Interesting journal article.

I came across a journal article which caught my eye as soon as I read the title, "Parents' goals, knowledge, practices, and needs regarding music education for their young children in South Korea'. The reason was probably because it contained the words 'music' and 'South Korea'. I was born in South Korea, never lived their but spent my whole primary school life with Korean parents and grandparents. However, when I started to read the article, I found the focus was not on 'Korea' but more on music itself, which is why I continued to read it. 

Youm (2013) states that music education is crucial for the development of children not only in the Creative Arts but within all areas. This is likely as music is a positive factor that enhances the emotional, social and cognitive development in children. However, primary school students are under the care of their parents and the music provided to these children is mostly not by choice, but by what is approved by their parents.

It is also stated that music can serve as an 'emotional bonding' activity in which the parent and the child grow a connection. I remember in primary school when I used to dread private piano lessons, but I still loved playing the piano at home. My favourite part of playing the piano would be when I would practice at home and grandfather would pop a chair next to me, watch me play and ask me to "teach" him. Although I was just learning the notes of the piano myself, at the age of five, I was teaching my grandfather all I learnt from these lessons. I think the only reason I continued to go for these lessons was so I could come home and 'teach'. This is where I grew a strong bond with my grandfather despite the fact that he was so strict and strong on discipline.

The article discusses that parents feel lost when teaching music to their children. I find that this is the way most M.Teach (Primary) pre-service teachers will feel if placed directly into a music classroom with a class of students all wanting to do something. The article continues by saying parents "seek direction wanting to do something good for their children but not knowing how" (Youm, 2013), I think this depicts my thoughts on teaching not only music but the whole Creative Arts stream. I love the Creative Arts, absolutely love music, drama, dance and visual arts. But before and during the unit of study 'EDMT5530 Creative Arts K-6', quite often I wondered, "Is it enough to love it?", "Does enjoying something mean I can teach it and teach it well?", "Will my students learn? If so, how? If not, why?". But then I think back to when i played the piano with my grandfather, I taught him what I knew and by doing this, I consolidated my knowledge and learnt even more than I knew. I think the underlying principles in teaching the creative arts can be quite similar. Although at the moment, I am still not 100% confident in going into a classroom and delivering an excellent lesson where all my students will be engaged and passionate about their learning, I have gained quite a steady knowledge of how to plan and where to look to be able to teach this KLA. This unit of study has really helped me learn about how to teach and why we need to teach the creative arts in primary school. I believe that with further practice, with further research and with further planning, I think I will be able to place myself in a position where I teach to learn and ultimately learn to teach the Creative Arts!


Youm, H.Y. (2013). Parents' goals, knowledge, practices, and needs regarding music education for their young children in South Korea. Journal of Research in Music Education, 61(3), 280-302.

Week 9, Visual Arts.

Visual Arts Workshop

This was our last visual arts workshop, and in this session our class shared our visual arts teaching opportunities that we had in our 4 week professional experience. Generally, everybody was given the opportunity to teach a visual arts lesson at their schools but there was a distinct split in those who had a positive experience, and those who did not. Lucky for me, I had a positive experience AND I was given the opportunity to teach 4 visual arts lessons. 

I was placed with a Stage 3 class at Homebush West Public School (HWPS)and this class loved their art. The classroom had two walls which were labelled "Gallery" and students could pin up their artworks to the wall whenever they wanted to. I had a look and there were some amazing drawings. Unfortunately, I didn't take a photograph of them as at the time I felt that they were personal possessions of the students and later I completely forgot to ask. However, I received many drawings from the students during this professional experience and I will upload them onto my blog in a later post. 

Lesson 1: Pictionary!

With my class, we had been focusing on adjectives as a language device during our English lessons so I thought it would be an amazing opportunity to deliver this lesson (taken from the idea in week 1). I got the students to sit in table groups of six and like we did in the visual arts workshop, I have each group one colour and A4 pieces of paper with alphabets written in the corners. Before we started, I re-capped our English lesson on adjectives and told the class that we would be drawing a representation of an adjective that described our family and community at HWPS. I showed them some examples I had made previously and the class was immediately engaged. I used the tips of emphasising no rewards but as we had been in the workshop, it didn't stop the children getting over-excited and eager to 'win'. I regret forgetting to take photos of the work samples, must remember next time!

Extension activities: Have doubles and or triples of each alphabet so the children that finish earlier can do another!

Lesson 2: Proportional portraits!

This lesson was observed by my tertiary mentor and besides that, I was nervous as to whether the children would enjoy drawing portraits and whether they would follow my instructions by will because they were interested not just because I was the 'teacher'. At the beginning of the lesson, I showed the class a picture of my portrait and told them this was what we were going to do today, and then showed them my cubist portrait to explain that this was an example of what we were aiming to finish in the following 3weeks. To my surprise, the children thought cubism was 'awesome' and they understood the principles of different perspectives and angles. The class followed my example (which I did on the whiteboard) to sketch out the proportional features of the face. Due to the short timeframe of the art lessons (45minutes), I ensured the children not to rush and that we would continue to complete them next week.

