CREATIVITY

WEEK 8 – Tuesday 29th October

Our lecture began with an emphasis on creativity within learning. We discussed Csikszentmihalyi (1996), who is a figure of creativity in schools. A famous quote from his book is “Constant busyness is not a good prescription for creativity”, this relates to the idea that boredom often leads to creativity. Children always being kept busy with tasks that the teacher has came up with, doesnt allow any time for them to be creative and fill their time in their own way. When children or adults are bored, we find something to do that will entertain us that is suited to the things we enjoy as an individual. Therefore, as teachers, it is important for us to create a tolerance for mess.

Moving on to the art workshop, we had a focus on Taylors model of assessment. We were all given images with a description on the back and were required to answer questions from Taylors model of assessment using our image. The first image we looked at was:

Process – Colourful, plastic lizards, plants and plastic toys.

Form – Set up against a rich black background to make the colours stand out.

Content – Resembled the queens head as it appers on postage stamps, suggests Britain is no longer made up of the people born here.

Mood – Like a mask covering up whats going on in the inside, pretending to be okay.

Another image that we looked at, and chose to create our video on was:

Process – Flags of the world, made by using black, grey and white materials. The artist must have knowledge and awareness of all the flags of the world.

Form – All flags are in a straight line and blowing in the one direction, this shows that there are similarities between all the countries in the world. Not one country is superior to the other.

Content – The artist has left out all the colours of the original flags to show similarities of countries rather than the differences.

Mood – It shows that if we take the time to get to know others, we would discover that we all have feelings and experiences in common.

After lunch we had our music workshop, this consisted of learning how to navigate the Charanga website. We looked at primary five, Mama Mia and how Charanga walks through it. The website offers lesson plans and step by step lessons and questions to work through with pupils. Theres a section for each year group with different songs for each, so theres a wide variety. I really liked the idea of this website, I’m personally not very musical, therefore, I think this recourse will come in handy as a base for teaching music.

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996) Creativity – Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, New York: Harper Collins

NORWEGIAN STUDENTS

WEEK 7 – Tuesday 22nd October 2019

This week in integrated arts we were lucky enough to be joined by four Norwegian students. We started the morning lecture off by hearing all about their life In Norway and how their education course at university differs from ours in Scotland. Some of the information we heard that surprised me was that all teachers must leave university with a masters degree. We were also told a bit about the Norwegian school system, for example, children start primary school at six years old, until they are 16. They then move onto secondary school for 3 years, then are allowed to attend higher education for 8 years. There is a strong focus on physical education being incorporated into all learning areas, numeracy and literacy etc.

Our focus in the art workshop was traditional Norwegian outdoor art. We were required to make an art piece, using what we could find from nature. First of all, we used our phones to do some research on outdoor art and take some inspiration from artists. One I looked at and liked his work was Andy Goldsworthy, he creates art using nature such as leaves, puddles and rocks. As a group, we went a walk along the side of the River Ayr, we all had a Norwegian student in our groups which helped us have a different perspective. Our first idea was to create a ‘snow’ angel on the ground but using the autumn leaves instead of snow.

However, we soon realised this wasn’t very creative and continued our walk to find something more exciting. We came across a tree with red berries falling of it and decided we would create the Norwegian flag.

 

I really enjoyed having the opportunity to work with the Norwegian students. It was interesting to hear the differences in our university daily life compared to theirs. Also hearing about how different their primary education system is to ours. Looking at the UWS graduate attributes, I think this experience helped me become more imaginative. Being given nothing but the outdoors to make a piece of art could be quite challenging, therefore, it requires an imaginative mind.

Moving on to the music workshop, we were looking at using the Garage Band app to create a piece of music. We worked individually to explore the different features of the app, which I personally think was quite challenging. I had no prior experience with the Garage Band app and never realised all the different features it has. So, I personally found it challenging and realised once the hour and a half was over, that I hadn’t produced anything of great length.

