Today’s lecture was about observing creativity. I found this very useful as it was very informative and talked about skills that creative teachers have and exploring the school context looking at initiatives that encourage a more creative approach to education. In the context of teaching we looked at defining creativity, understanding the environment for creativity, observing creativity, creativity in practice, creative teaching, teaching for creative learning and sustainable creativity. “In developing creative practice, we are nurturing imaginative approaches to how we work with children”. (Craft, n.d. P3). This means that as I teacher I can be creative with my lessons in order to enhance the pupils’ in my classrooms learning.
In today’s music workshop we looked at Charanga. Charanga is an online music resource. There are lots of options to chose from to alter the way I can use each section of the website. There is scheme which contains a lesson structure and freestyle which gives you more freedom to the way that you structure your lesson. I found this resource to be useful as music is not my strong point so I would be able to successfully teach my class about a music lesson using this resource. There is also a video on the website to show you how it all works which is helpful. For each song that you pick there are six steps which means learning a song could last over six lessons and the pupils could even perform the song that they learned at assembly for example. I found this workshop to be a positive experience as it showed me ways that I can easily teach music in the classroom and as I do not have a musical background it made me feel more confident about being able to teach my class music and also linking it to various different aspects of the curriculum. An experience and outcome that could link to this workshop is “I enjoy singing and playing along to music of different styles and cultures.” EXA 0-16a. (Scottish Government, n.d).This links into today’s workshop as charanaga allows you to access music and songs which could relate to various aspects of the curriculum.
In today’s art workshop we were given an image. The image I was given looked like a drawing of planet earth with a few extra shapes drawn on it. The aim of this workshop was to look at the image and speak to it. These were referred to emotional learning cards, teaching the arts is emotionally infused learning. There were three questions that we looked at to be able to talk about the image with. What is the subject matter, what is it about?, Is there a main overall shape or is it composed with interrelating sequences of shape?, Does the mood affect you, the viewer in anyway?. The video attached gives the answers to the three questions that are mentioned above. This type of lesson puts people on the spot and out of their comfort zone. This would be a good way for pupils to work together and discuss different pieces of art. They could also create a piece of writing surrounding what their picture had been talking about which means that it can link in to other areas of the curriculum as well.
Both of today’s workshops liked together as both areas of the expressive arts used technology to enhance the learning. Music used an online website to help us and art used a phone so that we could video the discussion surrounding the piece of art work. This allows pupils to be more creative as technology can help to enhance their learning experience.
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
Craft, A. n.d. Creativity and Possibility in the Early Years.P3