Here are some of my student's sketches started!

Lesson 3: Proportional portraits & cutting!

In this lesson, we re-capped what we were aiming to do (Cubist portraits) and continued with our sketching of proportional faces. As my students were stage 3, they had an eye for detail and as you can see below, some students even drew the fine lines under the eye and drew in eyelashes. 

Here are some of my student's completed portraits!

I was very impressed with what my students did, and they were very impressed themselves! After the portraits were complete, I asked the students to use a ruler to draw lines across the paper that would result in three pieces when cut. I demonstrated this on the board so that the children could have some ideas and after they checked with their table groups, they were allowed to cut their portraits into three pieces after they had written their name and two colours on the back of each piece-to-be. 

Lesson 4: Cubist portraits and more.

Unfortunately, my last lesson was on my last day of professional experience and during my art session slot, many of my students had to leave for that hour to complete other activities or go to PSSA. With the children that were left, i gave them the option of continuing with their cubist portraits or completing their "Get better soon" cards for a teacher from HWPS who was in hospital as I had about 10 new children from a different classroom in my class. Instead of using paint (Paint can get messy and is difficult to use and clean up in a short amount of time) the children used oil pastels, coloured pencils or wax crayons to colour the portraits in. They loved mixing different types of colouring-in materials and exploring the effects of smudging and scraping. But as many of the students were not present, the pieces were unable to be completed. One lucky portrait got all the pieces coloured in but the remaining, I left in two large folders as my supervising teacher said if he could, he would continue with them the following semester. 

I really enjoyed my professional experience and was extremely thankful that my supervising teacher was flexible with what I wanted to try out in my lessons. I was lucky that although I had to team-teach for other subjects, I was given the opportunity to 'fly solo' with the art lessons. I believe that the visual art workshops truly helped me gain ideas for these lessons and am glad that they went so well!

Week 3, Visual Arts.

Visual Arts Workshop

This workshop we were introduced to a version of cubist portraits. We had to cut our portraits (from last week) into 4 pieces, write our names and two colours on the back of each piece and the class would share pieces and paint four pieces that was not their own.

I chose pink and blood orange. These are the pieces put together after they were painted by the class. There was some smudging on one of the pieces but it has it's unique abstract effect.

Teaching tip: Ensuring the students painted pieces that were not their own seemed like a good idea. There are always children who are more advanced in artistic skill than others and the children who have low confidence in visual arts are not eager to participate in class. By allowing different students to paint different pieces, each student will work hard on the pieces as firstly it is not theirs and secondly, they know somebody else is trying hard on their own. It also allows the appreciating of different perspectives which highlight the underlying factors of cubism.

Before I use this idea in my art lesson, I would have to explain cubism and ensure that the students understand that cutting a portrait into four pieces does not mean it is a cubist portrait!
Cubism: Displaying multiple viewpoints in one picture!

Week 2, Visual Arts.

Visual Arts Lecture

In the lecture today, I learnt that there are stages of visual art development in children. I didn't know this! I thought that as children grow up, the reason to why they could draw better lines and better pictures was because they adapt to gripping stationary and gain more control in how to use it. This is possibly and probably true but I didn't know that you could categorise children's artworks into stages. 

Stages of drawing (1): 

Scribble stage (Age 3-4): Children understand that they can make marks on paper using stationary.This stage is common in children who have a lack of experience in drawing and painting. 

Symbolism stage (Age 7-8): Children start to draw items that exist in life around them. They tend to start drawing things that are most important to them and the colours they use to portray their pictures usually match what they have 'learnt' about the real world (ie: Water will be blue no matter what!)

Realism stage (Age 10-11): Children start to draw with detail and start to develop a desire to draw realistically. 

Examples provided by uni.

Wilson's graphic principles: Why children draw the way they do!

1. Simplicity principle: The easiest, simplest way to draw. 
2. Perpendicular principle: Defying the laws of gravity, drawings that cannot actually exist in real life, the way it has been drawn. 
3. Territorial imperative principle: One can cut each item of the drawing without disturbing the whole picture. Each drawing on the page has it's own space and territory. 
4. Fill-the-format principle: Fill the complete page with drawings. ie: Hands will have an unlimited number of fingers just to fill the space. 
5. Conservation and multiple application principle: Repeated symbols in drawings. 
6. Draw everything principle: X-ray drawings! ie: Draw the inside and outside of everything. 
7. Plastic principles: Whatever is more important will be drawn bigger and more detailed, even though it may not be true to real life. 

All I could think of whilst looking at the examples was, "HOW CUTE!". So i decided to ask my parents if they kept any of my childhood pictures. This is one of them!

So this one was drawn back when I was in year one,  six years old! Apparently I brought this home after the first week back from school after the holidays. The topic was: Draw what you enjoyed most during your holidays. I think it was the first time I got on a train and obviously that must have blown my mind, because thats what I drew. A train ride! 

