Tonight, Wednesday 23rd March, was the first time since starting university that I have truly felt inspired by children.
I have just spent my evening at the Caird Hall seeing Dundee Schools Orchestra and Bands Spring Concert. Thirty minutes after leaving, I’m still full of adrenaline and I am smiling from cheek to cheek.
Music is the heart and soul of my family. My dad is a trained music teacher. My mum and dad own and run three musical theatre companies, which I have gained a lot of my teaching experience from. I play both the piano and cello at grade 8, and spent several of my lunch times at school at orchestras and choir practice.
As a training teacher and someone with a love of music, it was so enjoyable to see so many children taking part in music tuition in a range of instruments to SUCH a high quality!
Primary 7 pupils from across Dundee took part in the Aspire Dundee Samba performance and it was absolutely FANTASTIC, transporting the audience to Africa! They were all so enthusiastic throughout the whole piece, executing choreography and difficult rhythm and timing, as well as displaying amazing cooperation and team work.
After reading so many books and articles about the importance of music, it was amazing to see the impact it truly has on young people. Hundreds of pupils stood on that stage tonight, with even more people packed into the audience, all beaming with pride.
Music really does play such an important part in a child’s life and the work that Dundee City Council have done to encourage and inspire youngsters into music is absolutely fantastic. And best of all, it is free! The Aspire programme that has been set up is groundbreaking, and I really hope that other local authorities across Scotland follow in their footsteaps.
If anybody is at a loose end tomorrow night then PLEASE go to the Caird Hall to support this fantastic talent.
Well done and thank you to the young people of Dundee, you made my week and showed everybody what music really is about!
Having spent a lot of my Sunday’s a child out exploring rock pools at Scurdie Ness Lighthouse, or trying to find Geo-Cache’s with my family, I’ve always enjoyed being outside. I don’t recall doing any Geography whatsoever when I was at primary school, apart from the water cycle maybe. We did topics on countries like Brazil and Canada, but I honestly don’t remember a single thing that we did so it can’t of been that prevalent. So when naive little me headed to secondary school and saw ‘Geography’ on my timetable, I just assumed I’d be learning about countries and that was it. Honestly. And what a shock I got.
One thing that has stuck with me for 6 years is when we studied Volcanoes. My teacher was great and tried to find fun and engaging ways to meet our learning. She showed us this song and the whole class erupted in laugher – pardon the pun – and I still find myself lying in bed at night with it stuck in my head. The geography department at my school was probably one of the best in the school. They all worked so so hard and knew their stuff.
So, I took Standard Grade Geography, and had a great class with the same teacher. We studied river erosion, and so we visited Edzell and did various experiments and tasks whilst we were there. That trip was both hilarious and miserable – it was absolutely pouring rain and the majority of us fell into the river. Ah well, good memories!
My friends and I on the bus coming home after getting soaked in the river!
Fifth year came and with it came Higher Geography, and a new teacher. There is literally no time to waste with this course and my teacher liked to talk for Britain – she literally had that much knowledge and passion about her subject that she could talk and talk and talk. Thursday mornings became a time of dread because we would sit for a double period listening to her talk about ‘Marvellous’ Marram Grass or how the glacier eroded the land into a U-shaped valley. I knew it was important but sometimes it got a bit boring and I felt myself daydreaming and losing concentration. But March came, and with it came a trip. But not just a day trip, it was a trip that we were away for three nights!
Our first stop was to the Lake District. We visited Ambleside and Grasmere, completing surveys on tourism in the town. The next day, we got up early and had a big walk through the countryside to visit a corrie, which was absolutely fantastic. I had learnt about this since 3rd year, so to finally see it for real was facinating! To say the views were breathtaking really is the truth.
My friends and I standing in front of a waterfall
A corrie with a lochan
Whilst all of this learning was going on, so did some socialising. The year below us also came on the trip and we made a lot of new friends and instead of just sitting in our rooms on our phones, we sat up playing old fashioned cards and twister and just had the best fun! The next day it was time to move on and travel further south to the Yorkshire Dales. I was SO excited for this because Malham Cove, a hotspot for tourism, is featured in one of the Harry Potter films and I’m a big fan.
