This week, the focus was around dance and drama. I found the two workshops very interesting and beneficial in both terms of a teaching and personal view.

Workshop 1- Drama

This week we were focussing on performing, participating in and listening to our fellow colleague’s drama lessons. I thought that the drama’s we were involved with today were very well planned and very engaging. I particularly liked a drama lesson that focussed on a book that we as a cohort read last year. The book is named ‘Room’ by Emma Donoghue and follows the story of a mum and son who are confined to a small room with basic equipment at the hands of the kidnapper and woman abuser called ‘Old Nick’. The group focussed on issues that no other group had focussed on before such as violence, empowerment, objectification and control/treatment from men towards women in society. The lesson was also very clever in terms of using different conventions and the placing of them. For example, the group portrayed ‘Old Nick’ as a bad character the whole way through the convention of hot seating whereas before, all the other groups portrayed a change in the character in the hot seating convention. I also liked the fact that the group made the class carry out the conventions in silence which I felt added an element of seriousness to the lesson because of the topic. Personally, I felt more engaged in this lesson out of any others previous to this. This lesson was focussed towards a secondary school level but showed how we as primary teachers could use drama to explore more serious themes in primary schools such as bullying. Through this input today, I have picked up some skills as a student teacher and skills as a learner. I have picked up the skills of confidence and analysis as a student teacher and as a learner because I was able to analyse the characters and themes in the drama and then had the confidence to share my opinion to the class through the hot seating and though tunnel conventions.
In terms of teaching drama, from the input today, I have picked up some tips such as doing all or certain parts of the drama in silence to try and create a more serious atmosphere depending on the theme or story. I have also learned to let the children take control of the story to a certain extent to let them have the opportunity to come up with their own ideas and essentially, have fun whilst still learning about drama.

Workshop 2- Dance

The focus of the lecture this morning was looking at the ‘Midway Model’ for dance in schools (Smith-Autard, 2002). This model explores how dance should be both fun and creative as well as aesthetically pleasing, emphasising that both components should be equal to each other. Thus, children need to learn to combine the ten basic dance moves with their own creativity and imagination to achieve a creative, aesthetically pleasing dance.

We were also looking at creative dance from the perspective of teaching and its importance within the curriculum. According to Cone (2009) creative dance should be empowering, fun, meaningful and safe. Alongside this creative dance should be directed mostly by the child or children. For children to get the most out of creative dance, they should be able to use their own ideas to create their own dance which is their own vision.

I was always worried about teaching dance before the module, however, after participating in the workshops, I have since changed my view on this. I now feel a lot more comfortable teaching this because I only really need to be able to teach the 10 basic steps of dance and be able to give small points of guidance to the children. I was also worried about losing control of the class in dance but I feel that it is best to let the children have almost complete free reign over their dance, with my input only to help create moves if needed and to ensure the children are co-operating and being fair with each other. It is also important to allow children to lead their own learning in dance because it is helps improve confidence, team-building skills, creative thinking and problem solving skills (Cone, 2009).

We also had a dance workshop which was based on the theme of Christmas. The class was split into four groups and were each given different tasks to contribute to a dance lesson aimed at a primary 4/5 class to the theme of Christmas. My group had the task of creating a full body stretch warm up which targeted all the muscles and joints in the body which would ensure safety in terms of body safety. We started from the head down to ensure all muscles were covered. The rest of the tasks were based around warm up games and dance moves based on Christmas.

I really enjoyed this work-shop because it further re-enforced how easy it can be to teach dance. I found it very useful to give the children pieces of paper and let them draw pictures or words related to a theme and then let them come up with a dance move relate to this word or picture. I was amazed at how easy it can be to teach dance. After the dance inputs, I have completely changed my view on teaching dance. I now feel so much more confident in myself and I am now looking forward to teaching dance in future instead of dreading it. This was a fun and exciting work-shop for not only children but for adults too as it taught us some great tactics and values to use when teaching dance. I have also learned that dance doesn’t have to be the stereo-typical ballet and hip hop, we can use dance to learn about many different topics such as different cultures, weather, holidays and almost anything else. I look forward to the future in teaching dance.

