Art Specialist Week

October 18, 2012

This week we have had a specialist week meaning that I have been timetabled to only have Art this week, therefore we can completely focus on our specialisms without having to juggle our other subjects such as Ed Studies, Science, Math and English as well as our specialism.

On Monday we talked about what we were going to do and that we had a school visit planned for Wednesday in which we would be teaching two groups each a thirty minute lesson. The lesson would stay the same and the children would go on a 'learning carousel' meaning they rotated around the tables doing the different activities which we were running. We discussed ideas for our lesson then as a group decided we felt that teaching the children about Line and doing activities such as the Blind Drawing, Drawing with your non dominant hand [i.e. if you are right handed then drawing with your left hand] and Continuous line drawings would be an engaging topic.

We used the standard university planning sheet and planned out our lesson , here is what it looked like:

Then after deciding who would deliver which activities we went home and got our 'teacher clothes' ready for Wednesday!

By Wednesday i'll be honest I was a little nervous and excited as I wasn't sure what to expect. Although I have done school experiences and worked in a nursery so am used to being in a classroom/learning environment I was always acting as a member of support staff and not the lead teacher so felt this experience might be different as we - the trainee teachers - had charge of the classroom and although Sadie and Vicky were there they were there as observers and not to take charge if things weren't going to plan or our timings were out and we had finished early meaning that our group had nothing to do.

We walked over to the school and were made to feel very welcome by both staff and pupils. We quickly set up our table with our equipment which was the resources - the pictures of Plymouth 3 pieces of paper, a piece of tracing paper, and a pencil for each child. Then we wrote ourselves name labels, this is when I started to feel like a proper teacher as its the first time I've written Miss K as my name! My surname is a pain to say and spell - Keskinkilinc [it means sharp sword in Turkish ] - so felt it might be a bit mean to make primary school children attempt it when most adults can't say it! Here is a picture of my name badge, it got decorated afterwards!

Overall I would say that our activities went well and the children interacted with them and were engaged throughout the activities. We started off by introducing ourselves and our activities, and asking questions such as what is a line? To look at the basic lines we had the pupils trace their picture focusing on the main lines which create shape, this then lead onto our activity of blind drawing as it meant that they had their image and the main lines in their head. Then we went on to the non dominant hand drawing activity which involved using the same picture and drawing it using their non dominant hand, and finally we went onto the continuous drawing, how we described this was:

'Your pencil is glued to the paper meaning you can't take it off!'

After that we then talked about which the preferred and why, which was the easiest or hardest, what do you now think a line is, and comparing the drawings which they had done and their experience of the activity every child responded and contributed something which I felt meant that they were a lot more comfortable talking to us as some children had 'passed' at the start when we had our first discussion so by giving an answer they became more involved in the activity.

By the second group of children I feel that were also knew what we were doing more so and lead the task better, this was because we knew what level the children were at and we also knew what language worked and how to put things so they understood what we meant. Personally by the second time around i felt a lot more confident and happier leading as i was more settled and comfortable in the classroom and with our activities.

We found that we didn't follow our lesson plan completely as we decided as a group to focus more on the smaller tasks and not do the extended drawing task we had planned to do. We were also very lucky as we had no children in the group who did not participate meaning we could focus on all the children and not have to have one person sat being a one to one with a child.

Overall I feel that the day was a success and that all the children we taught went away know what a line was and were confident in identifying lines in pictures meaning we had fulfilled our Learning Objectives. We also had two boys from our second group feedback to us that they had 'enjoyed the lesson and i felt like i really learned something Miss' which was brilliant for our first placement day as trainee teachers!

Here are some pictures of the children's work: