Micro teaching

Today was the micro teaching day. I was extremely nervous to begin with I don't like speaking in front of lots of people, my nerves get the better of me. I was pleasantly surprised by myself after the result of my session.

I did a mini printing technique for my group to try out. I used quick print foam which you carve and then cover in paint and print with. I thought this was a simple and quick task which would last between 7-10 mins. I started the task off by spending a good few minutes talking about my own work and discussing how I have used this technique before. I am extremely happy with how my session went as I finished exactly on time.

My feedback was mostly good from my group my tutor had said I had a good strong organised plan and a good workshop that was able to fit in a short amount of time. They also liked my introduction especially as I had shown my work and explained what you could do with these prints afterwards.

I also good some constructive feedback on how to improve my workshop if I was to do it again. I was told I should think about a conclusion rather than letting it just Finnish which looking back I wish I would have stopped everyone a minute or two before 10mins and made them talk about their final pieces. Another point made was it could have made the workshop into a mini card making one or some product at the end that could be used. I have taken all this feedback on board and it has helped me broaden my knowledge on what makes a good workshop.

 

 

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Work-shadowing

Today we paid a visit to Abraham Moss high school's art department. It was a great experience for me as I got to witness first hand what it is like to work with high school students in their environment. I thoroughly enjoyed it! I enjoyed talking to them about their work and looking through all their work and their final pieces especially the year 10s that we worked with. It was truest inspiring. They were all very talented and all produced extremely beautiful work. This particular year 10 group were working in natural form, every single student had produced something different and personal. It was inspiring to see such talent. We were able to walk around and interact with the students and talk about why they'd chosen art this also gave them the opportunity to speak to me and how I got to this point in life it was rewarding giving them advice on how to get to this point in life and also tips and tricks for their own work.
Working with year 8's was different to year 10's as they were a little more challenging. They were working on a honey bee project where they had to find facts about them and then present them in their sketchbook appropriately. In this lesson I was able to speak to their teacher who was very kind and told me about her degree and her path she had taken to become a teacher.

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Back after the easter break

Today was our first day in the new Stockport studios.  it was nice to finally be able to get into our space and be able to get back into work its just annoying that we only have a few weeks left in uni and won't really be spending much time there. as soon as we got there we got straight into uni mode and got told about our new tasks over the next few weeks which included planning a workshop for the Stockport Art festival, a micro teaching workshop (10mins long) and finally a work shadowing session at a high school that I am most definitely looking forward to.

We were told we had to base our Workshop on stockport and use it as inspiration this was a little difficult for me as I don't really know a lot about stockport and haven't been their before apart from the town hall. luckily for me I was in a group with two girls who knew about the area and were from there. Straight away they came up with the idea using the Stockport Viaduct as inspiration although we did discuss other ideas. we decided to use the Viaduct as a mural for the community to add bricks onto that have been decorated by them and then also have facts about the Viaduct dotted around on it. some of the facts that we learnt were:

• Built in 1939- 1940
• Largest brick structure in western Europe 
• Victorian engineering
• Cost £70,000
• 33.85 metres high
• 111.1 foot tall
• 11,000,000 bricks
• Designer/engineer- George Buck 

We also got the chance to walk around the town and take pictures.

Viaduct

Easter research

Over Easter I have been looking into different ways to take a route into teaching as I feel thins is a career I would like to pursue. I am more interesting in doing design technology teaching as I feel that's what I am more interested in over being an art teacher and feel my current degree (textile design) caters to the needs of that specific course. I have also decided trying some work experience at a school that could help with with getting on a course. I have also been working at kumon for the past months which has gained me experience with children who are between the ages of 4-16.

 

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High school workshop

This was a difficult workshop as we only had a few hours worth of group planning and discussion so we had to try and squeeze everything in and plan quickly. The started out a little stressful as we had to have a room change because of interview so we had to move tables and equipment into a gallery space which didn't allow us to use the walls for poster as people had their work up for exhibition so we had to make do with putting them on the back of chairs and tables. There was also a communication problem inbetween groups as we were scrambling around moving tables and didn't have enough time to group up in the morning as the high school arrived early. This also cause a problem in the lesson plan as we had to add an extra activity on the end (defence weapons).

I think we could have done a lot better if we had more time for planning at the beginning so communication between groups wouldn't be such a big issue as everyone would know what to do. Also if as a group we discussed what was going on within each table would help make some tables more successful such as the can table it seemed like it was a little difficult to work with as the material is difficult to manipulate. The nature table was a successful table because each student received a senario which they had to cater to the product they produced. I also feel time management was a issue we could have improved as it we weren't all aware of changes that had been made and I felt 20mins per table was a little bit too long for the making process. The communication between the special collections group was also abit difficult as they weren't always present when there were changes being made so maybe if we'd had a person who could run back and forth between the gallery and the special collections to make them aware would of been helpful.

Despite all these changes and issues we came across I felt it still worked well overall as there were more better moments such as the group tour around the Art school and they students enjoyed the tasks as it was an exciting introduction and we got straight into the tasks. The number of people was also helpful as he group could work with the students and interact with them on a 1-1 basis. I think as a group we managed to keep it all together and work quickly even though we had problems at the beginning.

I really enjoyed working with year 9's as they were so imaginative and exciting they enjoyed making and talking to them about their work was interesting and rewarding as we were able to give them an exciting and fun workshop to remember.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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High school planning

This task was difficult because we only had a few hours of meeting time to talk and get together a lesson plan for this workshop. It was very difficult to begin with as we were a huge group working on one workshop together so we wasted abit of time not starting a discussion straight away. So we had to split off into smaller groups and come up with ideas and finally mesh them together. We threw many different ideas out there and had to put them all together and see what we could come up with. A main idea that we like was the apocalypse idea where we gave the students a senario and they had to make do with the items we gave them to makeup a survival kit that could be kept in a window box for a quick escape. This is what we came up with as a group.

 

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