There was links of freedom, responsibility and teamwork within the two workshops as we had to plan and manage our own dance routine and micro-teaching activity as a team whilst listening to each others views and contributing to the group in both tasks.

References
Cone, T.P., 2009. Following their lead: Supporting children’s ideas for creating dances. Journal of Dance Education, 9(3), pp.81-89.

Smith-Autard, J. (2002) The Art of Dance Education. London: A & C Black

Today, the focus was around visual arts and music. There was no morning lecture today but there were two workshops.

Workshop 1- Music
In the workshop today, we were focussing on using instruments whilst learning about using symbols as music notes to create and follow and rhythm/pulse. We were using a resource that focussed on simplifying music beats/note values in the form of shapes such as squares and circles. We were also using different small phrases to keep in rhythm. For example- ta ta ta or ta ta, which conveys three beats or two beats. We used drumsticks to carry this out. Aside from this, the learning was also focused around using notes and harmony as well as learning about the lines and spaces in music. Whilst learning about this, we had the opportunity to try this out for ourselves in small groups by playing the glockenspiel.
I found this workshop very interesting and useful because I had never seen or used this method of learning/teaching music before. I liked the use of shapes to show the value of a beat because it was simple and easy to follow. It was interesting to see how music could be simplified in ways that I never even considered before. I did find the very fast pieces very difficult to keep up with, however, in a primary setting, much more time would be dedicated to the learning of the music.
I really like the idea of using symbols to teach music before advancing to proper symbols because it gives children the same chance to learn because they are all reading the same music so therefore, learning together at the same stage. This type of learning promotes inclusion within education at early level and perhaps into second level which is a positive factor.

 

Workshop 2- Visual Arts

Today, we were discussing art within the primary sector and our own experiences whilst in schools of the arts. Personally, during my placement, I haven’t seen much of the arts or the integration of them within each other or in other areas of the curriculum. I have seen some art work displayed on the walls of the classroom but that is all. I find this quite sad when there is so much opportunity to teach the arts in schools. However, in my classroom on placement, the children all have a reflective journal in which they can either write or draw whatever they want in any way they want. This journal is totally personalized to their creative wants, needs and desires and they are not guided in any way what to write or draw. This promotes creativity in the visual arts within education because there is no external influence over the children and they are free to draw or write whatever they want. I like it also because there is no expectation of perfection or standard from the teacher towards the children or expectation of sharing their ideas and artwork which gives children more reign, confidence and creativity of their own work and within the arts in general. Hence, reiterating that “It is essential that educators develop a creative practice which enables creativity through the encouragement of children’s ideas and possibilities, focusing on not inhibiting the individuals process”(Jeffrey and Craft, 2003, Craft and Jeffrey, 2004, cited in, Craft, 2007).

Here is some examples of the art work on display in the school I am placed in.

Within the lecture, I liked hearing about my colleague’s experiences of art within the classroom. It was useful to hear activities that they had experienced which I could implement in my own practice, but it was also rather harrowing to find that a lot of them hadn’t experienced any art at all whilst on placement.

References

• Craft, A. (2007) Creativity and possibility in the Early Years .[Online]. Available: www.tactyc.org.uk/pdfs/reflection-craft.pdf

We focused on drama and music this week. The inputs were a little different than what we are normally experience but they were brilliant to experience and will help my teaching practice significantly in the near future.

Drama

This week in the drama input, we had the chance to teach our class a drama lesson through microteaching. Our group chose to focus our story on ‘The Gruffalo’ by Julia Donaldson. We chose this story because we thought that it would be easy for the class to understand and engage with. As well as this, it is a well-known children’s story book and so we felt that it would be easy to implement this into real practice in the future.
We decided to use various drama conventions. This included; narration, role on the wall, teacher in role, voxpop, thought tunnel and flashforward. However, the class could use other conventions such as mime and freeze-frame when performing if they wished. Kelsey and I had the task of directing and teaching the thought tunnel to the class. We asked two groups to make the tunnel and Kelsey and I played the role of the mouse and Gruffalo. The class then told us how they felt about the characters as we walked through the tunnels.
I felt rather anxious before the lesson because I don’t really like drama or performing in front of other people. Bloomfield and Childs (2002) say that drama is communicated and portrayed through actions, movement and talking in front of an audience to gain a reaction. In order to do this, it takes great confidence, which is something I struggle with. So, for me, this is something I felt quite nervous about. I was nervous because I felt that if I was embarrassed or nervous then I wouldn’t be able to deliver this part of the lesson as well as I wanted to.
Despite this feeling, I feel that the lesson went really well. I think that I did better that I thought I would with my part of the lesson because I felt that the class engaged well and I managed my nerves well. I feel that the class responded well to the lesson and engaged well with the story. The class participated very well even when we didn’t think things were going as best as they could have.

