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.