Sunday began with a visit to Ingleborough Cave. It was amazing to see all of the stalactites and stalagmites. I didn’t appreciate how delicate they really were. The caves were so low though, and a lot of us kept bashing our heads against the roof – luckily we wore helmets!
Ingleborough Cave
Here comes the point of the trip where I thought I was going to collapse. We climbed Ingleborough Hill, and en route saw many geographical features. It really was the longest walk of my life and seemed to never end. Our teachers said ‘It’s just over that hill’….6 hours later we made it. I was proud of myself though, the views really were incredible and I felt like I was on top of the world.
On the final day, we visited Malham Cove on a glorious day. It made the trip and I remember feeling really sad as I got on the bus home. I honestly had the time of my life, and it was so good to actually see the features up close and in real life. I fully appreciated the amazing formations and sights I was learning about and it benefitted me so much when sitting in the exam and being able to picture standing on Malham Cove instead of just another picture in an old book.
Malham Cove
This reflection has made me realise just how important it is to get the children outside and actually see things in real life form. Until then, you do not appreciate the importance and value of it. It has to be interactive, engaging and capture them.
When Sharon told us what our task was to be last week for our first animation input, I felt a great sense of nostalgia and so many happy memories came flooding back. I felt it was important to share this and reflect, because looking back it was such a significant aspect of my time at primary school.
When I was in primary seven, my teacher introduced our class to Moving Image Education (MIE) and we explored various projects and animations. Some used music or audio to tell a story, and others did not. This captured us all, as there were so many aspects to it, varying across so many curricular areas, and so it met all of our needs.
One project that has stuck in my mind, and will always stay with me as being one of the best experiences I had in primary school, was when we made a music video. It was just after Alexandra Burke had won the X-Factor and everybody was obsessed with her single ‘Hallelujah’ – and I mean Bluetooth-ing the song to all of our phones and blaring it 24/7 obsessed. Red Nose Day was coming up and we decided as a class that we wanted to raise some money, and this was what we chose – to lip-sync her song. We couldn’t believe it…we were getting to make a MUSIC VIDEO?! The excitement to try this, something that nobody in the school had every done before, was unreal. But we were all sworn to secrecy. We wanted it to be a surprise. And a surprise it was…however I do think some people began to get suspicious as to why the song was played twenty times a day.
A make-shift green screen in the corner of the classroom, hidden away so nobody visiting would see. We were each given a role in the process, whether it be organising who was miming what, helping to edit, making posters etc. Taking our turn, we stood in front of the ‘green screen’ and tried our best to match the vocals. We transformed our classroom into a cinema, and got popcorn to give out and created various trailers to play before the music video began. Honestly, I think we all felt like celebrities that day. The creativity and confidence we all gained from this project was enormous, and it was so enjoyable that we were continually motivated to get involved. I’m sitting smiling at my laptop screen as I write this, because honestly it was the best thing ever.
Our teacher noticed how well we reacted to this project and so tried something new. Like Sharon’s input with us, we were introduced to plasticine animation and how it worked. We all split into mini groups, thinking up story lines, characters, scripts, resources and so much more and created our animations. Relationships were built throughout the project, and we all learned to cooperate in such a fun, active way. My best friends and I created an animation on a granny at the hairdresser, and it was the most ridiculous thing ever but it was funny. I’ll try and see if I can upload it to this blog post. (Apologies for the bad quality, I had to record it from my phone cause the real video’s memory was too big.
Don’t judge though, I know it’s weird. We were eleven and had a thing for making people laugh…
Upon reflection on my experience in primary seven, I have begun to realise how significant this year was for me. My teacher was so enthusiastic and tried so many new and exciting things with us, and I really think my motivation to become a teacher was inspired by him.
