Week 9 - Visual Arts

In this week’s art workshop we basically spent some time de-briefing with our fellow students on any art experiences that we might have had during our pracs. As I am doing part time, I didn’t actually go on prac so I was listening intently and very much attempting to live vicariously through others’ experiences. The overall message that seemed to be recurring in many peoples prac experience was that art was very much an afterthought with one teacher letting the kids do whatever they wanted on a Friday afternoon if they had been good, rather than executing an actual art lesson.

We were also asked to bring a one page summary of an art lesson, art resource, or anything that the class might find helpful in relation to art.

My resource was a website, www.kinderart.com.

www.kinderart.com is a fantastic award-winning art education website for parents, teachers and children of all ages which provides free art lesson plans for toddlers to teenagers.

Created in 1997 by Jantje Blokhuis-Mulder and her daughter Andrea Mulder-Slater, the goal of KinderArt is to make art lessons and educational information accessible to people around the world.

In addition to the thousands of free art lesson plans, the website offers printable activity pages, the art kitchen, educational links and articles, early childhood education resources and much more.

What I like about the design of this website is that there are a variety of ways to navigate the site; depending on the type of lesson plan you are seeking to access.

One way you can access art lesson plans is by medium/discipline/theme. These include drawing, sculpture, painting, printmaking, art from anything, multicultural art amongst many other categories.

Another way to access the art lessons is by age and grade. It is particularly helpful that they listed both the grade and what age that grade correlates to as there can be a difference between grades and age in different countries.

One of the most thoughtful and useful categories in the lesson plans by age and grade is a special needs section.

The special needs section contains a great number of art lessons which are appropriate for children and adults with special needs and additionally contains links to other websites and books which deal specifically with providing art experiences for people with special needs.

There are also other categories to explore such as colour mixing, 15 minute fillers and cross curricular art amongst others.

Teachers are encouraged to submit their own lesson plans for addition to the site and there is also a search function, newsletter and shop where you can purchase pre-prepared art packs as well as aprons and other art related paraphernalia.

Overall I feel that this site is a wonderful resource that I will definitely look to use in my future career as a teacher and I hope that everyone else finds it as useful as I have.

Week 9 - Drama

In this week’s lecture and tutorial we were asked to consider the question: what is storytelling?

These were some of the important characteristics that we decided go into making a story.

·       Generally contains a beginning, middle and end.

·       There is a protagonist

·       Generally a linear narrative that has an orientation, series of complications and unexpected moments and tension which builds and is resolved

·       The protagonist is usually much better off at the end or has changed. They have gone through an experience.

We also learnt that rather than reading a story, we need to learn to tell a story.

The focus of storytelling needs to be on the listener. We need to understand the listener by giving them the opportunity to engage their own imagination in the telling of the story. The storyteller should be free to use his or her own words to a certain extent - personal authenticity is enhanced in oral storytelling because it allows for the natural language, grammar, syntax and physicality of the storyteller.

In the workshop we began by doing a warm up exercise where we partnered up and assumed the ‘mantle of the expert’. This involved choosing an object in the room (I chose a door) and improvising an explanation of how you invented that object. This was a fun way to get into the re-telling of the Selkie myth.

We were told a story in the lecture, which is an old celtic story about a Selkie - a half seal woman who was captured by a fisherman who married and had children with her. The Selkie eventually returned to the sea after re-discovering her sealskin that her husband had locked away from her.

  

We were asked to re-tell the Selkie story to our partner but improvise an alternate ending. As the listener we were able to interrupt the teller by saying ‘Detail’ or ‘Advance’ which would either require the teller to improvise more detail about a certain section of the story or to advance to the next part of the story. My ending involved the children following their mother out into the sea and upon diving into the water they discovered that they were also selkies.

Finally we were asked to tell an original story from our childhood to each other with the idea of choosing one of the stories to present to the class. The class then had to guess who the story actually belonged to.

I now realise that as teachers we need to reconceive the curriculum as a set of great stories that engage our listeners (students) and inspire them to want to learn.

I have had a brilliant time exploring drama during the four weeks of lectures and tutorials and my only regret is that we do not have longer to learn more about it. I will definitely look to employ drama techniques heavily in my future teaching career.

