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reflection (’rɪˈflɛkʃ(ə)n)

noun

serious thought or consideration.

It is rare that preservice teachers are trained well in the Creative Arts, let alone having the opportunity to teach the Creative Arts, even on professional experience. There is either a specialist teacher that takes on subjects like music and dance, or these art forms are neglected in the classrooms and it is highly likely that the only form of creative arts that students may receive is visual art. In saying this, it has been such a valuable opportunity to be able to teach the creative arts and see the impact it has on students. Not only have I benefitted from learning about teaching the creative arts, but the other girls in this subject have definitely benefitted as well. This was also a helpful way in getting everyone to reflect on their teaching over the four weeks as reflection is an ‘active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends’(Dewey, 1933, p.7, as cited in Meyer, 2017, p.162). 

It was interesting to hear from the other girls, what their experiences in different classrooms were like. Uncannily, all of us struggled with similar problems in our lessons with behaviour management and noise levels and probably the most difficult one was knowing the students in such an awkward amount of time we were given there to teach, this probably affected behaviour management as well, as we just came into their classrooms randomly on a Tuesday afternoon. The presentation I enjoyed the most, was Jen’s scrapbook that she made from her lessons about fire and how it was based around a picture book was even better. It was great being able to guess what she did in her lessons as she gave hints to what she did and she was able to reflect on her lessons creatively. 

Michelle and I’s creative presentation was in the form of an animated slideshow, although it was difficult to see and hear, seeing as we had to move to the pottery room and had no access to a projector, we still managed to talk about what happened in our lessons and reflect on what we could improve on. The main thing we would have done was to plan earlier a mini unit plan and consult more with our teacher to give us ideas on what we could be doing during the lessons. Overall, it was a great learning curve to be able to step outside of our comfort zone to come up with ideas in teaching the creative arts and integrating other KLA’s with teaching the creative arts are great in being able kill two birds with one stone. 

References: 

21st Century Storytelling

storytelling (stɔːrɪtɛlɪŋ)

noun

the activity of telling or writing stories

The art of oral storytelling is slowly fading out in our society. We tell stories with a different type of expression and this would not be something that would come naturally to students. Although, “increasingly, technology seems to be used narratively in society, for example, the storying of self through social media” (Hall, 2018, p.1).  This is a way for students to be telling stories from their experiences and be exposed to the art of storytelling. Where voice (especially tone) is a very important in being able to capture an audience. 

This workshop goes through the elements of storytelling and how to achieve this in a digital format. There are 7 elements of digital stories, these are: 

Point of the story 

Dramatic question 

Emotional content- humour

The gift of your voice 

The power of soundtrack 

Economy- using images and talking 

Pacing- using tone and volume

Prior to this lesson, the one resource that students will need, will be to bring in an photograph of a memorable time that they had. It is helpful to have both a hard copy and a soft copy to use throughout the video. Going through the stages of making videos, there are 4 stages of production of videos, these are: 

Pre-production

Production 

Post-production

Presentation

Kirsty provided us with a handout that was a template with the questions below added into it for ease of writing about their memorable image. This handout could be modified for different stages, so adding sentence starters for K/1 would be helpful. These probing questions were definitely helpful for us as we thought about our image and helpful for being able to tell the story. 

Pre-production:

Writing the story/script to be used for voiceover into production. 

Production: 

Photos are taken which are:

One of the student holding the image (hands only)

One of the image and, 

One with the student in the frame. 

The voiceover is also recorded, making sure that there is minimal background noise and a good microphone will be helpful in ensuring this happens. 

Post Production: 

This consists of importing photos into iMovie or any video editing application and the voiceover that was recorded. I completed my digital story on my phone, on the app iMovie, which is very user friendly (especially for students) and is similar to the app on the iPad, which most schools would have. Adding a soundtrack/sound effects will enhance the storytelling in helping the audience understand how the storyteller is feeling. 

