Melissa's Melting Pot

For our session today we went to Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery to look at the exhibit called 'Endless Summer - the Exhibition of Surfing' and here are some photos I took... There was also an activity in which children could draw/decorate their own surfboard, this is an activity that you could easily use in the classroom as an extension task, here are two examples of the responses:  We also responded to the exhibition through our sketchbooks, here is what I did...

For the first two weeks the whole of the Primary Ed cohort were to put on a performance of Jack and the Beanstalk, to be watched on the second Friday by the staff and PGCE students. Now some people would be thrilled to be able to do a drama and music production in the first two weeks of their course but I will be honest, I was slightly dreading it. I am happy performing as I'm a Ballroom and Latin dancer which involves a lot of putting on shows and acting confident but that is within my comfort zone, acting is not.  We were split into groups of approximately 25 students per group, and it was a real mix of not only specialisms but also personality's and talents meaning that we had a wide range of people. I found that this helped us to begin with as it meant that everyone was in the same boat and could make friends with peers outside of their specialisms and tutor groups, but nearer the end of the two weeks it meant we had clashes of personalities and opinions splitting t

After having been around Plymouth collecting photo's and doing sketches last week, we then created a collaborative piece in groups based on Plymouth  It was up to us to decide how we were going to go about creating these collaborative pieces and different groups chose different approaching showing that a range of people can be given the same brief and starting point but end up with completely different results! We decided to create a map of Plymouth showing where we had visited on our wander and have places enlarged such as the Art Gallery and Museum, the Lighthouse, the Barbican, and the University. To ensure that we were working collaboratively we all worked on each part adding our own touches to each others base drawings - using the idea/concept from those drawings which you did when you were little that you each drew a part of the person - this meant that we not only ended up with our final outcome as a collaborative piece but each element had everyone's input in it.

We were set the task of going out in Plymouth and finding five places to which we had the photographs on a sheet of paper for. The places were the Hoe, the Barbican, the Merchants Museum, the Art Gallery and Museum, and finally the little run-down Church in the middle of the island. I think that this task was to ensure that we knew our way around our new city and knew where to find the key landmarks if we hadn't already, and if we had seen them it was to ensure that we were not only looking but actually seeing, observing and sketching the interesting feature of landmarks around us. I liked the idea of this task and felt that through fining places I was seeing the landmarks with fresh eyes meaning I took in different aspects of them and looked closer rather than a fleeting glance whilst walking past. This meant that we were learning to look - the title of our art module which we are completing currently. This activity could link with Geography and pupils could do a proje

For our first Art and Design Seminar [like a class of approx 30 students] we started off with a communication task and then looked at the body and how it is contoured. To begin with we sat in pairs opposite one another, and gave ourselves the labels person A and person B, this was to stop any confusion with who is to do which part of the task. Then the person A or the communicator had to describe a piece of famous artwork by Picasso or Magritte by using good descriptive language to person B who was sat drawing what was communicated to them. In this task I felt a lack of control and have discovered through this that i do not like having a lack of control over most situations, and although CJ was communicating well we didn't seem to be getting a 'proper' picture out of it. We then switched roles and as the communicator I felt more in control and happier within the role, using hand gestures and descriptive language to get across the idea of the piece of famous artwork. A

Hello to all those who have stumbled upon this blog, I am a Primary BEd student with a specialism in Art and Design, and have got to create a reflective journal as part of my course to reflect on my practice. Therefore being relatively technologically challenged I thought I would improve this by writing my reflective journal not only in an actual notepad but also online to improve my computer skills. I hope to be able to look back at this in a year or even three and be able to see an improvement in not only my reflection, teaching ability and practice but also my writing skills. Being an Art and Design specialist also I will be looking to improve my artistic skills aswell. I will use this blog to reflect upon my teaching practices and would love it if anyone reading felt they could give me feedback, so feel free to comment on my posts on here. Thank you very much. Speak soon, Melissa K xxx