Week 3 - Visual Arts

In this week’s art lecture we were given some great pointers as to how we should construct and create a visual arts lesson plan. We learnt about the teaching/learning process, which has three steps: 1/ Exploring (Experimenting), 2/ Developing (Making) and 3/ Reflecting (Studying). I feel that all steps are very important to include in potential lessons but I want to ensure that I allow for sufficient time for reflection in my arts lessons.

We were given a concrete example of these steps in action, which I found helpful.

A teaching and learning process for visual arts

1.     Exploring – show them a segment of a doco or film on turtles, maybe bring a turtle into class, read a story about a turtle, sing a song about a turtle, we could be turtles (drama) How do I get them enthused? Time to experiment and play with new materials – Don’t just brainstorm its lazy!

2.     Developing – making the artwork

3.     Reflecting – an opportunity to evaluate their work/work of others, time to appreciate – maybe a little written reflection

In this weeks tutorial we used our sketched portraits from last week to create painted cubist portraits. Firstly we cut our portrait up into four pieces and wrote the two colours that we wanted our portrait to be painted on the back of each segment. We swapped the segments of our portrait with our classmates and proceeded to paint the pieces in whatever colours were indicated. We were encouraged to not only use paintbrushes but to experiment with a wide range of tools such as tootbrushes, forks, sponges, rollers etc to create a variety of interesting effects.

Below is an example of one of the cubist portraits:

Week 3 - Drama

This week we focused on one of the most important components of the art form of drama: role.

To assume a role is to step into another person’s shoes, and by taking this step “…students learn to assume roles that are both similar to and different from those of their real lives, temporarily adopting another person’s perspective” (Ewing & Simons, 2004, p. 5).

This idea of assuming a role got me thinking about the opportunity that drama offers in the instruction of English Language Learners in the classroom. As Hertzberg points out, taking on the role of another person allows ELL students to take a ‘safe risk’ saying “If they make a mistake, it is the character who makes the mistake and not them; if they say something that really is from the heart, again it is the character and no-one else need know that it really is their thoughts” (Hertzberg, 2012, p. 133).

We need to provide our ELL students with a range of opportunities to practice different registers and language functions if they are to move beyond conversational language and acquire academic language, and drama offers a great way to provide ELL students with that range.

In the workshop we looked at the book ‘Voices in the Park’ by Anthony Browne. After having read the book we then proceeded to stick adjectives and phrases on two large outlines of two of the characters from the book, describing how we thought these characters were feeling.

After this we formed groups and developed a series of still images that painted one of two scenarios, either a birthday or a holiday, in which the characters interacted. I was chosen to play the voice of Charles and explain what was going on in our holiday scenario. This was very liberating because it gave me the opportunity to really articulate how Charles must have been feeling through the use of improvisation. I didn’t know what I was going to say before I said it and this experience was liberating! Finally in pairs we were asked to interact with each other assuming one of the characters from the book. To finish the workshop we were asked by the teacher to add another voice to the book and below is my piece of writing from the perspective of a homeless person

It’s a funny thing being homeless. You might as well be invisible. Nobody wants to look at you or pay you any attention because it reminds them of how good they’ve got it. If people actually stopped to think about how good they’ve got it then they wouldn’t have anything to complain about, and lord knows people love to have a whinge. But apart from the cold and the wet, I don’t mind being homeless. It allows me to see things that other people don’t see. Like cruelty, kindness and everything in between.

References

Ewing, R. & Simmons, J. (2004) Beyond the script: Drama in the classroom. take 2. 2nd ed. Sydney:PETA. 

Hertzberg, M. (2012). Teaching English language learners in mainstream classes. Marrickville Metro, N.S.W. : Primary English Teaching Association Australia.

Week 2 - Visual Arts

In the lecture this week we looked at the three stages of drawing that children go through – scribble, symbolism and realism. This was further explored through Marjorie and Brent Wilson’s graphic principles. It was fascinating to be provided with some guidelines by which we could more accurately assess the stage of development of our students.

At the beginning of our art workshop we presented our homework piece to the rest of the class.

The brief was to create a montage of our name using various found objects that represent various aspects of our personalities.

Here is my name montage.

J – I did a felt tip pen drawing of a microphone shaped in the letter ‘J’ because I perform as a vocalist in various bands.

E – I formed the letter ‘e’ by sticking together leaves that I found in my front yard because I grew up in the Blue                Mountains and I enjoy being amongst nature.