Presentation: 

It is important to be able to see all your students’ work with the finished product to give them feedback but also just to listen to their experiences. This is a wonderful way to finish up their stories, by having a viewing party. Students can also reflect on the production process whilst receiving feedback on their digital story. 

References: 

fundament (ˈfʌndəm(ə)nt)

noun

the foundation or basis of something

Music is something that all students love to listen, love to dance to or love to perform as well. Kids love to make noise, whether it be with their mouths, hands, body. Rhythm is one of the easier concepts of music to teach where and one of the more important as it is a basis of all music AND movement. So to teach dance, it is a fundamental skill is to move to the beat. This lesson focused on teaching beat in various ways. 

A good warm up/introductory activity to beat that we were shown was to get students to clap out the syllables in their name. This was later developed as a quick group activity for those with the same amount of syllables in their name would come up with a sound and an optional movement to go along with each syllable and perform it as a group. Another warm up activity that we were shown was called Step Ahead, where the teacher would be one “step” ahead of the students and the students would need to repeat the rhythm that the teacher had performed beforehand. 

We learnt two songs: the peanut song and shortnin’ bread (in appendix) and it was helpful to learn how to teach the song, where to break it down and understanding that adding actions not only makes learning songs engaging but helps them to make meaning of the song and remember the lyrics. The instructor showed us the most effective way to teach a song, which is to sing the whole song, then break it into phrases that the students will echo. Repeat the phrase before, then add the next phrase onto it, always repeating the phrase before to help students remember the lyrics. This is also a way to introduce simple structures of a song e.g. verse and chorus, as a song becomes more complex. Through these two songs, the instructor taught us canon and how to implement canon as well. The process of learning the songs were not too difficult, although I found it difficult to remember the lyrics despite the actions and there will be students like that in the classroom as well. So it is important to implement practice and patience with students. These songs are also fun way to learn about rhyme, and can help to build students phonemic awareness. 

Another activity that the instructor did with us, was soundscape/reader’s theatre. We were each given a poem to portray the words of the poem with whatever sounds. Un-tuned percussion was provided and we could use body percussion or vocals to create sounds. We were asked to think about how the words would be presented, so either one person read out the poem or the whole group, or segment parts where more people would say a word or a phrase to add emphasis. So it also helped as an activity to make meaning for the poem, which would be helpful to integrate with English in the classroom, as a part of a poetry unit. By doing this, music education becomes a way for “a range of curriculum areas to be addressed by providing students with alternative pathways to the development of complex understandings in other learning areas” (Australian Society of Music Education, 1999, p. 7). 

These activities are all great ways to implement music into the classroom, without being afraid to teach something wrong, as this is a simple concept that most teachers should have an understanding of without an extra vocabulary that needs to be learnt and it is a fundamental concept of music. 

Appendix: 

The Peanut Song  I’m a peanut small and round Lying on the cold hard ground.  Everybody steps on me,  I’m as cracked as I can be!  I’m a nut (click click)  I’m a rut (click click) I’m a nut (click click) I’m a rut (click click)

Shortnin’ Bread 

Three little babies lying’ in bed Two were sick and the other one said:  “Send for the doctor!” and the doctor said:  “GIVE THOSE BABIES SOME SHORTNIN’ BREAD!” 

Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ shortnin’ Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ bread. Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ shortnin’ Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ bread. Put on the skillet, put on the lid!  Mama’s gonna make a little shortnin’ bread. That’s not all she’s gonna do!  Mama’s gonna make a little coffee too!

Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ shortnin’ Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ bread. Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ shortnin’ Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ bread. 

Engineers by Jimmy Gartwaite

Pistons, valves and wheels and gears That’s then life of engineers  Thumping, chunking engines goin Hissing steam and whistles blowing There’s not a place I’d rather be Than working round machinery  Listening to that clanking sound Watching all the wheels go round 

References: 

integrate (ˈɪntɪɡreɪt) 

noun

combine (one thing) with another to form a whole.

