KEY BLOG POST 3: Reflection by the submission deadline

I have learnt many things over this unit which have opened my eyes to the hard work and dedication that it takes to be a teacher. One of my favourite and main new discovery has to be the lesson planning stage although I enjoyed this I felt it was a very tense and stressful part. I learnt having to over plan and make sure everything planned to the minute was very important and saves from having problems in the workshop and how vital it is to have every stage planned out properly and appropriately. This unit has also eloped me fight my fears and help me to speak to different people and produce workshops for my peers. I have always been frightened of speaking in front of people and talking about my work and by doing a micro teaching session with my peers it has taught me confidence and the positive feedback has helped me develop a liking for speaking and interacting with people. The collaboration of different people has also been interesting for me as its not something I've done before. although sometimes it has been a little difficult managing a large group of people working on one lesson plan I feel everyone played a part and pulled through when the needed to.

I feel there could have been more research going into lesson planning and perhaps a few more days at a high school work shadowing would be good experience and give more insight into what it would be like in a real life setting. Overall I think more preparation time before the two workshops could have been more helpful as they would have given us the chance to produce a better and more efficient lesson plan as we did have a few time issues on both workshops. The high school workshop especially needed longer time planning as it wasn't as straight forward and easy as the primary one. I feel this workshop would have benefited more if we had longer time as we would have been able to plan something that flowed more easier and had more efficient timing.

We did have two other opportunities to work with the stockport festival which was later cancelled and also another workshop which was cancelled also which has been a little disappointing. This unit over all has been very enjoyable although there have been moments when I haven't been sure about where we were supposed to be and where we had a specific area for us to go and work as we had a few problems with our new stockport studios. There were a few minor timetable problems that confused me a little but the unit was mostly straight forward and a lot of fun to do.

By choosing to do College One this has further confirmed my ambitions to become a teacher as I enjoyed working at a high school much more than I expected. The work shadowing was extremely helpful and interesting as it gave me insight into classroom life and also gave me the chance to speak to students and also teachers. I was able to give students advice and help them with their art projects which was something I felt was rewarding as I could help them do better using my ideas and my own experience to aid them. It has also helped me decide what kind of teaching I would like to do after doing some research into both art and design technology I have decided that design technology is something I would be more interested in as Textile design is my specialty and I feel that is something I am confident in teaching.

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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Stockport Art festival Proposal

For this brief we worked as a group and came up with the following:

We decided we would have an already made stencil on the wall which would then be decorated by the community and people who are visiting the Art festival using their memories of Stockport.

• Quick and easy few minutes task
• People can decorate more than one brick
• Brings together the community
• Adds ownership to the final product
• Adds identity to stockport 
• Each brick is different and personal
• Good for all ages even young children for drawings

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

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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KEY BLOG POST 2: Lines of Enquiry

We have had a very short space of time to have two major lesson plans made and set up. I think the use of team work and collaboration has helped us get through. It has made life easier for us as we have been able to delegate tasks to one another and work together quickly. Although I do feel some people in the group are a little louder and pushy with ideas and don't listen to other people so far this hasn't cause a problem but in the future I think if people went being hear I think this may cause problems. It is a big group for the high school workshop so I have been massively difficult trying to pick out one idea. We managed to split up the group into smaller parts which made it easier to make a decision and choose an idea and in the end we decided to choose a mixture of ideas used together as one. I feel this was a good way to bring in the people who weren't being heard and give them a chance to speak up in a smaller group and then also having a section of everyones ideas in one final workshop idea.

Planning workshops and lesson plans and then running them in practice was a good way to figure out time managing and also role play helped us get a grasp of how long we would need for each section such as the introduction and the conclusion. These beginning stages helped us a lot as after we had rail runs of each lesson we realised that we needed to have everything planned to the second so it all ran smoothly and through role play we realised we needed to take into consideration that there may be children who are a little challenging and less willing to engage.

I think I will enjoy working with high school children more over the younger primary school children as I feel they will be little more challenging and thinking up ideas for workshops for children between the ages 12-16 may be a little harder as their attention span is a little bit longer and they are more older so are learning new and more difficult processes.  whilst landing for year (s we found it a little bit more difficult because we were trying to come up with different ideas but still really interesting engaging and fun. at the beginning we hadn't realised hat we needed to fit the window box theme in with our idea which had caused a few problems in our lesson closer to the workshop as we ad to add different sections in which fitted in with the window box idea.

In my own practice I am more of a surface designer  so it was little bit difficult to introduce this into the window box brief for the children. I decided I would put myself forward for the window box designing (outside of the box) and help the children draw and give them ideas about what would look good on the outside of the box. I feel if i was able to choose my own workshop I would try and cater it for all students but use my own practice (textile design) as a basis for the project. I would manipulate the project so it won't specifically be textile based but maybe paper based or digital as I feel this could be better suited to a larger variety of learning types and tastes.

To further this idea I think researching further into my own practice and different elements and sections that could be useful for all types of learning and not only using specifically what I do on a daily basis but widening my horizons so I can work with a variety of different students, learning and age wise. Research into time management and fitting different types of skills and learning techniques into short time amounts for different ages is also necessary and appropriate as engaging and keeping the students attention at all time is a must. I will start this of by researching when its appropriate to break from a task and then move on to another.

Communication

Through out the project we have been keeping in touch mainly using Facebook. It's a good quick way to keep in touch as we don't have a lot of time in between sessions as they are so close together so outside of uni hours we have been communicating in Facebook. It's also been a good way to get information about sessions as they have been quite all over the place and ambiguous as we haven't got a specific place to work as the Stockport studios won't be finished till after Easter so we've been all over the place and not knowing where to meet half the time.

 

 

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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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