Students need the opportunity to both view and experience art.
Viewing/observing art:
Children need 'suitable, interesting and challenging stimulus and experiences' as starting points. As adults we have been exposed to a lot of art experiences, it's important we give students these opportunities too as the arts are a 'response to our thirst for knowledge, insight and revelation', we use and develop our ability to question, explore, collaborate, extend and develop ones ideasâ.
We need to teach children to genuinely 'see and listen' to art. We need to teach them 'how to be a member of an audience', become 'discerning, active consumers, able to engage with the arts at all levels in an informed and critical way'. It's important we expose them to a variety of different art forms so we can model and teach these skills. Art forms such as:
-creative writing (literature and poetry)
-visual arts
-drama
-music
-movement and dance
-new media (photography, film, television, computer art)
"HEY YOU COPIED ME!!" is a phrase I hear often in the classroom, however in the arts 'we need to acknowledge students may have been inspired' by a work of art. We need to ensure we model these excellence art forms to our students as 'excellence inspires and motivates greater understanding, effort and achievement'. Â Do not punish your students for 'copying' or taking ideas, rather acknowledge that they are trying to achieve excellence.
Creating art:
Firstly, we need to expose students to 'valuable, thought provoking, intense and satisfying or challenging events' such as:
-Live or videoed performances
-YouTube videos (Miniscule, movie trailers)
-Trips to the farm or zoo (Chesterfield Farm, Healsville Sancturary, Australia Zoo)
-Visits to galleries or museums (National Gallery of Victoria, Scienceworks, Melbourne Museum, Melbourne Gaol)
These experiences give us opportunities to reflect upon new understandings, questions and feelings.
Examples:
-create a soundscape, each student creates one sound and repeats, students join in one by one when they feel ready
-brainstorm questions students may have after the experience, research them, present them through drama
-students recreate their favourite part of the excursion/experience by re-creating/enacting
-students to imagine what might happen if⊠'The animals escaped from the farm' or 'The animals began to talk' and work in groups to create a drama piece
-students create a news report/mini movie/ad by filming themselves and using technologies such as iMovie
-create a claymation
-students to imagine what it is like to be a convict/endangered animal, individually starting from the floor in a neutral position, come alive (like a flower growing), go through different stages of their lives perhaps, exploring emotions, actions, body stance, expression
-students to walk through the room in neutral, then with a purpose, then challenge students to walk through the room as if they were 'Annie from the musical we recently viewed'⊠'Now try Mr Warbucks when he found out Annie was kidnapped' ect.
Incorporating Drama into Literacy:
Narratives: are 'the telling of stories with words, still or moving pictures, movements and sounds, forms or the basis of much human communication'.
'Teachers read, tell and re-tell stories about the past, present and future. They may dramatise, personalise, sequence, chronicle, illustrate and contextualise subject context to support learning, because they know that children respond positively to these strategies and they have found that working in this way helps children to think and learn'. -Kear & Callaway 2000
Ideas to use drama when exploring narratives:
-Students to act out narratives already created/ones they create, going through the same process of a beginning, middle/problem and an ending/solution.
-Students watch other narratives, record the important parts of the story (summarising and determining important information)
-Students to explore the use of minimalist words to tell a story (explore Indigenous storytelling)
-Students to explore the use of sound when telling a story, tell your story only using sound (no words), facial expressions and movement.
-Students to act out and film narratives, edit and add sounds/text if necessary.
-Improvisation, ask students individually to listen to a narrative read out, act it out using movements as the story carries on.
-View short movies/YouTube clips, watch only the beginning or the end, ask students to create the missing part of the narrative through drama.
Reading a book
-Act it out with students and have a narrator
-Bring the story alive using voice and imagination
-Ask students to imagine parts of the story they aren't told, 'How do the three bears make the porridge? Where do they go on their walk? What do they do?' allow students to use their imagination and 'accept all contributions'
-Allow students to create their own play to retell the story
-Allow students to improvise a different ending
-Incorporate musical instruments, exploring when best to use them and what emotions/experiences they may represent. Read a story once for comprehension and get students to think about when it might be appropriate to bang the drum loudly or jingle the tambourine happily. In groups ask students to retell the story with a narrator and instruments, perform to the class/record themselves.
Using puppets
-works well for 'shy children' as they feel comfortable 'speaking to or through a puppet'
-create your own, give them character profiles