One of the challenges of teaching creative arts is finding the time in the already intense and content full curriculum. Hence, why our teacher wanted us (Michelle and I) to tie in our creative arts lessons with their unit of work: transformation.

Lesson 1: Visual Arts

We created a letter to prompt our students to design their own galaxy, which read:

Dear 4SM,

My name is Peter Potter and I am an astronomer! That is, someone who studies the planets, stars and other natural objects in space. I am writing this letter to you because when I sat down outside yesterday night with my hot chocolate and looked up at the stars, I noticed that they were the same, ordinary stars. Beautiful, but ordinary. So, then I took out my telescope and peered through and noticed how dull and uncreative our solar system looked. I have proposed that we change the design of our solar system and galaxy to make it more fun and pleasant to look at! I have been told that you are all very creative and imaginative, can you all please help me design the galaxy? Create some unique designs, ones that we have never seen before? I really look forward to seeing these!

Kind regards, Peter Potter

There were success criteria that were either achieved in groups or individually: 

Each student needs to design their own planet + a star, comet, asteroid, meteoroid- these planets needed to have at least 3 different colours, one pattern and up to students to create any shape for the galaxy. Below are some examples of students’ planets who met the success criteria 

Each group needs to have created a galaxy with the spray bottle paint (created by using white acrylic paint watered down)

Planet 1- 

Planet 2- 

We did these tasks as a rotation, so 2 galaxy stations which I ran, where 2 groups came out for 5-7 minutes to decorate their galaxy. In the meantime, other tables, students will decorate their planets. If students were still waiting and have finished decorating their planets, then they can move onto creating something else from a galaxy, e.g. a star, meteor etc.

Reflections: 

Many students in groups did not know how to share or collaborate well, so next time get Mr Mitchell to sort out groups, who would work together well

As a result of students not knowing how to collaborate, we had to learn how to implement conflict management (which was also prevalent in the lessons to come) and some students got quite upset when their group didn’t listen or one person took control of the whole creation of the galaxy, there were some students who didn’t care if 1 student took over because they knew it wasn't worthwhile and the 1 student was stubborn as well 

Have an explicit section to focus on how to collaborate with peers, acknowledging what happened in this lesson where students were upset 

Lesson 2: Visual Arts

We addressed the collaboration issue in this lesson, making it clear that we wanted all students in the group to be involved in finishing their galaxies, making sure before they stick their planets on, that all students were happy with the placement of the planets. Throughout this lesson students were out of control noisy, we tried using all of the behaviour strategies we knew but still didn’t know how to control the noise. 

This lesson also acted as an art appreciation lesson, where students critiqued their galaxies based on 2 stars and a wish. Above on the galaxies you can see the star and square post-it notes attached.  Where 2 stars (on the star post-its) is what students think they did well with their planets and galaxies and the wish (on square post-its) is something that they wanted to improve for next time. We thought that this would be a simple idea for students to grasp and we modelled some for the students as well, but most students didn’t know what to write. Below is an example of a wish (ironically written on a star post-it). 

Reflections:

Do a guided writing of a star and a wish 

Was able to address the collaboration issue at the beginning of the lesson, although there were still some disagreements 

Don’t give glue-sticks to students until the whole group agrees on arrangement of planets on galaxy 

After reflecting on all the lessons, we knew that this lesson was the least engaging, which also affected the noise level and students going off task- needed to engage students better and make expectations clear 

Lesson 3: Drama

This lesson was based on the picture book by Oliver Jeffers called ‘How to Catch a Star’. Before reading the book, we got students to warm up with role walk in different characters or objects (astronaut, planets, star, moon, rocket) making sure they incorporate levels and size etc. We addressed the noise level in this lesson, making sure that students respected us as teachers and listened to us when we wanted them to, but also listening to their peers.