 

Things that we could improve on

• In reflection, I think that a few things could have been improved about the lesson. I think that the timing could have been a lot better. our lesson took 35 minutes when the guideline was only 20 minutes. I think we tried to cram everything into the lesson and underestimated the amount of time that it took to carry out each convention.

• I also think that we could have improved on our standing position. We mostly remained in the same spot of the room for the whole drama. I think that this was because of nerves and could be improved through practising teaching drama on a regular basis.

• A comment that was made was that the story could be hard to engage with on a personal level if you had never heard it before. We should take this into consideration and sometimes pick a story that children do know before- hand. We could also introduce the story before working on a drama in a primary school, such as, simply reading the story one day so that the children have had a chance to hear the story.

 

 

 

Things that went well

• We incorporated a wide range of conventions in the drama which gave us and the class more experience of using them.
• We gave the class thinking time when carrying out the conventions.

• We read the story loud and clear for the class to hear and interpret.

• We gave all the groups a chance to perform and participate.

 

Overall, I think that we did do a good job of the drama lesson. There are some things that could have been improved but this will get better with more practice. I actually really enjoyed teaching the drama which I never thought I would because I was quite nervous before it. I think that this activity has helped me combat my nerves a lot because I was pushed out of my comfort zone which is really good for me even though it might not feel like it at the time. I also think that the group worked really well together as we all contributed ideas and helped each other along the way during the lesson. We all took a part of the lesson to deliver so everyone had some responsibility and not just one or two people which I really liked. This is something I would like to do again because I feel that this sort of thing will help my confidence in teaching and performing drama.

If I was teaching a lesson like this with my own class in the future I would hope to achieve outcomes such as:

I have developed confidence and skills in creating and presenting drama which explores real and imaginary situations, using improvisation and script. EXA 1-14a ( Scottish Government, n.d, p8).

I enjoy creating, choosing and accepting roles, using movement, expression and voice. EXA 1-12a  (Scottish Government, n.d, p7).

 

 

Music

This week in the music input, we were very lucky to have some primary school children come in and teach us how to play some stringed instruments. The children were part of a school project which allows them to be taught how to play string instruments from P4-P7. I also found it amazing how the children were so engaged and played so well from only having one lesson a week as an orchestra and never have one to one lessons. They also have the chance to perform in concerts, competitions and conferences. They recently had the chance to perform in front of Prince Charles, who is the sponsor/funder of the project. The children started by teaching us some warm up games which helped with finger position and strength. I thought that these exercises were really useful because they are not only useful for improving fine motor control, they are fun too. The children loved carrying out these exercises and also loved teaching them to us.

I was paired with a primary 5 pupil who taught me how to play the cello. He first showed me the strings and told me what notes they were. He taught me a rhyme to remember the names of the notes. This was ‘Aunt Daisy Goes Crazy’ or, notes (ADGC). He also showed me how to hold the cello and where to put my fingers when playing the strings.
We then had the opportunity to play a small tune on the instruments. This was the first time I had ever played a cello before, so I found it quite difficult, but my partner was so confident in showing me where I was going wring and how to fix it. I found it so humbling and amazing at how well the children were able to teach us how to play these instruments with such confidence and ease. It was lovely to see how much the children loved playing the instruments and how keen and engaged they were in teaching us how to also .I loved this input and has made me realise even further of why I want to do this job. Today was very inspiring and showed why teaching is such an amazing profession. It was interesting and brilliant to see that through music, these children have confidence and charisma about music which I have never seen before. This was lovely to see.

