This week during drama we watched other groups deliver their micro teaching. I found myself at an advantage point as my group is delivering next week. It meant that I was able to see how different groups went on about their lessons. Our group was still deciding on a topic to base our lesson on and so I thought watching other people’s lessons first would give some inspiration. One thing I noticed was that two groups had their lesson based on the children’s book “going on a bare hunt”.

At first when I found out they had the same topic I thought I would be delivered with the same lesson twice. However, it was interesting as the lesson were very much different and apart from the fact they were based on the same book, nothing about the two lessons was similar. Both groups took a very different approach which made both lesson interesting different. The micro-teaching was a very helpful task assigned by Andrew as it allowed me to experience what it feels like to plan a lesson. Listening to groups reactions to presenting reassured me that not everyone in this course feels comfortable presenting and delivering lessons. A lot of the groups commented that standing at the front of the class was a daunting experience.

During our Visual Arts input Diarmuid presented us with our paintings from last week and explained that we were to develop them further by adding in literacy. Pupils should also be able to create and present work that demonstrates the ability to develop the visual elements and concepts (EXA 2-03a). We had to think back to a time we experienced Scottish Highlands or think about a movie or song that made us think of the highlands. We were then to incorporate short phrases into our paintings using coloured pencils. This was an attempt of integrating literacy into arts, by combining words and images. I decided to write down words that came to my mind when looking at the picture such as ‘peaceful’ and tranquil’.

I also thought it was really interesting to see everyones different approaches. Some people had decided to write down song lyrics, some had decided to turn the words into creative pieces by turning the words into pictures and some outlined their artwork with the writing. I think this would be an interesting task to do in the classroom as it allows the pupils to showcase their individuality.

In a classroom it is important to be able to integrate the arts into other subjects such as literacy. This shows the importance of the arts as skills can be transferred from one subject to another, allowing a cross-curricular approach.

References 

Curriculum for Excellence: Expressive arts Experiences and outcomes. (n.d.). [ebook] Scotland: Education Scotland, pp.1,5. Available at: https://education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-eo.pdf [Accessed 11 Dec. 2019].