon recognise that for a performance to be successful, everybody must make a positive contribution and have full co-operation.

Music

The main focus was learning to use our voices as teachers. Our voices are the primary source of communication to pupils, therefore taking care of your voice is essential. The General Teaching Council for Scotland advised helpful tips for teachers to manage their voice. One of which being ‘avoid shouting’, of course every teacher will have to shout to get their classes attention more often than they would like. However using other methods such as using an intimidating look for attention will put less strain on your voice and allow to get on with the curriculum.  It also advises teachers to protect their voice by trying a number of things: warm up your voice before prolonged usage by humming gently or doing some voice exercises, relax shoulders and neck, breath from the diaphragm, drink water regularly.

We used this learning to carry on to our next activity: singing. Now I have always enjoyed singing as a child, mainly in choir and having lessons in high school, however I felt reservations at the thought of singing in front of my peers. We used useful song resources suitable for early level music learners such as Choonbaboon. We took part in a 15 minute teaching video of a song, after a while everyone in the session eased into singing out loud and became more confident. In reflection as a teacher, I see now I can simple videos like this as a main part of my lesson if it carries out the pupil’s learning intention. I intend to find further resources like this to help inform my planning and teaching.

A useful example of a Choonbaboon video lesson – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KzQpQ5HLMI

Finally, we explored using grids within music. One of the most important and challenging part of learning music is knowing how to read a score sheet, therefore simplifying its appearance into a grid will make things much easier for children who are being newly introduced to music. Us, the learners, were encouraged to consider sounds which they would relate to a certain theme and how they would represent those sounds using different instruments, their voices, and electronic sound effects. In our case, we used the topical theme of fireworks for Guy Fawkes night. Therefore our sounds were described as a bang, whizz, hiss, boom, etc. After deciding how many beats were in each box and what instruments were categorised with each sound, our teacher conducted us to play our instruments along the grid.

Then into groups we came up with our own theme and repeated the activity on a smaller scale. I feel this lesson would be very effective for IDL learning as I associated the grid with maths learning. Learners could use their knowledge of grids in another lesson revolving around using co-ordinates.

One of the main points I took from this week was the importance of allowing children to have choice and input in an arts lesson. Both inputs of today’s module showed how the educators altered their lessons (whilst still using their own planning) to fit how we, the learners, changed the direction. I would say that before I thought teachers were in strict control of lessons and pupils did not have a say in what they were learning, but I am starting to realise that children can only express themselves if you allow them to. Craft (2009) highlight that in practice which fosters creativity by contract our focus to ensure that we encourage children’s ideas and possibilities, and these are not suffocated.

References

Booth, D. (1985) Imaginary gardens with real toads. In Reading and Drama in Education. Theory into Practice. [Online] Vol.24(3). Available: Taylor and Francis. [Accessed 31 October 2017]

Baldwin, P. (2009) School Improvement Through Drama: A Creative Whole Class, Whole School Approach. London: Network Continuum Education.

Craft, A (2007) Creativity and possibility in the Early Years [Online] Available: https://www.tactic.org.uk/pdfs/reflection-craft.pdf [Accessed: 31 October 2017]

GTSC. (2017) Voice Management. [Online] Available: http://www.in2teaching.org.uk/hints-and-tips/View/952.aspx [Accessed: 31 October 2017]

(This blog post will combine week 6 and 7)

I would say that in my past experiences, as a child, I definitely loved having the opportunity to take part in drama and dance. I would find myself using and watching these art forms as a way of indulging in escapism, a very common process that young children do to find a relief from their realities. However, as I matured I strayed from my interest in dance and drama, thus spurring feelings of uneasiness prior to these sessions.

Drama

In our drama session we explored new conventions that could be used within a lesson, namely: vox pocs, role on the wall, thought-tracking, voice-in-head and mime. We integrated our learning Anthony Browne’s ‘The Tunnel’ , a story of the relationship between a brother and sister. After familiarising ourselves with the plot of the story, i.e. the brother and sister do not get on and the brother seems to bully his sister, we were asked to create a role on the wall for the two characters. Drawing an outline of each person, we wrote words on the outside to describe what the character appears to be and on the inside what the characters feels about themselves.

