Week 8 Visual Arts 1

APPRECIATION OF ARTWORKS

I was very excited about my first Visual Arts workshop this semester since I really enjoyed this section last year. In all four areas of Creative Arts, Visual Arts, as a basic and common area involved in daily teaching, develops students' creativity and engagement in the process of learning. Dr. Robyn Gibson identified in the tutorial that ‘art appreciation does not aim to fill children with facts about art, but to develop their strategies of looking art and making sense of what they see’.

In this week’s workshop, my favourite activity is ‘Dinner Parties’ since I was picked to hold one pieces of artworks. There were five students were chosen to hold one painting which was not originally theirs. The rest of students in the class had to think critically and match each images to its corresponding students by asking simple ‘Yes or No’ questions. The New South Wales Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus mentioned that for appreciating visual arts, students at Stage 3 would learn to ‘communicate about the ways in which subject matter is represented in artworks’(NSW Board of Studies, 2007, p. 24).

 

In ‘Dinner Parties’, students, particularly Stage 3 students, would learn to focus on and think critically about the subjects and techniques used to represent in one image that made the image different from the other four artworks. This activity required students to conclude their key ideas in simple questions; hence students would develop their art criticism and oral presentation skills. It is a good idea for teachers to use Feldman’s Inquiry Method of Appreciating Art to guide students find out the key features in the paintings, just like what we did in the workshop.

The five printings for 'Dinner Parties'

Reference:
Ewing, R., Gobson, R., (2011) Transforming the Curriculum through the Arts. South Yarra: Palgrave MacMillon

New South Wales Board of Studies. (2006). Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus. Sydney: Author.

Week 7 Music 3

Music 3: Listening and Organizing Sound

In the final music workshop this semester we covered mainly three aspects that creating simple compositions, selecting music for listening activities with a specific musical focus and integrating music with other KLAs and technology.

Nancy introduced some extremely useful teacher’s resources including a book called ‘Jelly Beans And Other Suites ’, some Apple application and educational websites. “Jelly Beans And Other Suites” was a very helpful teacher’s resources that I would like to use in my future teaching. There were several reasons:

1.      The book had a CD for teacher to play in the class so that students could be engaged;

2.      The size of the pages was very large and the book got clear and big label for every details;

3.      The songs recorded in the book were not too hard, but since it needed students’ cooperation and higher ordered thinking of the concepts, it would be better used in Stage 3 classes;

4.      The songs were very enjoyable and would not be very hard to analyze the elements of Music in the songs. For example, we covered duration, tone colour , dynamics and structure in the class;

5.      Each section of the song that required different type of instruments was labeled in different colour so that students could be instructed by teacher easily.

Researchers (Kellet, 2000; Hennessy, 2000) argue that music is an area that can result in a confidence issue dependent on past experiences and/or musical training. With a teacher’s resource like “Jelly Beans And Other Suites”, “neither the teacher nor students would be required to read music or have any prior ability to play a musical instrument”(Ewing & Gibson, R., 2011, p. 117). The rhythm was easy for the teacher and students to follow. The teacher could point at each bar during the CD was playing, and students could use various percussion and melodic instruments, such as wood or metallic xylophones and triangles. Involving new technology like CD players in the process of teaching Music would be more engaging and provide students deeper comprehension of the elements of Music. During listening to the songs that professionally recorded in CDs could guide students to follow the rhythm, organise sounds and encourage students to play the instruments. Hence in the future, I would like to use technology properly in the classroom environments as a tool to engage students more in learning Creative Arts, particularly Music.

References:

Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the Arts. Palgrave Macmillan: Melbourne.

Week 6 Music 2

Music 2: Performing – Singing and Moving

The music tutorial this week focused more on performing and sound-organising. One activity called ‘Beachcombing’ caught my full attention and made everyone in the class engaged. After listening and singing the song, students chose one instrument each and created own verses about the beach environment. Then students explored musical concepts of tone colour, duration and dynamics to creative their own sound story. The activity was design based on the Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus that:

MUS1.2: Explores, creates, selects and organises sound in simple structure.

I would like to use this actvity in my future teaching since the song “Beachcombing” built a positive and engaging learning environment for all the students to imagine and create. In Gulbenkian Report (1982) identified one contribution that music brought to education was

“Developing capacity for creative thought and action. Music stimulates creativity because making music involves experimenting with sounds and rhythm. Used creatively, music develops ‘elaborative, original, fluent, and flexible thinking’ (Cornett, 1999, p.322)” (Gibson, R. & Ewing, R., 2011).

