I anticipated that I would be doing some work shadowing and perhaps helping to run some classes depending on how much interaction with the children the chosen teacher would allow us to have.
When I found out that our group would be designing/making something for the school's playground I was very excited as this was not what I thought we would be doing. My first impression of the brief was positive, I was glad to hear that we would be given quite a lot of freedom with the design and that a lot of the choices were up to us, something I am not used to, I half expected there to be a lot of restrictions when it comes to the design and making of the piece.
We have been given the opportunity to create workshops for the children of the year three class of Northendon Primary School. We decided as a group that the best way to tackle the first meeting with the class would be to split the class into 6 groups (as there were 6 of us running workshops) and use a "speed dating" (for use of a better term) type structure for the afternoon. (The groups would take turns at each table and take part in each workshop, move on etc.) We had 15 minute slots for each activity, and would use the first 5 minutes to introduce ourselves, our practice and tell them about university life. We then had 10 minutes to run a workshop that related to our own practice. As I am a Textiles in Practice student based in the weave area, I decided to do some paper weaving with the children. I wasn't sure at first if the children would like my workshop, I thought that they might find it a bit boring, or maybe wouldn't grasp how it related to textile weaving. I was in fact proven wrong on this as the majority of the children seemed to like it, and had quite a lot of room for creativity during the workshop as they could create their own colour patterns and were free to experiment with different thicknesses of paper etc.
One thing that I was surprised about was how capable the children were. I was worried that they would not be interested in paper weaving, and that maybe I would lose their attention whilst talking about myself and my studies. However the children proved me wrong by being very willing to listen and some showed genuine interest, asking me questions and wanting to find out more. They were very quick to grasp what I was telling them to do, and the majority of the class listened intently to my instructions. Some were better than others at the paper weaving, and there were a couple who needed some extra help which is inevitable. I was extremely impressed by the children's positive attitudes towards learning new skills, something that I was not expecting.
Overall the day ran very smoothly, a lot better than I was expecting. I was anticipating the children to take advantage of the fact that they were not taking part in set lessons, maybe by being loud and excitable, or by not following instructions. However, they were all pretty well behaved. The children all seemed to have a great time and at the end of the class they took it in turns to tell the rest of the class what they liked most about the afternoon and the things they enjoyed learning about.
Our second visit to the school went very smoothly again. I have been very impressed with how bright the children are, I wasn't sure what kind of learning level a year three class would be at, but they were much more advanced than I thought. We got the children to design their own alien that would be used on our final piece that is being put in the playground by using promt cards that they had to follow with words on such as "six legs" and "big ears". At first I thought that the 2 hour time slot we had for the task was too long, but this actually seemed to be an appropriate time slot for the task. Some children again worked faster than others, so during the time that was left over for these children we were quick to think on our feeet by suggesting to the children that they think of names, jobs, stories about the aliens that they had created. Even though this was exactly an art and design aspect of the afternoon, I thought that this was very important to include in the afternoon as it related to university level of art and design. We, as artists, constantly use a narrative to help explain our working and thinking processes. Being able to speak about your artwork is something I have found difficult int he past and I think that this is because I haven't had much practice in this area before coming to university. I think that by encouraging this in younger learning levels, it helps to give the children these skills to work on and improve for later on in life. This is something that I have only recently realised during this unit.
Our group showed a lot of professionalism during this unit by consistently giving each other support during the unit. We were very good at keeping in contact throughout our time together, whether this be by phone, text or on our facebook group. We have arranged a few meetings seperate to the school visits and tutorials, these meetings were very important as they allowed us to prepare for our school visits and to talk about what needed to be done and who were the best people to do such tasks. I have learnt during this unit that communication is the best tool to have in a group and the fact that we have communicated so well throughout the project has definitely allowed us to excell in our working processes.
As our final piece is made of wood, I have been using a material that I have never used before. I have never worked three dimensionally and this has proved to be very challenging to me. At first I did think that I would be able to work in this way, when actually, I fond it very difficult. I was not able to project my vision of the piece as I did not have the previous knowledge of how my vision cuold actually be made into a real piece. Despite this, the process has been an eye opening experience to me. I have actually enjoyed challenging myself with three dimensional work and researching wood joinery and new materials has actually been exciting. However, I do not think I will be working with wood in the future as I am not skilled enough to execute a professional wooden piece. I think I will be sticking to weaving.. I would not have known how difficult wood working is if it wasn't for the nature of Unit X. Something to bear in mind in the future!
I have really enjoyed group working during this unit and feel that my group have been blessed to be put together. I think the reason we have bonded sow ell is that we have chosen to be part of this group, rather than placed together by tutuors (which happened last year during unit x) and because we all had similar interests for the work, we have all been willing to put in the effort and actually try to work together as a group. Working with a mixed group of students from different areas of art and design has allowed me to engage in areas of practice that I am unfamiliar with, and this has challenged my own working practice. This is important to me as I feel that in the outside working environment you will be placed in a team that have come from all backgrounds, and keeping open minded about different working methods is something to bear in mind.
I have really enjoyed this unit, I would go as far as saying that this unit has been my most favourite since starting university last year.
I have thoroughly enjoyed having the opportunity to work with a group of students from all over the art school. It has been a great experience working with people who have a similar interest for the future as myself.
My confidence in working with new materials, and in new collaborative ways has grown extensively throughout the unit as I have been able to tackle things that wouldn't normally come up in my regular units.
Having the opportunity to work in a primary school has been amazing, as my ultimate goal is to become a primary school teacher I am so pleased that I had the chance to get some work experience first hand with a primary school class. This has secured my vision in pursuing a career in primary education as it has been so enjoyable working with the children.
I have learnt that it is ok to make mistakes in your work as this has allowed me to take a step back and assess what went wrong, and how to prevent this from happening again in the future.
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