Creative Arts Teacher In Year One
Language, Focus, Appropriateness of Interests for the Early Years
Year One requires a different approach when teaching exactly the same content as part of a Visioning Wall Project - a digital mural created to empower.
Following from 1 Creative Arts Therapists In School 2 Programme Achieve - Art Classrooms 3 Digital Murals
When teaching Year One in preparation for the Visioning Wall I pitch the lesson to
- their language level
- their focus (ie friendships, play)
- their interests
- entering their 'learning stage'
- engage
- enable record of achievement of levels
- access their entry points from their point of view.
- deliver content measurable within the context of a programme called Maths Through Art
Maths Through Art is adaptable. Structuring it to suite a project about Visioning is relatively simple
- Maths Through Art runs behind the learning stage
- It may be explicitly referred to but it is not the focus of the lesson.
- and mediates all approaches to teaching art to young children in our school speciailist subject
When I enter the classroom I might say (after introduction) “Together we will use our Maths Through Art knowledge to draw what we think we will look like later in our lives." (MIECAT practitioners use the question “What would that look like?” often.) I could demo draw ing myself as an old woman hiking.
Settling period
- I Greet them “Good Morning 1B may peace be with you.” reference discussion
- Pray with them if appropriate and at the designated time.
- Unpack the topic.
- I would ask the children have they ever dreamed about how they see their lives when they grow up.
- I might refer to Program Achieve (I Can Do It) and ask them what kinds of things they think they might need to do to be able to live a life like that person.
- I might ask them to tell me about people they admire
- We might make list of characteristics that these people.
- We might look at how students feel when they are around people that they trust and admire.
The process is one of Conversation rather than the traditional sense of therapy. It is nurturing and empowering rather than therapeutic in the stricter sense of the word. (It is hard to tell when a conversation will have healing properties though.)
- All the while, I say to the kids "you will be drawing soon." and "You will be doing this too in a minute."
- I scaffold for learning by revising lessons. (I will blog drawing faces soon and link)
- Creative Character Creator ..How To Make a Comic Strip are examples of lessons I referr to frequently
- It is now that Maths Through Art is explicitly referred to by name. This is so that I can facilitate transferr of knowledge. (I will say “Remember when we learned proportion in Maths Through Art.”)
- The language of prespective and proportion is simplified (What goes back in space gets darker. What goes back in space gets smaller. Let's look at the size of the nose compared to the size of the whole face.)
- Within the context of the Project, some things have been well structured. The materials and the size of the paper remain constant. This conformity will be a topic for discussion when we refer to “Getting Along” Program Achieve.