Throughout both inputs, I found that there were links to confidence and willingness. Firstly, there was the promotion of confidence in the drama workshop and the music workshop as we had to be confident in standing in front of our peers performing and we had to be confident in trying out a new instrument. Secondly, we had to be willing to participate in the workshops or the activities simply wouldn’t have worked to their full potential.

 

References

Bloomfield, A and Childs J. (2002). Teaching Integrated Arts in the Primary School: Dance, Drama, Music, and the Visual Arts. London: David Fulton Publishers

Scottish Government .(n.d) Curriculum for Excellence. [Online] Available: https://www.education.gov.scot/Documents/all-experiences-and-outcomes.pdf (Accessed 21st December 2017)

The two topics we were focussing on this week were drama and music. I started off in the drama workshop this week.

Workshop 1- Drama

In this week’s drama input we were focussing on some new drama conventions again. These were then implemented in a Halloween theme. We were given the setting of a haunted house where an incident had occurred. We were not told what the incident was which left us room to implement the new learning of the conventions. This was interesting to see as each group had similar ideas but completely different at the same time despite being told the same information about the haunted house.

We also revisited previous drama conventions that we had learned. This included, ‘teacher in role’ and mime. We discussed ‘teacher in role again’. We discussed how this is a very useful technique to set the scene of the drama, but it is also the technique that a lot of teachers may feel uneasy about using because it gives the discussion of the drama room to go in almost any direction. Personally, I do feel a bit uneasy about using this convention, but I think that with practice I will become more confident using it.

We then moved on to looking at some new conventions. Here is the four that we learned.

Flashback– when the characters flashback to point before the drama or to a previous point in the drama.

Flashforward– when the characters move forward to a certain point in the drama or act out a scene which occurs after the drama.

Narration– when someone narrates the drama/ story and tells the audience what is happening.

Slow motion– when a scene or part of a scene is acted out slower that the rest o emphasise the drama.

After learning about these new conventions, we then had the opportunity to engage with them through acting out our own scenes relating to the theme. I enjoyed this part because I felt that by this part of the workshop I felt more comfortable performing short scenes in form of the rest of the class. I actually quite enjoyed it.

The use of the different drama conventions allows a creative opportunity for children as well as the chance to develop social skills through producing a piece of drama as a team. This is due to the activity being mainly child led with a lo of freedom to come up with their own ideas to integrate into the drama.

We also looked at the work of Augustus Boal, who came up with the convention of ‘Forum Theatre’. This is a controversial convention because of the usage of it. The convention is used to allow the audience to suggest ways in which the drama could be changed or improved. Personally, I think that this convention worked well in the class lesson, but I can see how this convention is controversial. It could be hard to implement in the class because of the time factor and more importantly, children may feel that their work is not good enough and knock their because people are wanting to change things about it. Csikszentmihalyi (2013), says that it is important to have certain building blocks in the creative arts which includes; no worry about failing and ensuring that self-consciousness diminishes. Due to this, I probably wouldn’t use this convention, unless I thought it was suitable to the class in particular.  I want to ensure that every child in my class feels confident and proud of their work. I also want to promote individual creativity which makes the child keep wanting to participate in drama.

Linking back to the Thomas Tallis Pedagogical wheel, (Thomas Tallis School, 2013), I feel that I have became more reflective in drama as I have been more keen to look at where I could have improved. As well as this, I have been more persistent and kept on trying to engage more with drama which I have been successful with. It is important that I keep persisting in drama as well as improving in the techniques I am using in order to give the learners in my care the best experience possible.

At the end of the lesson, we also talked about next week’s task. We have to plan a 20-minute micro teaching lesson on a children’s book of our choice and teach it to the class. I feel very nervous about this task as this is something I have never done before. However, I know that I will get through it and perform to the best of my ability. I hope that after next week, my confidence will increase even further.

Workshop 2- Music

In this workshop, we started by looking at the importance of the voice in general and for teachers. We learned that the voice is one of the most important aspects of the body and that we as individuals and more importantly, as teachers, need to ensure that we look after our voices as best we can. “The voice has become an increasingly important tool at work. A clear and carrying voice quality at a natural pitch is a pre-requisite for success in communication”

Fritzell (1996) cited by GTCS (2010).

