Melissa's Melting Pot

Assessment in Art and Design... Is it nessisary?  What does assessing art achieve?  Why assess art? We discussed this in our art seminar and came up with a list of reasons for assessing art  Do you assess art? Or do you not see the point? What is the value is assessing art? This really made me think. I've not seen a huge amount of assessment in art and have found that the others in my art group haven't either, and some of the assessment I have seen has been very subjective and inconsistent throughout the school. I have also seen some amazing assessment of art in other schools and they have used success criterias and peer and self assessment to look at children's art and level it. Does art need levels though? Or is it just like Maths, English Science etc...  This is a question to think about and consider as art is unique as a subject in that assessment can be subjective and should be based on skills and techniques, in contrast to personal opinion.

In our seminar today we were given the 'team building' task of  creating something to wear to a celebration . We were given a selection of materials and were able to do whatever we liked, but had to work as a team. The task had to be completed in 20 minutes. In my team there were four of us and we quickly decided that we want to make a graduation gown and hat. Without further discussion we got on with the task at hand. This meant lots of cutting, stapling and taping onto our model (who volunteered for the job). I created the black bin bag gown, Charlotte made the graduation cap and Jenny created a flower corsage to go on top of the gown. This was fun task and a really nice way to start the year off with Art! Here are the beautiful celebration outfits our Art group made: After we showed our outfits we were presented with a question from the Lecturer Sadie. She asked us to answer two questions individually: Why were you able to work well as a team? Did any m

I'm now going into my last year... scary stuff!  This means I will update this as much as I can and try to keep more up to date with my posts!  Having just started back with my lectures and seminars I thought I'd post about whats happened so far... I'm doing four modules this year which are: Becoming a subject leader (Art), Dissertation module (Art), Education Studies, and Core (English, Maths and Science). My timetable is slowly filling up! I'll post abut the Art seminar that I just had later on today :) 

Earlier in the year we were presented with the question :  What artistic practice do we value and how would we teach art effectively in the primary classroom? Personally I think that this is a very important question to ask yourself as an art teacher and professional. This is because good art teaching (be it primary, secondary or beyond) is not about just looking at practices you feel may be fun or create a good end result, but also about what the children will learn through the process of creating.  We then looked at how children learn and created mind maps to illustrate this After thinking about these things we were asked to create a collaborative textile piece based on yourself and university life. The groups came up with such a range of ideas and there weren't two ideas the same. My group decided to each create a shopping bag using a batik technique that represented us, and in the foreground have the Plymouth skyline to bring it together and make it colla

Our second 'field trip' last week was on the Friday to St Ives! And it was BEAUTIFUL weather!!! Which for those of you in the South West of England will be a surprise! We went to the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Gallery first which was really lovely. I will be honest, I wasn't quite sure whether it would be any good or if it would be dull but the education officer there is absolutely lovely and so informative!  You can see into what would have been her studio and see pieces that she was working on before she died. Here are some pictures from the Garden: After that we went to the studios attached to the Tate St Ives and thought about what we might use in a medium term plan linking the subjects with activities you could do at the gallery, we also looked at potential challenges and possibilities when planning trips. This was the view from the window! We then had some free time in St Ives, so it was off to the beach!

Last week on the course we had two art trips, one was to visit the Plymouth College of Art and Design (PCAD) to see an artist's exhibit and work with her, then we visited her studio to continue working on a collaberative piece of artwork. The amazing artist we worked with was Sarah Downham Lotto who works with mixed media and collage to create amazing pieces of work. Have a mooch at her work, her website is www.sarastudio.net  An example of her work We started out with a HUGE sheet of paper and with black marker pens we added shapes, lines and doodles inspired by her work (which featured a lot of circles as you'll see in the pictures below. Then we added colour using coloured inks. And then added detail with coloured tissue paper and crepe paper. I will be honest, I didn't like certain aspects when completing this work, but actually when reflecting on it all of the different aspects work well together and I did enjoy making it and liked

I haven't uploaded anything to this blog in ages recently... Need to start doing this slowly again, my aim will be to write a blog post once a week from now :) fingers crossed it works! I've been a busy bee this year, there have been two placements this year, I'm moving in with different people for next academic year (which I am very much looking forwards to!), I've had what feels like a gazillion assignments (although the actual number may have been closer to five..), been diagnosed as dyslexic and am now writing this on my (new!!) laptop through the DSA, competed in cheerleading at a national competition, bought a pet (I wasn't too sure about this to begin with, but am now more convinced that it was a good idea :) ) and may have also bough a car!! So it's been a bit of a busy year to say the least! I'll keep going with this now and make sure I keep up to date a little more! Plus expand on some of the things that have happened this year :)