We read the book and stopped before the little boy came up with solutions on how to catch a star. This was a stimulus for us to see students’ creativity in thinking of ways that the little boy could catch a star, to be portrayed in a freeze frame. We modelled one suggestion for them, using a ladder to climb and catch the star and then sent students to create a freeze frame. This time, Mr Mitchell chose groups for us, as we did not know the students well enough to know which students would work well together. This was mostly helpful as most groups were on task. The ideas that the students came up with were really good when they were coming up with them, but when it was time to present, groups forgot what they had thought of, or they were just being silly. Students were able to guess what groups had thought of for the little boy to catch the star and were able to confirm their hypothesis by tapping in some students. 

Reflections:

Students were really engaged in this lesson

Addressing noise level in this lesson helped effectiveness of lesson as well

Asking students to close their eyes before seeing a freeze frame was effective for setting the scene

Some students when showing their freeze frame were silly and was unexpected- not sure how to deal with this situation, but made it known to them that it was inappropriate

Setting a WILF was helpful in seeing students use of levels and facial expressions as well as them collaborating well

Lesson 4: Integration of the Arts 

In this lesson, we incorporated elements of both music and dance into a number of activities for the lesson. We wanted to make sure that students were having lots of fun for their last lesson with us and in order to make sure kids were safe, we took them outside. We set behavioural expectations inside of the classroom before going outside and made sure that we were explicit that if they were silly, we would end the lesson. We used Oliver Jeffers’ ‘How to Catch a Star’ as a stimulus again to bring a theme to our lesson. 

We did a warm up game for music called send off, where students needed to send off a clap (send off the star) to the student next to them and they star needed to go around the class as fast as possible. This game helps students in rhythm but also makes them focus on the task. We played this several times with different variations in speed and direction. 

The next activity we did was mime, which also made sure that students were focused on each other. One student was the leader and the other copied the action to the best of their ability. Their focus for this activity was for whole body movement and size of body. 

The last activity we did was follow the leader- where students were lined up and the first student was the leader. Michelle or I would call out an a number of things for them to create a move out of and the rest of the group would follow, some of these included a planet, an astronaut, an alien etc. Students were to be aware of space and size of their movements. 

Reflections: 

This lesson went shorter than expected- could have had more activities planned 

Overall, noise was okay, but students needed to be reminded to not be too loud as surrounding classes could get distracted and explicit instruction before leaving the classroom was helpful

preconceived (priːkənˈsiːvd)

noun

(of an idea or opinion) formed before having the evidence for its truth or usefulness.

When my partner (Michelle) and I went to visit our class at North Sydney Demonstration School, we knew we were allocated a year 4 class (4SM) and we were told to plan some get to know you activities. We had some activities planned, but instead made the judgement that it would be better to observe how our teacher (Mr Mitchell) taught the classroom and just get to know the students by observing how they worked. We were introduced to the class and they were told that we would be coming in to teach them creative arts, not just visual art. Mr Mitchell asked them to ask us any questions they had about the creative arts and what we would be teaching, but most of the questions were not at all related to creative arts, which showed that they were easily distracted. Mr Mitchell also forewarned us about his class being noisy, and made known to us some students who had learning difficulties, students with short attention spans or the students that were EAL/D. After observing the class, we knew that it would be difficult to work with the class as they were quite noisy, but we underestimated how loud they could be. We knew that when teaching the creative arts, its okay for students to be louder than usual as they get excited, but everyone is engaged with the work (noise that showed they were on task).  We tried to also soak in what Mr Mitchell’s behaviour strategies were, so that we could implement them when needed. For example, to give ownership to students to speak, he would throw around a small soft footy to show one student talking at a time. We also noticed the layout of the classroom, made it look quite small, and there was no space to move around as all the desks were in rows. Michelle and I knew that it would be difficult to work with this layout of the classroom as it is important to foster creativity as it “requires commitment to space: physical and conceptual. Creating space means being conscious of the physical place of your classroom, and ways in which it may foster children’s creativity” (Craft, 2000, p.110).  References: 

in video above: some materials that can be found at reverse garbage sight

Reverse Garbage- finding beauty all around

garbage (ˈɡɑːbɪdʒ)

noun

worthless or meaningless material or ideas; rubbish

We’ve all heard the saying “one person’s trash, is another person’s treasure”, and I think this can really been seen in this establishment that has been created by diverting resources from landfill for teachers and students. This creative reuse centre was created by teachers and community workers in 1975 and is a source of materials for teachers and students, where these materials can be bought in bulk are inexpensive to purchase, to be used for projects in the classroom.