Using this convention within a drama lesson I feel would be useful because it allows the children to learn the valuable lesson of seeing other people’s points of view and that a person may not be what they appear to be. I understand now that the main intention of drama lessons in early education are allow children the opportunity to pretend and to have the freedom to to express themselves, however moral lesson about stereotypes can always be useful when teaching children. We later moved on and finished reading the story to be able to apply the other conventions in our lesson. As groups, we acted out segments of the story and used voice-in-head, which requires a character to step forward out of the scene and the actor explains the thoughts and feelings of the character which the audience may not have picked up on. This gives children an opportunity to relate to the character using aesthetics to help recognise how feelings can make people commit certain, potentially hurtful, actions. Grainger (2003) suggests drama is essentially associated with creating and solving problems, therefore children can create their critical thinking skills through their role in the drama experience and use ways of thinking they may not used before. In respect to teaching, I feel after seeing all of my fellow peers take part and have a role in the activity, that group drama is the best way to ease children into performing and to involve everyone in the lesson. Ways this could be adapted is maybe less confident children could have non-speaking roles, however everyone getting up in front of an audience will start to build on their confidence. Andrew pointed out that a common worry of teachers, when asking pupils their thoughts and answers, is silence from the class. This results in the teacher ending the silence quickly with telling the class the answer he/she were looking for. In reflection I see now that patience, especially in drama lessons, is key when allowing the children to think for themselves and that being scared of ‘the silence’ is something to overlook. Additionally, flexibility is a skill that goes a long way in teaching drama lessons, if the lesson veers away from the path you had initially planned it to take – just go with it. The use of drama in curriculum is for the child to express themselves without limitation.

‘I have the freedom to choose and explore how I can use my voice, movement and expression in role play and drama.’ EXA 0-12a.

Dance 

As much I considered all aspects of the arts to be important in primary teaching, I did not realise the extent of how much dance is incorporated in the CfE curriculum. I was surprised to learn that there are many dance-related experiences and outcomes, including

‘I enjoy creating short dance sequences, using travel, turn, jump, gesture, pause and fall, within safe practice.’ EXA 1-08a.

Over the course of two inputs, these outcomes were displayed in our dance activities. In groups we had to move round different stations of movement, namely: reach, twist, balance, turn, kick, jump, hop, gesture, slide, and roll. At each station we had to come up with a movement of this description. At the end we combined all of the movements to create a dance which we performed to the rest of the class. As a teacher, I see how giving the children this freedom has its benefits for their creativity to develop in different ways. However I always see how having certain guidelines and a structure to their dance moves, i.e. their movement had to within a certain category, makes things easier for those who may struggle in this area.

               

Later, everyone in the session stood in a circle, using the theme of Halloween, to create a dance move for every number from 0-9. We then got back into our groups and answers a list on mathematical calculations, the answers determined a sequence of the dance moves we had created. This showed how dance can be incorporated in any other curricular subject, such as maths, and how using memorable actions can help young learners understand the concept of every number having meaning/value. The main thing I took from this particular teaching was how little teacher input there was. Using this type of method in my planning and teaching for dance lessons is essential because as Cone (2009, page 81) states, “offering children the opportunity to discover how they can be creators of their own ideas is the one of the most powerful lessons we can teach”.

References

Grainger, T. (2003) Creative teachers and the language arts: Possibilities and potential. Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education. Vol.31(1). pp. 43-47.

Purcell Cone, T. (2009) Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances. In Journal of Dance Education. Vol. 9(3), pp. 81-89.

Scottish Government (2004) Curriculum for Excellence: Expressive Arts Experiences and Outcomes. [Online] Available: https://www.education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-eo.pdf [Accessed 24 October 2017]

 Art

We began our session by continuing the process of printing which we worked on last week. We photocopied the prints we made and then filled in the rest of the blank paper to continue the image on the photocopy, then applied colour.

Having this sense of freedom within a lesson can allow a child imagination to run wild. In this particular lesson I saw how important it is to let a child know that there is no right or wrong answer when expanding on their work and taking a completely different creative direction is something that should be encouraged. A useful planning idea I have learned is one art lesson/concept can be taught across multiple sessions and activities, the use of reinforcement in education is crucial for a student’s understanding of the subject to expand.

Below is my interpretation of adding more to the original print:

Curiosity is an essential part of creativity and we should do whatever we can to encourage it; valuing the inquisitive nature of young people. As discussed by Csikszentmihalyi (1997) if curiosity is not encouraged and there are not opportunities for children to experiment with possibilities, they will become less willing to take part in creative thinking and actions.

Music

In another workshop we were taught how taught how to create music using GarageBand. This is an application used for music and sound effects which an individual creates on the computer. It can used as to merge many different sounds together and create an interesting piece of music. Then we furthered this learning on by creating a sound backing track for an animation which had no sound.

Below is a picture I took whilst using GarageBand to compose my music piece:

I believe children would be highly intrigued to be taught music in this way as it involves the use of technology. Contemporary styles of music, such as electronic dance music, are created using these type of softwares. “There are some simple and amazing programmes that allow children to compose exciting music with little or no instruction” (Page, 1995 p.26) Teaching children in more modern ways will allow them to be willing to engage and enjoy the lesson. Using software like Garageband is a good tool to use in a classroom for children to explore the use of combing a range of sounds and express their creativity – one of the key guidelines in curriculum for excellence.

