Visual arts allow simple texts like as above to be brought to life. Just by adding a little colour or animation can really allow pupils to gain a better understanding of their work rather than just reading boring plain texts. Making your texts visible allows pupils to be more engaged with their work. It can also shorten the learning process for learners as they are able to comprehend the work load more easily (Jandhyala, 2017).

 

This activity was fun to complete as it allowed me to observe how easy learning would be if we could make our literacy lessons more visible. When reading the article above I didn’t have a lot of knowledge or understanding about it however after I starting scribbling some annotations down beside key aspects of the article I gained a lot more knowledge from it than I had at the start. It was definitely a good resource you could use in the classroom to try and make your literacy lessons more appealing to younger people. The lesson allowed me to gain creative and problem solving skills when I was able to come up with ideas of images that links with the words in the article.

 

 

 

Today’s Art session was all based on the children’s story “The Dot”. The story was based on a little girl called Vashti and how she kept telling herself that she couldn’t draw. Her teacher encouraged her to continue drawing and not to give up on herself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5mGeR4AQdM – The Dot Video Link

This indicated ways in which I as a teacher can try and encourage art within the classroom. It is important that as teachers we don’t convey the wrong messages to our pupils. Although we may not like drawing or not very good at it, we should always try to be positive about drawing so pupils are encouraged to “make that mark”. By being positive about the arts and keeping an open mind it allows pupils to gain better confidence in the subject and also through themselves (Hault, 2012).

Our task was to create marks with our hands and paint on a plain piece of paper. When looking at these marks we were asked to then flip the page around and upside down to see what we could draw around the marks to make a picture. Here is my sheet of paper:

 

 

                  

Our drama session was based on the picture above. The picture represents a Tenement flat in the West End of Glasgow during winter time. Tenements like these were more used within the 1960’s era. They were built in urban areas for those people who were mostly likely to be in the manual labour industries. Within the flat there would be 8-10 families who would all have their own flat/house however had to share the communal toilet which at this time was outside in the back garden for the majority of these tenement flats (Cairn, 2017).This session allowed me to reflect on how important your behaviour can be on a pupil. As mentioned before, if you state that you aren’t really a fan of art or anything messy then there is more of a chance that pupils will not be engaged in Art lessons and will feel that they aren’t very good at it themselves. Art allows pupils to gain creative and imaginative skills that allow them to express their thoughts and feelings through drawing ( McAuliffe et al, 2007).

 

 

In small groups we created small drama scenes that related back to the tenement flats. For example, our group created a scene based on waking up on Christmas morning but the kids didn’t get any presents because the dad lost his job.

We used three drama conventions throughout this short scene these were:

Flash forward => Were you move the scene forward as if it is in the future.

Flash back => Were the scene goes back in time like the past or rewinding the scene to whatever     happened in order to get to where they are in the scene.

Freeze Frame => When you create an image that indicates to your audience what is going on in that scene.

This session allowed us to think about the horrible situations people lived in during that generation and how disappointed some kids must have been. The scenario was good to use and it allowed us to put true emotions into the scene and allowed us to relay how we would feel if we were put in these situations ourselves.

The session gave me the opportunity to gain collaboration, creativity and team work skills. I would also be able to use this in classroom, as it would link in with history and would allow pupils to go away and do some research to gain a better understanding of the tenements. It would also allow pupils to express their thoughts and feelings as if they were in this situation themselves.

Overall, these sessions have allowed me to gain more knowledge on the arts and how I can interpret them into my classroom. I have learned that there is no such thing as “I can’t draw” and that pupils should be encouraged to do it and experiment with it within class time and also at home. It is also important that these two sessions are practised quite frequently either as an individual or as a student teacher, so that I am more comfortable with the subjects so that my pupils can feel comfortable with them too.

REFRENCES

Cairn (2017) A History of Glasgow’s Tenements [Online] Available: https://cairnestateagency.com/history-glasgow-tenements/ [Accessed: 17^th September 2019]

Jandhyala, D. (2017) Visual Learning: 6 Ways why Visuals are the Most Powerful Aspect of eLearning. [Online] Available: https://elearningindustry.com/visual-learning-6-reasons-visuals-powerful-aspect-elearning. [Accessed: 17^th September 2019]

Van’t Hault, J. (2012) Kids Drawing- How to Encourage Creativity, Skills and Confidence [Online] Available: https://artfulparent.com/how-to-encourage-drawing-skills-confidence-creativity-in-young-children/ [Accessed: 17^th September 2019]

Watts, R. Cox, S. McAuliffe, D. Heme, S. (2007) Teaching Art and Design 3-11. (Reaching the Standards). London: Continuum International Publishing.

