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.
Visual Arts 2: Child-based & Teacher-based
In this tutorial we learnt that assessment is “an ongoing process of gathering evidence of and making judgements about students’ needs, strengths and achievements. Assessment should not rely solely on quality of finished product, but pay particular attention at processes that combine to create that product” (Gibson, R., Art Tutorial 2). The attitudes and skills are important to the learning process and should be a focus of attention. That means teachers should not judge or measure students’ artwork in terms of right or wrong. This knowledge is very important and as preserved teachers, we should keep this idea in mind when we begin teaching in school and have assessments of children’s work. In my personal experience, when I was in Year 4, my teacher judged my drawing as ‘wrong’ and ‘disappointing’ because it was different from other students’ work. This experience had a large impact on my life and was one major reason made me did not want to continue further Art learning for the rest of my life. However now, this personal experience now become a power reminding me to be cautious in the way to approach assessment and encourage students enjoying the process of learning not focusing too much on the final results.
Psychological theories, much in vogue during the fifties and sixties, gave rise to arguments which made art, as a manifestation of the unconscious mind, a necessary process in achieving a balanced personality or in a more mechanistic sense an adjunct to the development of cognition (Messon, P., 1985;Heyforn, V.M., 1985, p.55). “Treasure boxes” as one way to process assessment, encourages students to decorate their own boxes, keep students’ artworks in their boxes. The idea is engaging students’ imagination of their private treasure boxes and hence, students would treat their artworks as pieces of treasure. I would like to do this activity in my future teaching since “treasure boxes”does not only fit a primary school setting, it also help students cherishing to their own work and Arts. Students could also display their treasure boxes to their parents so that parents could know what their children had gained from schools.
Then in the next session of the tutorial, we focused on wheels we had started working from last week. Ms. Gibson handed us a viewfinder, and let us select a section of our wheels drawing. Then we enlarge that section in a large piece of paper. Students used various techniques to do artworks with limited resources, such as scrunching paper, cutting paper into different shapes and sticking them into different parts of the drawing. This activity encouraged students in using their creativity and imagination and using limited resources to create pieces of artworks.
Reference:
Heyforn, V.M. (1985). The Artistic Creativity in The Aesthetic in Education, Malcolm Ross (Ed.)Pergamon
Visual Arts 3: Encouraging Art
Dialogue
This week, we looked at the different approaches to taking to children
about their art and encouraging art dialogue. Robert Schirrmacher in Art and Creative Development for Young
Children (1998) has identified six of the most common approaches used by
adults to respond to children’s art, and in class we discussed how some are not
suitable:
1.
Complimentary
2.
Judgmental
3.
Valuing
4.
Questioning
5.
Probing
6.
Correcting (Ewing & Gibson, R., 2011, pp. 136-137)
We found that teachers should not use these approaches which had negative effects on students’thinking and creating processes. Instead of those useless approaches, there were more questions and comments should be provided by teachers focused on:
The elements of design (Ewing & Gibson, R., pp.138-139):
l Line
l Shape
l Size
l Value
l Texture
l Colour
The principles of design (Ewing & Gibson, R., pp.139-140):
l
Repetition
l
Balance
l
Rhythm
l
Harmony
l
Contrast
l
Gradation
l
Movement
l
Emphasis
l
Proportion
l
Unity
Then for each group, Robyn provided us a piece of children’s
paintings. As preserved teachers, we were required to ask students some
appropriate questions based on the elements and principles of design, such as “How
did you use different colours to make the patterns?” and “How did you use the
colour you did in your painting to form unity?” These questions would engage
students to think deeper about their artworks and the knowledge they have used unconsciously
in the process of creating.
In the next section we participated in a painting
activity and the uses of colours. Like what we did in last semester, but this
time instead of dividing a piece of paper into 4 sections and only using a pair
of complimentary colours, we painted monochromic, neutral, warm or cold and
complimentary colours in the four sections. This activity was the one I engaged
the most in this semester since Visual Arts is concerned with ‘creative
manifestations of the human imagination’ (Lynn, 2002, p.7; Ewing & Gibson,
R., 2011, p.130). While creating and expressing students’ own ideas in
paintings, it was also a process of comprehension the elements and principles
of design. My work can be view below.
References:
Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the Arts. Palgrave Macmillan: Melbourne.
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