Although animation and all things technology are not my strongest point, and the animation we made in our workshop is a reflection of this, I am so, so keen to try new things. I know how important it is to throw yourself out of your comfort zone, and I want to embrace this as much as possible. What is the point in life in sitting on the fence and never experiencing the thrill/adrenaline/dread of a new experience. Yes, it sometimes can be so daunting, but the satisfaction received after it cannot be replaced by any other feeling. I’m no animation guru, but I know with a bit of commitment, confidence and the right frame of mind I will some day be able to deliver such a fun, enjoyable and engaging lesson/project as my teacher once did.
Let’s be honest, everybody has suffered from anxiety at one point or another in their lifetime, whether it be education linked or not. It is a constant battle that we have to put up with, and is scary and unpleasant enough as it is, and not knowing how to understand, deal or cope with it makes it one hundred times worse. However, I really admire Richard for using his first workshop with us to help us tackle our fear – teaching a science lesson.
When I first read Richard’s email telling us that we had to prepare a two-minute science experiment, I’m not going to lie, I panicked. So many questions ran through my head and it got a little overwhelming for the first thirty seconds but then I realised that every other student in my year was in the same position, and there was no point fretting cause we all felt the same.
Considering I took science for all six of my school years at secondary, I really shouldn’t have felt the way I felt. I was never out of the science department, yet it felt like a foreign language when I sat down to decide what I was going to do. I decided to reflect on these years in science and tried to remember any simple experiments that I once participated in and memories of my third year standard grade biology class were most prominent. I had a great biology teacher. She was young and new to the school, and was so interested and engaged in every single one of us in the class. She had a new burst of energy which we all needed, and made the most boring topics exciting. I got on really well with her and was sad to see her leave at the end of the year.
The experiment I chose to demonstrate was one I did in S3, and it involved milk, washing up liquid and food colouring. It was a representation of the digestive system and how bile (washing up liquid) breaks down fat (milk). It separates the fat globules into smaller chunks so it is easier for the enzyme lipase to break down.
It is a really basic experiment. About a centimetre of whole fat milk on a dish. A drop of food colouring in four different colours in the centre of the dish. Then a drop of washing up liquid to the centre.
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Basically, the soap reduces the surface tension of the milk by dissolving the fat molecules like i mentioned before. The surface of the milk OUTSIDE the soap that was placed in the centre has a HIGHER surface tension so it repels the soap
To be fair, mine was not as glamorous as I remember it should have been, but it filled me with the confidence I needed and I now know that with a little prep, you can do anything you put your mind to. So thank you, Richard, for taking away my fear of teaching a science lesson, and it was a great way to start off the new semester! It really isn’t all that bad after all!
Right from the word go this animation narrated by Sir Ken Robinson was engaging, taking me on the journey through education, diving deep into the errors we have created in the design of our current education system. It never struck me how old fashioned schooling is structured until now. But we must move on from this; how do we educate our children so that they have a sense of cultural identity while being part of the process of globalisation? One thing is for sure, by not living in the past. We cannot alienate children who do not see the purpose of school.
We are drilling the wrong ethos into what school is all about: Hard Work – Do Well – College – Job. That is not how it works anymore; there are so many different options to get you where you want to be but there is a lack of informing the young people about what is available.
Why are we educating children by age? Why do we assume that the most important thing we have in common is our age? Why don’t we base it on the children’s interests and abilities?
Another important idea that was raised and I found most interesting in the video was encouraging divergent thinking. I find it sad that our ability to think creatively decreases the older we get. Our education system that was created and based on the industrial revolution has programmed us to work, learn and do in a specific, manufactured way. This has eliminated our ability to think outside the box and quite frankly squashing our true potential. I have no imagination now, and I absolutely hate that. Where has that ability to invent scenarios and tell nonsense stories gone? Well, I think I have found my answer.
In conclusion, this animation indicates how important it is that our education system catches up with the increasing needs of children in the learning environment. It is having a negative impact on our children and we must get away from this manufactured way of learning and move on to more a dynamic, child-centred arrangement.
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