 

 

 

 

 

Integrated arts is based on classroom content standards being taught whilst teaching them through the form of arts (Riley, 2014). Many teachers don’t use the variety of resources the arts brings to the classroom purely based on the fact that they may not be educated enough in the extra-curricular subjects related to the arts. The arts open teacher’s horizons to subjects such as music, drama, dance and visual arts.

Integrated arts benefits children’s learning. It enhances pupils learning processes. It developed multiple skills such as communication, creativity and critical thinking. Art allows pupils to express their feelings through a different format without actually having to talk to and adult about it (McAuliffe, 2007). It allows pupils to take part in a lesson which is more engaging and fun whilst learning.

The first session we looked at today was based on Visual Arts. Visual arts allow pupils as mentioned before to engage with their own thoughts and feelings and place that into the world of imagination and drawing. Within today’s session, we had a look at pupils work from over different primary school stages such as early, first and second level.

You could tell by some of the pictures the different thought processes children had went through and the resources they may have used to create the final product. Looking at a specific picture of what looks like to be a group of flowers. It enticed me to continue to look at it as the pupil had put in a lot of detail to the painting. I established from looking at it that the painting had been completed with a thick brush and possibly completed by an early level learner as the painting has splatter marks on it and looked very rushed. The pupil went into great detail with picture and the black coloured paper made it stand out really clearly and highlighted exactly what it was we were looking at.

Here is the picture we were looking at in today’s session:

 

 

 

This workshop highlighted the huge differences in resources then compared to the present day. Children nowadays are used to the different forms of technology that is present within our contemporary world. Things such as ICT are now allowing pupils to draw or paint on an electrical device such as a laptop and they are quite up to speed with the evolving of technologies compared to the adults (McAuliffe, 2007).

We also had a drama session later on in the afternoon. Drama is an important subject within the curriculum as it broadens pupils’ skills. They can gain skills such as creativity, communication and teamwork for example (Farmer, 2019).  From a young age, children are already introduced to drama through role play either within their home or when they are in nursery.

We looked at a story called “The Lonely Dragon”. The lonely dragon story allowed us to then be introduced to the variety of drama conventions that we could use if we were to use this resource within the classroom. These drama conventions included Teacher in Role, Improvisation, Thought Tunnel and Freeze frame. These were very good conventions to use for this type of story as it would create many different outcomes as not every group of pupils would come up with the same scenario.

Drama allows pupils to express their emotions and feelings whilst being in a supportive environment of their classroom. Pupils also begin to feel confident in themselves when taking part in drama, allowing them to open up their imagination and individuality (Appleyard, 2018). A disadvantage of drama however, would be for those pupils who are possibly shy or less confident. Sometimes drama isn’t for everyone but I do agree that it should be used within the classroom as it is just as an important subject as the rest of the curriculum and it boosts pupils confidence as well as their learning.

Overall, from this week’s sessions I have gathered a more in depth knowledge of how important drama and art are within education. The sessions have broaden my thoughts on how there are many different ways you can involve everyone within the class however not everyone will like drama and art but it was good to see the variety of resources you could use to make sure everyone was included.

As teachers we should always try and embrace the arts as it is just as important a subject as other curricular areas such as Maths or English. The arts allow pupils to broaden their learning processes and open their horizons to new opportunities.

 

References

Appleyard, V. (2018) Positive Effects of Drama Programs in Education. [Online] Available: https://evolvetreatment.com/blog/positive-effects-drama-programs/. [Accessed: 10^th September 2019].

Farmer, D. (2019) Why Teach Drama to Primary School Children? [Online] Available: https://dramaresource.com/why-teach-drama-to-primary-school-children/. [Accessed: 10^th September 2019]

Riley, S. (2014) WHAT IS ARTS INTEGRATION? HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW. [Online] Available: https://educationcloset.com/2014/04/03/infographic-what-is-arts-integration/. [Accessed:10^th September 2019]

Watts, R. Cox, S. McAuliffe, D. Heme, S. (2007) Teaching Art and Design 3-11. (Reaching the Standards). London: Continuum International Publishing.