Next, we looked at a resource devised for children and primary schools called ‘Choon Baboon’. The music resource teaches children different songs which can relate to specific topics such as Pirates and The Titanic. This is very useful resource as it fits in well with the expectations and outcomes of Curriculum for Excellence. For example: I can sing and play music from other styles and cultures, showing growing confidence and skill while learning about musical notation and performance directions. EXA 1-16a (Scottish Government,n.d,p9).

I thought that the resource was very easy to use for teachers as it is laid out very well and the video’s do all the teaching. This would be perfect for teachers who do not feel entirely comfortable teaching music or for teaching certain topics as there are songs that are specifically related to certain topics. The resource is also very engaging for children as it is easy to follow, has bright colours, has a simple layout with lots of help throughout and has a humorous tone to the materials. This resource could be used with any age of children but would be great to use with a young primary such as primary 1-3 due to the simplicity of the materials and the clear structure.  This is most definitely a resource I would use in the future with any age of class.

Finally, in the last part of the workshop, we looked at the use of graphic scores. This is when we simply draw a grid of boxes. One side (left vertical side) shows the instruments and the horizontal axis shows how many times the instrument will be heard. The group can decide how many beats these instruments will have in each box. We then had the opportunity to devise our own graphic score with any instruments we wanted. Our group chose to go with the theme of Christmas. I found this activity brilliant as it was easy to follow, and with clear explanation and support to pupils, this would be very easy and effective to implement to any age group or to certain topics such as Christmas, animals and many more. This gives children the opportunity to compose music and learn new concepts of music like notes and note values.

Here is our graphic score.

Here is some of the instruments we used.

 

Overall, this week I really enjoyed the two workshops and I now have more of an understanding and have learned some new strategies which I could use to teach these two curricular areas.

 

References

Tallis, T. (2013) Tallis Habits Pedagogy Wheel. [Online] Available: http://www.thomastallisschool.com/tallis-pedagogy-wheel-guide.html. [ Accessed 18th December 2017]

The General Teaching Council for Scotland. (2010). Voice and the Teaching Profession. [Online]. Available: http://www.gtcs.org.uk/web/FILES/FormUploads/voice-and-the-teaching-profession1652_214.pdf [Accessed: 18th December 2017].

Scottish Government. (n.d). curriculum for excellence: expressive arts experiences and outcomes. [Online]. Available: https://www.education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-eo.pdf (Accessed 18th December 2017)

 

 

This week we were revisiting the themes of dance and drama. My initial thoughts of dance were dread and hate. I have never been confident participating in dance in most of my years in school or just my life in general, so I thought that I would hate this workshop. In the first stage of the lesson, I did feel like this. We were warming up through dance which I felt very embarrassed about. We danced a warm up to a remix version of ‘Thriller’. However, I started to ease into the follow up activities of zombie tig, splat and the bean game. I think that this helped because it was fun games in general for everyone to play which took the embarrassment away. I think that this is a great way to warm up for this kind of activity, based on last week of learning the different muscles that we use in dance. It gave the opportunity for us to completely warm up without feeling like we were in a gym. This could also give the opportunity to teach children in a primary class further information about the body because we could ask them about what muscles we are using doing these warm up and so on.

I enjoyed this week because there was full class interaction which made the activities and tasks less daunting. The tasks were initially follow up tasks from the previous week which were related to the theme of Halloween. Because I was absent the previous week, I joined a group and quickly learned their dance as best as I could. I found this quite difficult at first because of the time pressure and because I felt a little bit embarrassed.

After this activity we then formed as a whole class and came up with 9 more moves which would form the class dance. These were Halloween related. For example, a skeleton move. I really liked this activity because it gave everyone an opportunity to contribute their thoughts and ideas to the class. This is something I would use in my class to give owner ship and creative opportunity to my class instead of me just teaching them a dance to copy.