Being able to explore the factory and see how many different objects are there can be a great stimulus for thinking of ideas to be used in the classroom. And that was exactly our task as we visited the premises. We were to pick an object/material to be a stimulus for a lesson idea. For example, students could make wind-catchers out of plastics (pictured below) when learning about weather and materials which allows for integrating the creative arts with science. One of the objects that caught my eye were vinyl records, which primary school kids probably wouldn’t have seen a record or know what it is used for, and this could be an interesting idea on exploring how music was played in the past e.g. records, cds, MP3s etc. They were inexpensive and could also be used afterward to make a mandala mobile to show students creativity and imagination or something that is more practical like a bookend or a clock, showing that different materials can be used to make everyday objects, which would help to explore the properties of materials. By integrating different curriculum areas together, where creative arts is the easiest avenue to be embedded into other content areas, not only does this help us teach the crowded curriculum, but it allows for quality pedagogy (Ewing, 2011) in which students have fun and are engaged in learning. 

Another idea could be to organise an excursion to bring students to Reverse Garbage to explore different types of materials and getting them to investigate how materials can be used in different ways to engage them in authentic learning. 

pictured: wind-catchers made out of recycled materials 

pictured above: Integrated Arts students in front of Reverse Garbage

References: 

Dancing through Culture

culture (ˈkʌltʃə)

noun

The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively or the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society.

One of the features of teaching the creative arts in the classroom, is the ability to discover different things about cultures from around the world. This allows students to not only understand another culture, but allows them to understand something different to their own culture. Through this workshop, we were able to explore and begin to understand the culture underlying the Bollywood scene through dance, which also allows us to listen the music of the culture as well. Melchior (2006) explains that “the arts provide young people with authentic learning experiences that engage their minds, hearts and bodies. The learning experiences are real and meaningful for them” (p.12, as cited in, Melchior, 2016). The workshop consisted of some warm up activities that would assist students in learning the choreography of the dance as well as learning the steps to the dance. The features of the dance were quite interesting as well, as there were individual and partner aspects which brings interest to the dance. In terms of suitability for the classroom, this moves of the dance are quite simple to learn, although can bring challenges for some students, where repetition of the moves will helpful for students to remember. For some students dancing could be something that makes them feel uncomfortable, as most of us in the class were (including myself) in the beginning, but as students are immersed into the dance, they become invested into it and become involved in the fun. 

Whilst working through the choreography of the dance, the instructor also taught us about the culture of Bollywood and that is helpful for understanding how to perform a move but also just as information to learn bout features of Bollywood. Implementing this into the classroom would probably take a whole term, but would be worthwhile when seeing the product whilst learning about a different culture, where “dance plays a vital role in developing connectedness in a culturally responsive classroom” (Melchior, 2016).  References: 

harmony (ˈhɑːməni) 

noun 

The combination of simultaneously sounded musical notes to produce a pleasing affect. 

Teachers should enable students to be creative in the way they represent their understanding of the world. This activity allows students to display their creativity in the way they perceive their surroundings. Students will experience a place (using their senses e.g. seeing, hearing, smelling etc) that is allocated to them and will need to come up with a way to give clues as to what area they explored. In this case, we were given parts of the university campus. Students then present their creative portrayal to the class who will guess which area you had with the clues that were given in the portrayal. Students are urged to not give obvious hints and are encouraged to think outside of the box. For students that find it difficult to come up with ideas, suggest what they can do, for example, soundscape, collage, puzzle etc; as well as ensuring that students are familiar with the areas to guess or show all of the areas on the board so students are able to guess. 