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997) Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of discovery and invention. [Online] New York: Harper Perennial. Available: UWS Library. [Accessed 10 October 2017]

Page, N. (1995) Music as a way of knowing. Maine: Stenhouse Publishers

 

Art

Popular painting “Windows in The West” by Avril Paton (1993) was our main reference to learning in our sessions this week.

After learning a bit about the history of this painting, we identified how it made us feel and were if we indeed ‘liked’ it. However I came to understand that it is not a matter or like and dislike, but as teachers of art we should simply break down a piece of work to analyse what the artist is trying to put across. Reading Rod Taylor’s (2010) model of ‘Process’, ‘Form’, ‘Content’ and ‘Mood’ helped me to come to terms with how I would discuss and interrogate art objects with children in a classroom. I found each concept, particularly ‘Mood’, very interesting as it allows children the opportunity to effectively interpret what they see and feel, developing their aesthetic education and emphasising to them that when it comes to art there is no right or wrong answer.

Our learning outcome was to understand how using a form stimulus, including a print of an ordinary building in Glasgow, can trigger a child’s imagination. A child can look upon this painting, seeing each window has a person living inside, and create a backstory for each tenet. Opening many potential cross-curricular opportunities for a teacher. A child could develop their literacy skills through creative writing for a tenet of the building, alternatively the use of a drama lesson (involving narrative) can prompt a child’s inventiveness and their critical thinking  behind the painting. Prior to this, I did not realise how this print could evoke a child’s creativity in such ways. However, in reflection as a primary teacher, effective communication i.e. openly discussing the work of an artist is vital in exploring new techniques and processes for my development as well as the child’s.

I was able to apply my learning later on in a practical workshop where we used marking and painting to explore colour theory. We were asked to draw/mark a section of our choice from  ‘Windows in the West’ onto a polystyrene cut-out. We proceeded to use paint and rollers to cover the polystyrene and stamp it onto multiple pieces of coloured paper.

Examples:

                  

Although each student was given the same instructions and stimulus, each made different interpretations of drawing and choices of colour, no one person had the same perception. Colour theory is important for not only allowing a child to explore their creativity but to help express their emotions. I have learned that it is essential to apply this concept to my practice as it can effectively develop a child’s communication skills and allow me (the teacher) to understand the depth of the child’s emotions, some of whom may suffer a troubled home life or face learning difficulties. As well as developing my subject knowledge behind our practical tasks, I was able to grasp the key steps you would take when planning and managing an art lesson. Examples of this would be to having cleaning materials at the ready in case of spillages and to make sure children wear aprons. Simple directions like this, that I had not previously recognised as imporant, can be instrumental in making sure a messy lesson runs smoothly.

Drama

As it was my first drama input of the year, I was fairly anxious to see what was in store. However I was shown that teaching drama is not merely about displaying a person’s acting abilities, but is it to allow children to pretend to be somebody else for a change. There is something about changing identities that can be liberating for a child, allowing to express themselves in a way that they might never get the opportunity to do so. Quality classroom drama focuses upon risking uncertainty, exploring new ideas and discovering the unknown (Winston, 1998).

The tasks were based on a story about a village and how they were terrified for their safety as they faced a ferocious fire-breathing dragon flying too closely to their homes. In this specific activity of improvisation, I was able to see the importance of a teacher involving the children and taking on their creative ideas of where the story might lead to. I understand how this builds a child’s confidence tremendously and inspires them to enjoy drama and see it as an effective outlet. We explored various themes in drama teaching including freeze frames, teacher in role, improvisation, thought tunnels and hot seating. All of which can be very valuable and memorable methods to allowing children to be as much involved as possible in the lesson. The drama convention I saw as the most interesting was teacher in role. Teacher in role is the method of the teacher switching in and out of character, this can be done by putting on a piece of clothing, communicating with their pupils in a completely different way through the story. An example, the teacher puts on their top hat, becomes the mayor of the village and asks the now “villagers” to come up with a solution to the problem of the dragon.

To me, the story of the dragon was a perfect example of a stimulus creating a response (i.e. opening a door in a child’s limitless imagination). Each input of this week has furthered my knowledge on how help provoke a pupil’s creative thinking and how to encourage to use this way of thinking more often if that is how they learn better. A person’s imagination is prominent at the age of a primary school pupil and my job as a teacher is find any means possible to manifest their individuality.

References

Hickman, R., Taylor, R. (2010) Critical Studies in Art and Design Education. London: Intellect

Paton, A. (2011) [Online] Available:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVDRL6wsQYU [Accessed 3 October 2017]

Winston, J. (1998) Drama, Narrative and Moral Education. London: Falmer Press.