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.

In today’s art workshop we were observing children’s artwork from all different stages throughout school. There was artwork from the early stages of school, the middles stages of school and the upper stages within a primary school. It was very interesting to see the development of the artwork as it changed throughout the various stages. The book teaching art and design talks about the stages of development in art and design and I was able to identify which stage it was from looking at the progression of the drawings. There are four stages of the development in art and design which are the scribbling stage, the pre-schematic stage, the schematic stage and the gang stage. My favourite stage to look at was the pre-schematic stage. This was my favourite as the pictures demonstrated how imaginative and creative the children were even if it wasn’t very clear what the image was the pupils were still able to tell a story about the picture which was written on the back of them. I found this to be a very positive experience as there was a variety of pupils’ artwork to observe from many different stages throughout the primary school. My favourite picture was of a painted teddy bear. The children had been asked to observe the teddy bear and paint it using texture. The way the child had used the paint meant that it had created a fuzzy texture just like a teddy bear which was interesting.

During the drama session today we looked at using various drama conventions. These included teacher in role, freeze frame, thought tunnel and hot seating. This was useful as it showed how to help children use their imagination. In the workshop we used a scenario about a dragon going into a village and destroying parts of it. By using the different drama conventions it was useful to develop a story about the dragon and also to help portray how we would feel in the situation which is exactly what the pupils would be doing in the classroom during a drama lesson as they would be able to put themselves in the shoes of the dragon. The pupils would find this to be a fun lesson as they would be able to use their imagination and be able to feel empathy for the dragon. By the time it came around to hot seating which was nearer the end of the session, we had time to observe the situation the same way the pupils would have, whilst using imagination and then considering an outcome on how to help the dragon. An experience and outcome that I felt would link to this drama lesson was “I use drama to explore real and imaginary situations, helping me to understand my world.” EXA 0-14a. (Scottish Government, n.d) This shows how the pupils can use their imagination to create a drama scene about the topic that they are focusing on.

This links with part of what I seen in the art workshop which is that when painting the picture, the pupils had to observe the teddy bear and decide how to create it’s texture, much like how in drama the we observed the situation with the dragon which is what the pupils would’ve done before deciding what to do with the dragon to help their village.

Reference:

McAuliffe, D (2007), Foundation and Primary Settings. In Teaching Art and Design 3-11. London: Continuum.

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

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