Below is an example of how to portray an area creatively: 

A Parody of 500 Miles by The Profilers

When I wake up, well I know I'm gonna walk, I'm gonna walk to a little old town near you When I go out, yeah I know I'm gonna go I'm gonna go to find some tasty pad thai for you If I get stuck, well I know I'm gonna get I'm gonna get the bus to be safe next to you And if I get bored, yeah I know I'm gonna roam I'm gonna roam around this little old town with you

But I would walk 500 miles And I would walk 500 more Just to be the one who merrily walks through Rain or sunshine to be at your door

The literature stimuli of the lesson was The Shape Game by Anthony Browne, doing this sequence of creative arts activities with students will be beneficial when doing an in-depth literature analysis and/or visual literacy. Any other quality literature when considered carefully, would be easily implemented when doing this sequence of activities. 

It was great for us as pre-service teachers to participate in these activities as most of us wouldn’t have seen an integration of the creative arts, mostly only seeing one strand of the creative arts at a time in the classroom on professional experience. As encouraged by Robyn, we are to integrate the arts with each other but also different KLA’s with integrity and harmony, where it can be brought through a clear theme that ties together the sequence of lessons. 

Sequences of creative arts activities

Playing the Shape Game

Each student draws a shape and are given two textas

After given 2 minutes to draw a shape, the students will pass their shape to the left and they make the shape into something else by drawing (you can pass the shape around 1-2 times so students can add details)

Students will pass to the left again and the next person will title the artwork creating a character, object or a place 

Create a story with all the shapes that were made (in groups of 4)

Each group of 4 will use their shape in creating a short story (additional emphasis can be made e.g. encouraging students to make sure they are using descriptive words or adding a success criteria) 

Making sure that all 4 shapes have been used in the story

Example: Slithery Snake and the Lost Swan went on an adventure and encountered a DANGER! Sign, but entered anyway. Then the monster trucks took Slithery Snake and the Lost Swan back home.

Other ideas after creating a story could be: to take one character and move it into another story, or try to amalgamate the classes stories, or role play their stories. 

Using an artwork as a stimulus: 

Shape Painting by John Coburn

Discuss the different aspects of the stimulus, for example: the shapes- what do they remind you of, what are the sizes of shape, colours, background etc. 

Understand that students will have different perceptions of shapes and explicitly state this in the classroom and this helps students to celebrate different perspectives (Eisner, 2002, as cited in, Hall & Thompson, 2017, p.128). 

Pick students to select a shape to represent it as a sound or instrument, then have a conductor to orchestrate the sounds, by tapping on the  

Tap shape once- just play once, tap shape twice- continuous playing, double tap shape off

Shape Collage

Students to create their own unique shape that represents individuals personality on sheets of coloured paper (kindergarten sheets), tell them to focus on the size of the shapes e.g. wavy lines, straight lines. They will create multiple copies to give to students in their group and one to keep for themselves 

Students will be in groups, and each student will receive one shape from each person in the group as well as their own shape, provide an A3 sheet of paper so students can create their own organisation of the different shapes, which shows that within these artworks, small subtleties can have large effects (Eisner, 2002, as cited in, Hall & Thompson, 2017, p.128), as none of the collages will be the same as the others

In the classroom don’t give glue sticks until students are happy with the arrangement of their shapes 

Using the shape collages as stimuli, students will compose a selected collage and perform it in front of the class to guess

They will create a movement/sound/word/phrase to the shape that they made and they will select one arrangement from the group of arrangements (as seen below) to perform.

Move students off into separate spaces so students can’t see what the other groups are doing and probe students to think about the orientation and placing of shapes (thinking about levels) in their selected collage 

Then groups will perform their selected collage and the audience will have to guess out of different collages which one was the stimulus for their performance. All of the groups collages will be shown so students can guess 

References: