I particularly enjoyed music in this week’s session. To begin with we listened to clips of different types of music and we were to write down adjectives about how they made us feel. When we shared these with the class it was interesting to see the different ways in which the same piece of music affected people differently. One piece made some feel happy while it made others feel annoyed. We discussed how a certain piece of music can bring memories with it and that can influence how we feel. A study into music therapy for depression found that music greatly improved the symptoms of sufferers (NHS, 2011). Although the study was a small one, its results show that music can be a great influencer on how we feel.

We then listened to a piece of classical music three times and were to come up with a story based on it. The group I was in went with the story of some friends who are baking a cake realise they have run out of ingredients. They must run to the shops before they close, but as they get there they see the mean shop owner is not going to let them in. They then fight and take the ingredients back to the house and finish making the cake. It was all very simple, but we had fun doing it and it got us discussing the impact of music on our thoughts. It also is a good exercise for getting people to work collaboratively together and so I think that it would be an excellent activity to do with older pupils in the class.

In art we were given the opportunity to finish our paintings from last week, this time by using pastels on top of the paint to give it more depth of colour and texture. We were also looking at how to critically evaluate a piece of art using specific questions. Below I have done this on my completed landscape portrait from last week.

Creativity is a skill that is incredibly important and both art and music help to encourage its development. Collard’s (2016) paper on creativity within the classroom shows that creativity is very closely linked to the executive functions within the brain. Cognitive flexibility – being able to alter perspectives and problem solve where needed- is very similar to the creative skill of being able to identify and solve problems as well as that of being open minded. By providing a classroom that nurtures the physical, social, emotional and intellectual needs of children these executive functions improve and therefore so do children’s creative skills (Collard, 2016). This therefore proves that creativity is closely linked to how the brain functions and shows why it is so important to nurture creativity.

References

Collard, P. Education Scotland. (2016). Creativity and Learning: What is the Connection? [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/improvement/documents/creativity/cre36-creativity-thought-piece-paul-collard-june-2016.pdf [Accessed: 25 September 2018].

NHS, (2011). Music therapy ‘helps treat’ depression. [Online] Available: https://www.nhs.uk/news/mental-health/music-therapy-helps-treat-depression/#conclusion  [Accessed: 25 September 2018].