WEEK 3 – Tuesday 24th September 2019

The lecture began by watching a video about “Room 13”, this was the first I had ever heard about it so I was very intrigued. Room13 began as an abandoned room in a primary school, and to this day it is still a concept and a room in many schools. It is a place for children to “manage their own learning and have creative autonomy in determining the subject, media and direction of their work” (Adams et al, 2008, p.11)

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the area of art, one of the worst things you can do is tell the learners what you want them to paint/draw and how to paint/draw it. Art has to be a way for children to express themselves and come up with their own ideas or it is pointless and pupils will not get any benefit from it. For example, telling all pupils to draw a flower pot with flowers, and telling them what colours to use results in a class of 30 pupils all with the same outcome. Including no originality or creativity at all.

In our Art lecture today, we were required to use all different random resources to create a paintbrush, we were then given the 3 primary colours and white and were required to paint a landscape. Although it proved difficult to use a paintbrush that we had created ourselves, it brought a fun and personal element to a simple generic landscape painting. It got us all talking comparing brushes, to see which materials worked out better and it also brought on discussions about what colours can be made with the paints (as we weren’t able to wash our brushes obviously, all the colours were just mixing.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

In our drama lecturer, we looked at Global Citizenship and social justice. For each issue such as immigration and free speech we had to act out scene around it. I found this quite difficult as they are all very sensitive areas that required a lot of prior thinking and planning before we could come to a decision of something to act out. However, I enjoy the idea of drama in the classroom, “drama means different things for different people” (Kitson and Spiby, 1997.) I think this quote is important because drama is a great way for children to express their individuality, however, we do have to remember that all children will express themselves differently. Some children may be confident where as others may be shy and reserved.

References:

Adams, J (et al) (2008) Teaching Through Contemporary Art: Report on Innovative Practices in the Classroom, London: Tate Publishing

Kitson, N. and Spiby, I. (1997) Drama 7-11: Developing primary teaching skills. New York: Routledge.