Integrated Arts is where we as students learn how to interpret each performing art, that one day in the near future will deliver to our own class. For the forthcoming weeks we are focusing on drama and art.

During this week’s drama class, we started to look at the drama conventions. We were looking at the different drama conventions such as teacher in role and freeze frame. Through these drama conventions it allows us as student teachers to see just how creative the children can be throughout this class. They can take the drama in any direction and truly let it become their own. Booth states that “Drama is the act of crossing into world of story… Storying provides students with a natural human process for finding essential meanings in the experiences of themselves and others” (Booth,1995). This explains that children can help to create their own stories and use all their creativity to make a new world that could not exist without their imaginations. For us as teachers its extremely important that we allow them to have this creative freedom that children need and desire.

In our art class this week, we were also focusing on how important it is for our children in the classroom to have this creative freedom that we discovered they needed during our drama input. For us, this input allowed us to see just how a child’s creativity can be easily directed by the child’s surroundings. As we were looking through the artwork that had been produced by children through different stages in school and developmentally, it was easy to see just exactly when a child is most creative. From this I now have the understanding of when it is best to let the

 children have freedom with their art lessons whilst still giving them direction but allow them to be as free as possible with what they are creating.

Both our drama and art inputs this week, deeply explored the creativity of a child and how we as teachers and influencers can help them to be as creative as possible. From both of these inputs, I also realised just how important it is to allow each child to be creative and let them flourish as they are creating their own paths without having to be directed too much.

References

Booth,D. (1985) Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads: Reading and drama in education, Theory Into Practice. 24(3):193-198