During week 8 of our integrated arts course, in our final visual arts input we were all given an artistic photograph that could be interpreted in different ways and could include many emotions. Our photograph, when glanced at looked like multiple lamps sitting on a small table. However, after looking deeper into the picture it was clear that the picture meant much more than what met the eyes. Through our photograph we felt like the lamps were portrayed as being scary and creepy as the artist had painted two dots on each which made it look like eyes. The first thing we thought of after seeing this was when you are in a dark forest or area and animals such as cats or birds are staring from the darkness. I believe this would be an effective way to encourage children to understand how there can be many meaning behind art. As every pair had a different picture it was interesting to see how others interpreted your picture and vice versa. By doing an activity like this within a class can allow children to meet this benchmark: ‘Inspired by a range of stimuli, I can express and communicate my ideas, thoughts and
feelings through activities within art and design. EXA 0-05a / EXA 1-05a / EXA 2-05a’ (Education Scotland, 2019). Children can discuss with classmates their interpretation and can listen and develop an understanding of the others. This encourages good listening and communication skills between pupils.
Within out music input we were focusing on different websites we could use to assist in our teaching of music within a school. One of the websites we looked at was Charanga, in my opinion this is a very impressive and helpful tool as it has a huge array of musical teaching ideas. As I have never been very musical I believe this would be a huge help when teaching music lessons. It included rhythms, beats and pulses etc whilst breaking it down into easy chunks to allow children to fully understand how music is created whilst allowing you as the teacher to feel confident in teaching music.
Both these inputs allowed me to see how by breaking down parts of a picture or part of musical notation allows for children to fully understand and interpret.
References:
Education Scotland. (2019). curriculum for excellence: expressive arts experiences and outcomes. [online] Available at: https://education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-eo.pdf [Accessed 30 Oct. 2019].
