(This blog post will combine week 11 and 12)
In week 11, we had our final drama input where groups in our class continued micro-teaching. We also had another dance session where we planned a dance that we later performed and filmed in week 12. The final music input intended for week 12 was cancelled due to Julie’s illness.
Drama
As my group had already taken their turn to micro-teach last week, it was interesting to switch roles and see it from an audience’s perspective. This way I could reflect as a teacher by observing my peers and watching what teaching methods they chose to use in their drama lesson, this further enhanced my practice as I can see what methods worked best and which ones did not. Three groups in total conducted a drama lesson to our class, however one group’s lesson I found deeply meaningful. This group decided to that their target audience for their lesson would not be aimed at children or young people but adults. They decided to base their lesson on the fictional novel
Room, which we studied last year for one of our modules. As the story is based on a woman and her young son being help captive in a enclosed space by a violent rapist man, this content would be not be suitable for using in the early years. However, as we are all adults, using stories made for children did not have quite same affect as this story did. For example, they used the drama convention hot-seating to place the “Old Nick” at the subject of the audience’s questions. His principles of being sexist and discriminative to women provoked many people in the audience to feel offended, angry and uncomfortable.
Even though the aim of this module is to enable us to successfully teach the expressive arts to children, I feel this session allowed me to really understand why drama is such a powerful art form. It makes us feel in ways and experience situations we have never came across before and this can make people realise how they truly feel about an issue. After this session, I truly felt as if it had made an impact on me, which is how we want children to feel after experiencing drama. This has informed my practice greatly as I understand that we as adults need to protect children, however we also need to prepare them for potential problems that they will face in their future. After all, as Booth (1985) suggests, “storying provides students with a natural human process for finding essential meanings in the experiences of themselves and others”. It is our job as teachers to nurture children’s and support learners’ capacity to make-believe.
Dance
Our lecture was based on the importance and the benefits of providing dance education to young learners. Cone (2009) suggests that when children create dances using their own ideas, they are empowered to explore their thoughts, feelings and perspectives; building on their ability to use aesthetics to think creatively. All children should have the right to compose, perform and appreciate dance (Smith-Autard, 2002), as they can utilise these experiences to express their creativity in ways that they cannot through more traditional subjects in school.
This week we choreographed a dance related to the theme of christmas. We were given ideas of a dance lessons, such as a game or a stretch routine, and we had to come up with ways in which we could relate to the theme. This activity required us to consider the characters, a storyline and a title for our dance, as well as to consider any props or costumes that we plan to use. This throughly informed my planning and teaching skills as I thought of fun and unique ideas to implement a lesson to children. We also received feedback from our peers on what was good and what could have been improved about our ideas. This was particularly useful to me as an important part of teaching is being able to work in a team and share ideas and this activity helped me build on these communication skills.
After seeing all aspects from each of the groups we had come up with a full lesson and by the end of it we had choreographed a full dance routine. After practicing this dance over the following week, we recorded the dance in the next session. Overall, I feel like the dance input of this module has significantly developed my confidence and skills to be able to integrate dance into a child’s education. In addition, this has made remember how much I love being involved in the expressive arts and want to keep participating in these areas in the future.
Overall
My participation in this module has shown me how art integration is a valuable and complex approach to learning and teaching. It is crucial for the expressive arts to be promoted as an imperative subject area in its own right but also as a way to compliment other subject areas, as Strickland (2008, p.21) proposes, arts education acts “as the emotional glue that makes sense of the analytical world”. By nurturing children’s creativity and encouraging their creative process they will lead richer lives and, in the longer term, make a significant contribution to society.
References
Booth, D. (1985) “Imaginary gardens with real toads”: Reading and drama in education. Theory into Practice. [Online] Vol.24(3), pp.193-198. Available: Taylor and Francis. [Accessed: 6 November 2017].
Cone, T. (2009) Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances. Journal of Dance Education. [Online] Vol.9(3), pp.81-89. Available: Taylor & Francis. [Accessed 2 December 2017].
Smith-Autard, J. (2002) The Art of Dance Education. London: A & C Black Publishers Ltd.
Strickland, P. (2008) Teachers Arts Education: Integrating in the classroom. [Online] Available: https://search.proquest.com/openview/951ab9d82e4667822a3d33d0923581c6/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y [Accessed 6 December 2017].
Strategies like this made it easier for me to read music, as I do not have acquired a lot of prior experience or skill in it. We then practised different songs using the drum sticks to keep the beat. I was able to identify what areas that some children would struggle with and what methods can be used to explain the notes in a simpler way, such as saying the words ‘coffee’ and ‘tea’ to demonstrate crochets and quavers. We later moved on to using instruments such as the glockenspiel to challenge ourselves by playing real notes. In respect to teaching, I believe this activity is a great, practical way to introduce the concept of basic music notation. Hallam (2010) suggests that music builds 
on a person’s perceptual, language and literacy skills and learning an instrument enhances the ability to remember words through enlargement of the left cranial temporal regions. This activity has shown me how even in areas I do not have much experience in I can effectively teach other children expressive areas, as long as I acquire the correct knowledge and skills I will be capability and confident enough to become a great facilitator of arts education.
conventions: teacher-in-role, flash back, hot-seating and thought tunnel. Using teacher-in-role, one group member got into the character as the mayor of pigs’ town and asked the audience (the pigs) what ideas that had to stop the bad wolf from blowing everyone’s houses down. We chose this convention because it can help deepen the belief and commitment in a young class, the questioning gives direction and shape to the learning activity as well as stimulating their minds in areas they may have not thought about before (Barrs et al., 2000). I was given the responsibility to lead the teaching of flash back within the story. Using questioning again, I asked the class their input on the reasons why the wolf wanted to blow the pigs’ houses down, in other words what experiences of his had turned him into a villain? In groups, I allocated the groups a short time to discuss their ideas that they would later perform as an acting demonstration. Participation is key in drama, making sure everyone got up and performed was essential for me. I feel this is so important when applied to a classroom environment because not every child will be as expressive or in favour of performing as other more confident children will be, therefore all pupils must have the same level of opportunities in drama. After all, as Neelands (1990, page 6) states, “drama is to do with the child experiencing rather than performing”. This session really helped me to reflect as a teacher and gain experience in planning and actually carrying out a real drama lesson. This opportunity further informed me on how to use CfE expressive arts experiences and outcomes in my planning, for example “Inspired by a range of stimuli, I can express and communicate my ideas, thoughts and feelings through drama” (EXA 0-13a / EXA 1-13a / EXA 2-13a). I used this experience and outcome all thought out my lesson as I allowed the pupils to have the chance to show their creative ideas through the drama convention.
build on a child self-esteem and confidence. In reflection, I see how collaborative approaches between children and adults, such as this music lesson today, is beneficial in nurturing a learner’s and teacher’s creativity. By the child sharing their skills their barriers came down and gave them a lot of self-motivation, this is a great way to increase comfort and capacity to creativity (Harris, 2016). I really admire the work of Greenmill Primary School String Project as they go above and beyond for giving children opportunities to learn music. The attitudes of the teachers behind the project were very inspiring to me, they are the role models that young teachers need to recognise the importance of teaching the arts in primary schools. I plan to take this positive experience on as a teacher and apply this concept of helping children find their passion as it will have a valuable impact on my learners.