Symbolism stage. I would say that this picture demonstrates: Perpendicular principle (The train tracks going up into the sky), multiple application principle (Look at the passengers! All have same faces who look like my father despite the fact that even I was on this train, in Africa.) and plastic principle (The train takes up 70% of the paper!). 

Visual Arts Workshop

My beautiful friend and my semi-beautiful drawing.

We drew portraits in this workshop. Drawing human faces is rather difficult for me, I am still uncertain when it comes to drawing portraits so this workshop was good in that I could learn not only how to draw but how to teach to draw as well. We were given simple, short and easy-to-follow instructions on how to sketch the face and then we were given the opportunity to fix our portraits to resemble our opposite peer. It was fun and my partner and I laughed through the whole session as we gave each other 'facial reconstruction' with pencil and eraser. 

I learnt the steps to drawing a proportional face and will definitely practice! I can see this lesson in the primary classroom, I would probably give more time for younger students. I feel that this activity would most suit a stage 2 or stage 3 classroom where the children would certainly be in the symbolism stage progressing to the realism stage. 

1.  Matthews, J. (2003). Drawing and painting: Children and visual representation,  SAGE publications, London. 

Name montage.

Visual Arts Homework.

After the first visual arts workshop, we were given 'homework'. We were to make a name montage that represented us. My name is only five letters and there are many things that easily represent me, so it was quite hard choosing what to place where. But here it is!

Y

The four countries I've lived in. These places have built up who I am now!

Materials: Pen, colour pencils. 

U

I am obsessed with cosmetics! I love trying out new products, recommending the good ones and experimenting. 

Materials: Cosmetic packaging boxes. 

J

This is a J... not a G. In the shape of the treble clef because I have a passion for music! 

Materials: Polka dot plastic shopping bag. (Double meaning here haha)

I

People who know me will also know that I live on black jeans. I have so many pairs of different brands, cuts and detail but nobody except me really knows...

Materials: Black denim. 

N

Primary education and immunology, what I loved and what I love now!

Materials: Ink and stamps. 

Teaching idea: In the primary classroom, it is quite common that students have a name tag on their allocated tables or by their bag hooks or even on their school storage trays. Instead of printing out a boring name tag or getting the students to do the common 'colour in your name after you write it out in bubble writing', create this boring task into an awesome and fun art lesson!

Week 1, Visual Arts.

Visual Arts Lecture.

The first thing we were asked in this lecture is "What is the creative arts?", and to this question, many students (Myself included) linked the answer to drawing and making things. However, as the lecture continued, I found that the creative arts also incorporated drama, dance and music. Combining music, drawing and dance? How exciting! I absolutely love watching theatre and musicals, adore exploring museums and galleries, enjoy doodling on paper and have a passion for listening to, playing and making music. How fun would this unit of study be! But then, I thought about WHY I was doing this UoS in the first place and then it struck me... Enjoying the creative arts experience would be quite different to teaching students about creative arts and then getting them to enjoy it as much as I do. Hopefully, I'll gain some confidence and break through the cloud of worries building up through this unit.

EDMT5530, be nice!

NSW K-6 Creative Arts: Visual arts, music, drama, dance. (1)

 "Creative arts is a non-threatening tool that children can relate to through drawing, painting, play, drama, music and many other modes as a means of self expression. The creative arts can be used as an alternative language, assisting children to get in touch with their feelings and begin to articulate how they feel." (2)

Visual Arts Workshop. 

This is as good as it gets.

As a child, I was never an extreme artist despite the fact that my aunt taught art and my mother was a fashion designer. BUT, as I said before, I enjoyed pencil on paper and more often than not, I thought my "scrawly-doodles" were quite... cute? 

In today's workshop, we participated in a modified-version of 'pictionary'. The theme was set as "Characteristics and features of an art teacher". Even though many of us in the class were not confident in our drawing skills, everybody was engaged and had so much fun! Now I imagine taking this activity into my classroom, how fun would it be for the kids?

There was emphasis in that there would be no rewards for the winning group, this is a great classroom management tip in that children tend to get rather competitive and despite their kind nature, the can't help but 'cheat to win' or get upset if they don't. Note that extrinsic motivation in the classroom is not recommended anyways as it doesn't benefit the learning of the students in the long run. Even though we were not primary school students and even thought there was no reward, due to our 'adult nature' we were still competitive and dived into guessing to win. 

My drawing: 'M' (Word: Marvellous), 

'Artwork' explanation: Marvel (Marvel heroes) + US (U.S flag)

PS. Our team... didn't win. 

Activity: Modified pictionary. 

• Form class into groups.
• Give each group a specific colour (This is the only colour the group can use to draw) * This makes it easy to identify groups at the end and makes it a challenge as well for students to try and portray their ideas in only one colour. 
• Hand out drawing paper with alphabet in corner. 
• Aim is to draw a picture that represents the theme, that starts with the alphabet on your paper's corner. 
• Guessing activity at the end, giving points to groups. 

References

1. NSW DET. (2006). Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus. Sydney: author.

2. Prior, K. (2005). Why creative arts with children? Parity, 18(9).