In today’s workshop, we began by observing artwork of children aged 3-12 years old. We looked at the concept of creativity and why we as future teachers should strongly encourage the creative arts in the classroom.
After today’s session, I had a stronger understanding of the levels and type of work produced at each school stage. Looking at the range of artwork from different year groups I began to see the progression throughout the school years.
There are often negative views and misconceptions of the importance and value of art and design within the curriculum (Last, 2017). It is important as futures and teachers we value the arts as I learned that developing art skills in early childhood can have significant importance. Some of the benefits include stimulating the brain, increasing your memory, attention and concentration skills.
When young children create art, it is crucial as teachers we praise effort instead of product. I often find myself quite guilty of praising pupils artwork by saying ’good job’ or ‘very nice work’. However, this is too vague and generic. After today’s session, I also realised that constantly praising can actually be quite negative if done too much. Young people may become reliant on input from teachers and avoid forming their own artwork opinions, pupils may also start to create what they think you would like to see rather than being creative and using their own imagination.
I learned that the best way to give feedback to children is by praising and recognising their effort rather than always focusing on the final outcome. Such as ‘well done on creating a new colour by mixing yellow and green together,’ ‘the bright, harmonious colours help create strong visual impact’ or ‘gluing on those beads one by one takes a lot of time and effort, the final design will be so intricate’.
I also realised that we should not just assume we know the subject of the painting. We should ask students to explain their painting and allow them to tell their story. It is important we pay close attention to the details. With your pupil’s you should discuss the use of –
- Colour
- Tone
- Shading
- Shapes
- Lines
- Patterns
- Texture
For example, asking the pupil why they decided to give the teddy bear a range of different tones for the fur allows them to discuss their thinking process behind their artwork. We should start conversations with to allow them to elaborate on their art work, such as ‘I see you have used a purple, is that your favourite colour’ or ‘I noticed you have used pointillism in the centre of the flowers, what made you decide to do this?’. We should allow young people to enjoy the arts and to just have fun being creative. It is not always about the final outcome but the process behind it.
As a future teacher I think it is important we celebrate and display the pupils artwork. My placement tutor had art displays all around his classroom and the pupils all had great pride discussing their work with me. This shows that their work is appreciated and they are all successful.
In today’s drama workshop we used a scenario about a village being attacked by a dragon. We then looked at a variety of drama conventions. These included-
- Freeze frame
- Hot seating
- Teacher in role
- Thought tunnel
To begin with, I was nervous about the thought of hot seating, as you are put on the spot. However, this encouraged me to think and act creatively. In order to portray a character, you have to be imaginative and push yourself outside of your comfort zone. Hot seating would give young people the chance to discover, handle difficult topics and emotions and allow them to express their emotions in a supportive environment.
I think thought tunnel would be a great convention to use in class. It would mean that pupils would all have to respond to the same situation that’s taken place and be creative with how they respond to 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.
Using the various drama conventions allowed us to develop the story of the dragon. It was interesting to how groups took different creative spins to the story. This would be a great task to do in class as it would allow them to come up with a scenario and develop the story in stages by using these conventions. I learned that there is more to drama than the final product, it is about the process and all the stages it took to get there. Drama allows children to guide their own learning and allows them to make their own creative choices.
Given the benefits that the creative arts can offer, time should be allocated for young people and teachers to experiment create different styles of learning and teaching and focus on creative activities and achievements (Craft et al., 2001).
References
Last, J. (2017). A crisis in the creative arts in the UK?. 1st ed. [ebook] Norwich: Higher Education Policy Institute, pp.2,3. Available at: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/A-crisis-in-the-creative-arts-in-the-UK-EMBARGOED-UNTIL-7th-SEPTEMBER-2017.pdf [Accessed 13 Dec. 2019].
Craft, A., Jeffrey, B. and Leibling, M. (2001). Creativity in Education. 1st ed. [ebook] London: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd, pp.6,18,19,25. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=WMKvAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=creativity+in+education+anna+craft&ots=AosqDT9j7z&sig=LpqjQM9bdLm26dRRPV9MJHxJxgk#v=onepage&q=creativity%20in%20education%20anna%20craft&f=false [Accessed 8 Dec. 2019].