PRINT MAKING

WEEK 6 – Tuesday 15thOctober 2019

This weeks art workshop was on print making and the link between literacy and art. We looked at some of Bob and Roberta Smith’s work to give us some inspiration. A couple fo their pieces I liked said “We have only got eachother” and “Art makes children powerful.” However, we were to come up with one of our own quotes. The one I liked was “Things don’t have to change the world to be important.” We were required to draw out our quote in big letters so that they could be seen. At this point I realised that my quote was too long for what we were going to do, so I changed it to “Be Fearless.” Our next step was to engrave our quote into a tile, we then had to rub ink into it and print it onto a piece of paper.

Personally, I enjoyed this task and I thought it would be a good way for children in the classroom to express their views. We could make prints with strong persuasive words, to go along with whatever topic we were studying.

 

Moving on to our music workshop, we were looking at rhythm patterns. The difference between the beat and the pulse of a song. The beat can change throughout the song, however, the pulse remains consistent “the pulse is a steady beat.” We were all given drum sticks and had to read pieces of music in order to play the beat. We learned about minums and that they are worth two beats, crotchets are worth one beat and quavers are half a beat. However, quavers often hold hands to become two quick half beats together.

Although, I don’t have much musical background I really enjoyed this workshop. I think it made music fun and something everyone can be involved in no matter if you know how to read music or not. I look forward to giving my class drumsticks and seeing how we get on!

MICROTEACHING

WEEK 5 – Tuesday 8thOctober 2019

This weeks lecture began with our introduction to music. Prior to this input, I had no idea of the effects of music and how important it is within the classroom. For example, music helps improve social awareness, promote wider health and wellbeing and enhances social skills. These are all vital skills young people should have, that they can develop simply through music.

Later on, during the music workshop, we looked a lot at musical appreciation. Listening to different pieces of music, has different effects on each individual, due to our individual musical appreciation. We can use music to inspire us to think creatively through literacy and art, for example, we could listen to a piece of music and allow it to inspire the pupils to write a creative piece of writing, or a story board (which we done in the workshop.)

During this weeks drama workshop, my group were to carry out our microteaching. We decided to choose a children’s book and develop drama ideas from the story, the book we chose was “Going on a Bear Hunt.” We decided to look at the drama conventions: Freeze Frame, Teacher in Role and Thought Tunnel. Once we had identified the conventions we had to split the lesson up so we all had something to plan and carry out. My area was the warm up, which I found slightly nerve-racking as it meant that I was the first in the group to talk. For the warm up, I decided to make it as if the pupils were going on their own bear hunt around the classroom. I found this very effective, as I meant it related back to the book but also made the pupils feel at ease and ready to start looking at the conventions.

I feel like our microteaching went okay, everything that we planned we were able to carry out. Personally, I feel like I need to work on my tone of voice and pitch, but I think that comes down to my lack of confidence.

ART AND LITERACY LINK

WEEK 4 – Tuesday 1stOctober 2019

In our drama workshops for the next couple of weeks we are completing and observing microteaching. In our groups, we have to plan a drama lesson then carry it out to the rest of the class. This week my group were only observing the micro teaching so I was looking forward to it. I think it was beneficial to watch the other groups teach as it allowed us to see each other’s ideas and teaching methods.

Thinking forward to our microteaching next week, my group got together and started to plan. I think our planning process went very well as we were able to split off to get jobs done. Someone completed the powerpoint, while another sourced a copy of the book we are going to base our teaching on. Now that we have a plan, I feel slightly more relaxed about next week, however, I am nervous that it wont go as planned.

In our art workshop, we looked back at the paintings we done last week. We were asked to use chalk pastels to emphasise our paintings and add anything we’d like to add.

Our next step was then to realte the piece of art we had completed back to creative writing. To do this, we were required to think of a time we had experienced the scottish highlands. However, if we’ve never had an experience we were to find a scottish poem that we liked. We were then given pencils and asked to write the poem/experience over our painting. At first, everyone in the class had the same kind of feeling, we all felt like we were going to ruin the painting we had worked on over the two weeks. However, after completing it, I understood the logic behind it and realised that it was actually a very good way to bring literacy and art together.