S – I created an s shape out of torn up sugar sachets because I have a sweet tooth!

S – This ‘s’ was made by sticking chili flakes onto the page in an s shape because I am a fan of spicy food.

E – I cut this ‘e’ shape out of my friends’ album launch flyer that I was performing at.

I really enjoyed creating my name montage as it gave me time to appreciate some of the things that I enjoy/are important to me and it was also a very good way to find out a little bit more about my classmates. It is definitely an activity that i would look to use in a classroom setting with my future students.

In the rest of the workshop we paired off and created a pencil drawing portrait of our partner. I was nervous about engaging in this activity, but after our teacher gave us a couple of simple instructions on how to accurately divide up our face so that features such as eyes and nose would be proportionate and accurately positioned I felt a lot better about the activity. It just goes to show how a bit of appropriate teacher scaffolding can provide students with the confidence to engage in previously daunting activities.

Week 2 - Drama

The emphasis of this weeks’ Drama lecture was on readers’ theatre. According to the NSW BOS Creative Arts k-6 syllabus, readers’ theatre “…involves a rehearsed reading for an audience where participants build, sustain and resolve dramatic tension within the context of the drama through gesture and language.” (p. 91). We learnt about the importance of emphasising voice qualities when modelling readers’ theatre through exploring tone, pitch, volume, accent, stress and playing with pace and silent pauses for dramatic effect.

We had the opportunity to participate in our own piece of readers’ theatre in the drama workshop. My group was assigned the poem ‘on the ning nong nang’ and it was great to be able to employ some of the techniques we had heard about in the lecture. My group presented our reading of the poem through the use of levels (low, mid, high), experimenting with pitch, volume and tone and incorporating movement. 

I particularly enjoyed the planning process prior to our performance, as it was interesting to hear differing opinions on everything from what the text meant to discussion of what each individual should be doing during the performance.

Indeed, Ewing and Simons ( 2004, p. 84) recognise that “Working co-operatively to unpack the meaning(s) of a text can be one of the best ways to demonstrate that everyone brings their own prior experiences to anything they read, and there is no right way to interpret a text”. This certainly proved to be the case when my group was discussing the poem. It was refreshing to hear the perspectives of my group mates as some of them had very different ideas to myself as to what the text meant and how best to deliver it, but we were able to reconcile our differences and arrive at a final script that we were all happy with.

References 

NSW Department of Education and Training. 2000. Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus. Sydney:
DET.

Ewing, R. & Simons, J. 2004. Beyond the script: Drama in the classroom. Take 2. 2nd ed.
Sydney: PETA.

Week 1 - Drama

It was great to be getting stuck into drama early on in the semester. I have been interested in exploring drama ever since first semester where we looked at the technique of ‘conscience alley’ being used in English as a tool for further exploring character in text. One thing that really resonated with me in the lecture was just how great an opportunity drama provides in teaching kids how to look at things from alternative perspectives. I am starting to realise that teaching is so much more than just communicating academic content to our students. Of paramount importance is the elaboration of our student’s morals and character and I think that drama will offer a very rich vehicle for children to analyse situations from different points of views. If we can get our students to empathise with the situation of characters by ‘walking in their shoes’ through the use of process drama, then we will be going a long way towards moulding socially aware and thoughtful young people.

In the lecture we looked at a piece of text called ‘The Green Children’ and were asked to formulate questions to bring to the drama workshop. Some of the questions I came up with were:

‘Why are the children green?’
‘What do they eat?’
‘Why do they have to fit in with the majority?’
‘What was the green boy pining for?’

As a result of these questions, we were asked to further challenge the perspectives and assumptions we had formed as a result of the text. For example, were the ‘green children’ actually children? Could they have been small adults or maybe even aliens instead? I am starting to appreciate the opportunity that drama provides for exploring a multitude of different roles and perspectives. As I am learning, drama is always about assuming a role.

We proceeded to engage in a number of drama activities revolving around the text, such as still image/freeze frame of the moment of discovery of the green children, creating an aerial map of the town the green children were discovered in and tapping in which requires each student to assume a freeze frame of a character in the scenario and when they are tapped in they have to come to life and improvise some dialogue.

I had a great time in drama and am starting to see how drama can be a brilliant tool that we can incorporate into other KLAs especially english.