Week 11 Reflection

This week’s class was full of new experiences involving drama and music. We made up songs with drama components, furthered are ukulele skills, learned how to juggle, choreographed a dance to music and took turns leading a song.

With regards to juggling, Terry taught us an important lesson about education, If you never give children the chance to learn something, you are limiting the scope or possibility of what they can be capable of. We need to give children a broader and more diverse array of chances of doing things with regards to the arts. This is something important to keep in mind as future teachers of young minds.

This weeks reading emphasised the importance of play, and the value of it. Play is often dismissed as non-educational, or nonsense work, but many theorists have argued the value of free play, particularly Vygostky, who supports the social benefits of play on one’s development. The reading noted that play is not simply busy work, and that “play is connected with children’s lives and their interests” (McArdle, 2012, p42). 

Play can be seen as a form of self-expression and enables curiosity and discovery. Many of the activities we did today in class allowed for a lot of freedom to experiment with play. Whether that meant being able to make up dances, having complete freedom about body movements, or making up songs, having freedom experimenting with percussion and non percussion instruments, and figuring out and making meaning of these forms of the arts themselves.

Although it is the teacher’s role to guide the group, teacher’s don’t always have to be task-masters and set out tasks for children that have specific answers or ways of doing. Especially when concerned with the arts, it is important that children are given freedom for self-expression, and are allowed to learn from that. 

Educational theorist John Dewey was very much supportive of the role of the teacher as more of a guide that facilitates growth through freedom, and not always considering only traditionally academic values or ways of teaching. A quote from his literature, Democracy and Education captures this notion, “Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.” Dewey, n.d., p154). 



Art Experience:



For children aged 3-5



Materials/Equipment: Costume box, bits and pieces of clothing that can be used as dress ups

Play a song for children with a lot of dynamic changes and changes that evoke strong feelings:

 Eg. Bizet - Overture 



Let children dance or act to this piece of music freely. 



Learning Outcome: Allows children freedom and creativity, whilst giving them a song to which they will match their movement/drama etc… to some extent