To follow this, we were then taught a small part of the dance which was the introduction. Apart from this, we as a group came up with this dance ourselves minimal tutor influence. Cone (2009), believes think that this is very important in teaching creative dance because it challenges children to find their own solutions in moves, costumes, props and special awareness as well as promotes engaging in imagination. This, as a whole, allows children to have the opportunity to grow in confidence as creators and in performing. Through this, children will have the opportunity to feel proud of their own work and will feel a sense of achievement around creating their own dance to perform. Further to this, The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (2004), states that “Pupils who are encouraged to think creatively and independently become more interested in discovering things for themselves, more open to new ideas, keen to work with others to explore ideas, willing to work beyond lesson time when pursuing an idea or vision”. Resulting in their pace of learning, achievement levels and self-esteem increasing.

 

By having the class perform the dance altogether and then breaking off to perform their own section within this will help combat embarrassment and nerves because the spotlight isn’t solely on one person or group.

After this work shop, I feel a lot more comfortable teaching this sort of lesson. I don’t feel as embarrassed anymore because of the techniques used in the activities. This is important for me as a teacher because I want children to enjoy dance and want to participate because I feel that I lost out as a child because I hated it so much. This was due to being made to stand up in front of a whole class either on my own or in two’s or three’s. Because of this, this is a technique I would use to use whole class involvement instead of small groups.

To conclude, I think that this workshop helps promote the values of teamwork and creativity. In primary schools, through dance, it is clear that children are encouraged to become successful, confident, responsible and contribute which encompasses Curriculum for Excellences four capacities for children to achieve in education (Scottish Government, 2004). On a personal level I feel more confident and I look forward to teaching dance in the future instead of dreading it.

Workshop 2- Drama

This week in the drama work shop, we focused on more techniques/conventions used in drama. We looked at five new conventions.

Vox Pop– teacher acts as a new reporter and asks the children/learners questions.

Mime- acting out a scene in silence.

Role on the Wall– Drawing an outline of a character in the drama and writing what you/the group think of them on the outside and what they think of themselves on the inside.

Thought Tracking– when the children express their thoughts on a character.

Voice in the head– When a character in the drama pauses at a point at expresses how they feel about themselves or another character to show their perspective, so the audience can fully understand their feelings.

We acted out these conventions to a story called ‘The Tunnel’ by Anthony Browne

Here is an example of ‘Role on the Wall’ relating to the story.

I still found the workshop quite challenging because I still have a little bit of embarrassment being in front of the class performing. However, I feel that this is improving over the weeks with practice. I will keep practising through being in primary schools, in my own time and in university classes.

Over the weeks, we have been discussing things that can go wrong in a drama and things that may not go as planned. I think that this is what I will struggle with most in my teaching practice of this curricular area because I am a person who likes things to work in a clear structure and way. I think that the thing I will struggle most with is allowing children time to think of an answer without me trying to come up with what I want them to say almost immediately or prompting answers that I want them to say. I think that I will try and work on this by saying questions out loud and counting to ten to allow a sufficient amount of time for children to answer. I will also research more strategies that could help me.

There was a link of time management between the two workshops today. I have learned that it is very important to manage time effectively in order to enhance the learning experience. It is important to allow time for learners to think effectively to establish their thoughts and creativity (Eisner, 2004). This is something that I will always try to practise in future as it will help build confidence within learners.

Overall, I did enjoy this workshop and would like to try and implement these drama conventions into my own teaching practice in the near future as they give children a perfect opportunity to express themselves and provide a sense of escape for some children.

 

References

Eisner, E. (2004) What Can Education Learn from the Arts about the Practice of Education? International Journal of Education & the Arts. Vol.5(4) pp.1-13.

Cone, T.P. (2009). Following their lead: Supporting children’s ideas for creating dances. Journal of Dance Education, 9(3), pp.81-89.

Scottish Government (2004). A Curriculum for Excellence – The Curriculum Review Group. [Online] Available: http://www.gov.scot/Resource/Doc/26800/0023690.pdf (Accessed 18th December 2017)

Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. (2004). Creativity: find it, promote it. [Online]. Available: http://moodle.uws.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/109338/mod_resource/content/0/QCA%20Creativity.pdf (Accessed 18th December 2017)

This week the class were learning about dance and music. This is the first week the class have had a dance input. I was absent during these inputs, but my peers filled me in on what happened in the sessions.

