In today’s lecture we looked at concept visualisation of an academic article. This was interesting as it allowed us to annotate a text with pictures to help establish a better understanding of what the text is portraying. It means that by adding pictures to a text that it creates a visual of the understanding that you have of the text and helps you to remember important components of the text which may be useful. Using concept visualisation in the classroom would help children broaden their understanding of a text whist also using their creative side.
In the art workshop today we looked at children’s feelings towards art and how to encourage them to use their creative side. A lot of pupils may say that they cannot do art and don’t feel confident with art as a subject as they have never been good at it. A useful way to show pupils that they can do art is to start off with a dot and see what they can create from that by drawing and adding things onto the dot. We used black paint and spread it all over a board and then used our hands to put different shapes on the paper and see what the shape looked like and added to it to create a picture. I found this to be a useful method to encourage art and creativeness as art is not my strong point but I was able to create pictures from the dots I had made from the paint on my hands. I found writing a blog on my experience was helpful as I was able to reflect upon my experience in today’s art workshop. “Professional reflection is central to the development of new awareness, knowledge and value shifts which lead to more effective practice in arts teaching.” (Burnard and Hennessy, 2006, P3). This means that I can continue to reflect throughout my teaching experience and it will help me to evaluate and improve my teaching within the arts.
In today’s drama workshop we looked at windows in the west which is a painting by Avril Paton. Using various drama conventions we were in a tennament and had to create various scenarios of things that could happen in a tennament day to day. This is a good way to encourage children to use their imagination to create something of their choice. We used thought tracking and this incorporated freeze frame with some narration on how a certain character was feeling. We also used flashback and flashfoward which allowed us to build on the scenario that we had came up with. This is useful for pupils as it allows them to use their imagination to create and add to their drama scenarios hopefully allowing them to build some confidence in drama as this helped me to feel comfortable by adding to the one drama scenario that my group had came up with. An experience and outcome that I felt could link to this drama lesson was “I have the freedom to chose and explore how I can use my voice, movement, and expression in role play and drama.” EXA 0-12a. (Scottish Government, n.d.).The pupils could then take the drama scenario that they started off with and add a different aspect to it like introducing a new character or a plot twist. This allows pupils to use their imagination and their creative side as they are given some freedom into creating their own aspect of the drama scenario.
The art workshop and the drama workshop linked to each other as in both we were given a starting point to help us make a start on the task to complete. Like the dot for art and looking at the painting in drama and discussing the tennaments. Giving pupils a starting point can be helpful as they may not all feel confident in the first place but giving them a starting point means that they are able to develop this. This then leads to the pupils feeling more comfortable around being creative and gives them confidence to participate in the lesson properly as they can see that they are able to create a piece of art or a drama scenario using their imagination.
References:
Scottish Government, n.d. Curriculum for excellence: expressive arts experiences and outcomes. Assessed online. Available at: https://education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-eo.pdf
Burnard, P and Hennessy, S, 2006. Reflective Practice in Arts Education, 3-12. Netherlands: Springer. P3.