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This week’s lecture started with looking at ‘Justifying the Arts-Drama and Intercultural Education’ (Fleming, 2006) and we looked at the process of visual thinking. The task was to take a page of the journal each, pick out metaphors and then draw them on top of the page.I personally struggled with this task as the section I had was mostly academic and filled with quotes so I was unsure how to turn them into pictures.

In our drama workshop, we looked at four main concepts (Still image, Thought tracking and flash forward/back). We took inspiration from Avril Paton’s ‘Windows in the West’ and were to create scenes around things that could be happening in the tenement.  I found this really interesting as there was lots of different ideas showcased within the class and it also helped me to see a link between drama and literacy in the classroom. Drama could be used to enhance creative writing as it could allow children o explore things like alternative ending or beginnings through flash-forwards/ flashbacks.

However, our visual arts workshop was probably my favourite. We covered our hands in black ink and then used them to create different shapes on the page. We then went over them with black pens to see what images we could create. I found this really fun and inspiring because you start out with a simple dot or line and use your creativity to turn it into so much more. It also helped me get rid of the idea that I can’t draw because if you can write, you can draw!

References 

Fleming, M. (2006) Justifying the Arts- Drama and Intercultural Education. The Journal of Aesthetic Education. Vol.40(1), pp.54-64.

This week I started back university and stepped into Second year with an open mind, more than ready to learn all about our first module which was Integrated Arts.  We were given a brief introduction to the module and talked through assessment details but we were also given some vital advice on how to best deal with the module, such as developing a tolerance for ambiguity and messiness.

The two aspects that we focussed on this week was Drama and Visual arts. In drama, we looked at Improvisation and different ways of using it within the classroom, such as Thought tunnel. Some of the methods were teacher lead, such as Hot Seating or Teacher in Role, whilst others where more group lead, like Freeze Frame.

In Visual arts, we first looked at ‘Teaching Art and Design 3-11’, were we discovered that children’s development with art and design happen in stages but children work shouldn’t be exclusively held to these stages as they are influenced by different sources, such as culture and rate of development. We also looked at different children’s work that’s been collected over several decades and I noted that the younger children’s work was more creative and filled with colour and imagination whist the work of the older children was less expressive and looked like they were working to certain requirements rather than their own free choice.

I believe that Drama and the Visual arts are similar in the way that they allow children to express how they’re feeling without actually having to use words. They can use a variety of mediums to express emotions in so many different ways but it doesn’t
have to make sense to anyone but themselves.