Workshop 1- Dance

In the first input of dance, we were making up a dance. We learned that firstly, to carry out dance, especially with children, we must first warm up. A warm up game/ strategy that we tried out was highland tig. The class then had to label the outline of a body that had been drawn around. With this simple strategy, we were then able to label different parts of the body and muscles which is crucial for children to know about in order to stay safe during a lesson or activity which includes dance or physical activity.

According to Cone (2009), “One of the most powerful experiences dance educators can offer children is the opportunity to create a dance that reflects their ideas”. It is also important for us as teachers to let children be creative in their own ways and devise their own dances.  In order for them to do this, we must take a step back and allow them to create ideas for themselves which will allow them to build their own confidence and solutions to problems that may occur (Cone, 2009).

It is important for children to have independence through dance but it is also extremely important that children are safe, having fun and that their is meaning in all aspects of dance. It is the role of the educator to ensure that this is in place for the full lesson.

 

We then learned about the 10 key stages of dance that teachers should teach to children. These are as follows; twist, balance, turn, kick, jump, hop, gesture, slide, roll and reach. Before this input and information, I would never have been able to incorporate this into a lesson or make up a dance on my own. Whereas now, with this simple piece of information, I would feel comfortable, after a few more practices, to make up my own lesson to teach to a primary class.

This was then implemented into our own learning by making up our own dance in groups. These 10 key steps had to feature in our dance, but we could vary them however we wanted. This activity was then further elaborated by adding in another 6 concepts of dance moves. These were; jack hammer, wing, grand jets, shorty George, sponfebob and pressure turm. One of these moves was then incorporated into the dance.

I think that this is a great activity/ lesson for children to do because it encourages creativity in both child and student. It is also easier for the teacher to implement, especially if the teacher is not confident teaching dance to children. It is important for children to lead learning but to be safe also.

If this is followed then children will be presented with a mass of opportunities in the arts through creativity. Through the process of creativity in dance, children will be able to generate ideas that have value to them as well as having the capability of using imagination and analysing and correcting their own mistakes (Education Scotland, 2013).

Overall, I look forward to participating in the next dance session.

 

Workshop 2- Music

This week in the music class we were looking at the importance of music in other areas of education. The class read and analysed a document called ‘International Journal of Music Education’. The class was then split into small groups and each group were given a section to complete a mind map presentation on. Because I was absent, I never had the chance to carry out this activity, however, my peers shared and allowed me to document their findings for the purpose of this blog post. This group were given the task of finding out about the importance of music in numeracy, they found that there were very few links between this. Here is a few of the fact and findings that were presented. Where there is few links between music and numeracy, some links have been established.

 

 

Research into the impact of arts programmes found that children who participated in arts programmes performed better in mathematics than those who did not participate. Children who took part in the experiment for the longest had the highest scores out of the participants. Gardiner et al. (1996) in Hallam (2010).
Haley (2001) also found that those who had played an instrument before the 4th grade had higher results in mathematics than other children.
Overall, the evidence suggests that being actively engaged with music can improve performance in mathematics.

(permission from author to use in post)

The group then presented the findings to the class and then moved onto a lesson planning activity. Due to the lack of findings on the topic of numeracy, the group decided to turn their attention to the importance of music in literacy instead for the lesson planning activity. The group came up with the idea of using three short excerpts in the class and allowing the children to choose their favourite which inspires them to write a creative story.

It seems that both workshops relate to the theme of integration and importance within other areas of the curriculum. The integration of the expressive arts to other subjects in education is extremely important due to the transferral of skills and attributes such as motivation and ambition, confidence in validation of their own opinions, application of creative processes in other situations and teamwork (Education Scotland, 2013).

Although I was absent, I think that this input is particularly useful, mainly for us as student teachers because it allowed us to develop our skills in lesson planning and critical analysis which can only benefit our teaching practice.

 

References

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 17th December 2017]

Education Scotland (2013) Creativity Across Learning 3-18. [Online] Available: https://www.education.gov.scot/improvement/Documents/cre39-impact-report.pdf [Accessed 17th Decemebr 2017]

Hallam, S (2010) The power of music: It’s impact on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people, International Journal of Music Education [Online] pp.269-289. Available: http://ijm.sage.pub.com/content/28/3/269 [Accessed: 17 October 2017]