Students used one instrument each group and made a statement to sing and perform. While students were creating song and lyrics, they had to use their prior knowledge of the particular environment and higher order thinking to establish connection between the song and their instruments. During performance, students understood and developed their knowledge about the instruments, singing and performing skills as well as the joy of playing music.

References:

Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the Arts. Palgrave Macmillan: Melbourne.

NSW Board of Studies. (2006). Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus. Sydney: BOS.

Week 5 Music 1

PERFORMING & PLAYING

Before our first Music tutorial started, we reviewed the music concepts learnt from Creative Arts 1, which are:

l  Duration;

l  Pitch;

l  Tone Colour;

l  Dynamics;

l  Structure

We started with three world-known musical pieces to refresh our memories of the musical concepts and draw students’ prior knowledge to the class. The three music pieces were “Carnival of the Animals – The Swan”, “In the hall of the Mountain King” and “The Ice Dance”. Nancy also gave us a list of questions about music concepts to think while playing the music clip. After listening, students discussed and analysed how the music concepts had been used properly to perform and organise sound. This strategy is advised for teachers to use while teaching music in the class. It could engage students and help them to analyse and comprehend this music piece better through making a sequence of questions. For example,

“In the hall of the Mountain King”

l  Duration: How was the speed of the piece? Was it getting faster or slower?

l  Structure: What is the main piece of the song piece of the song? How many times could you hear in this piece?

l  Tone Colour: How was the cello played? (e.g. Tapping.) Is that different from using strings?

l  Dynamics: Was the music getting louder?

l  Pitch: How did the song make difference to you?

The questions based on the music concepts are useful to guide students build their comprehension of music. For Stage 2 students particularly, they need to learn to respond to music and “identify the use of musical concepts and musical symbols in a range of repertoire” (NSW Board of Studies, p. 25). Furthermore, the questions about music concepts are set for “developing the variety of children’s intelligence” (Gibson, R. & Ewing, R., 2011, p. 112). Robyn Gibson mentioned in Transforming the curriculum through the Arts that “music is another way of knowing and expressing ideas, moods and feeling. By using music, children can draw on additional avenues of learning.” The thinking process is vital for students to comprehend the music concepts beyond performing and playing.

References:

Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the Arts. Palgrave Macmillan: Melbourne.

NSW Board of Studies. (2006). Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus. Sydney: BOS.

Week 4 Dance 3

DANCE 3: Space - General and Personal Space

In our last Dance workshop this semester, Nancy taught us about sensory learning and the use and effect of stimulus in a dance lesson.

SENSORY LEARNING: Teaching students to use their senses to develop imagination and their expression as well as stimulate creativity.

5 types of stimuli:

Then in the next session of the workshop, each student chose one type of stimuli and prepared the performance. The one that our group chose was the auditory stimulate, “Find Your Spark” from “Now is the Time – 170 ways to seize the moment”. The reason for selecting this type of stimuli and its resource was the literacy could be combined with multiple areas in Creative Arts. The contrast between light and darkness could be presented in Visual Arts; the sound could be played by musical instruments; the scenes in the story could be presented in Drama or Dance. “Becoming physically articulated and finding one’s own ways of moving can often improve a child’s abilities with spoken and written language” (Gibson, R. & Ewing, R., 2011). Through reading and brainstorming, students needed to present the written text into dance by focusing some key words, such as “ignites”, ”overshadows” and “threatens”. Those key verbs gave students some ideas to effectively use the elements of music and present the situation in story better. For example,

SPACE: spreading out, coming close to each other

DYNAMICS:

Opening arms – light of the spark;

Pushing (the person in the middle) down – darkness of the spark

Since this activity required students’ comprehension of the literacy, it could meet the Stage 3 KLA’s requirement that students “explore, select, organise and refine movement using the elements of dance to communicate intent” (NSW Board of Studies, 2006). As an activity focused on auditory stimuli, students need to think critically how to organise sounds and present the ideas effectively. In this case, the written text could be read out before the dance presentation. For example, in a Stage 3 Literacy lesson, auditory stimuli like listening to a written text could be combined with dance and help students develop their comprehension to the elements of Dance, Literacy and creativity.

References:

Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the Arts. Palgrave Macmillan: Melbourne.

NSW Board of Studies. (2006). Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus. Sydney: BOS.