I've never been good at art. When I was growing up in Singapore, art wasn't of much importance as a subject in schools and even then, it was all very rigid. My artworks in school were graded. I mean, how does a teacher give a grade to a piece of artwork? I never want to give my students a grade in art. I simply want them to enjoy the process of creating and imagining.
The first Arts workshop was a really wonderful experience. I loved the idea of getting my students to do a Name Montage at the beginning of the year. Rather than having them write about themselves, I thought that giving them the leeway to describe themselves by creating a montage for themselves is an excellent and fun way to get to know my future students. I will definitely be keeping this activity in mind.
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| My brainstorm for the Name Montage |
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| It turned out a little different from my brainstorm. As I started on this project, the ideas just grew. |
I really enjoyed the Pictionary game as well. Rules can be changed and this activity can be easily scaffolded to suit students of different age groups! I felt that limiting each person to a letter while drawing an attribute of an Art teacher would be a greater challenge for the Upper Primary levels. As it turned out, though no prizes were given, we all had fun and it was an enjoyable task. This activity can be used in any other KLA. Not just visual arts. It can definitely be tweaked to fulfill a literacy (thinking of vocabulary beginning with the given alphabet) or numeracy (keeping score) outcome.
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| An attribute of an arts teacher starting with "N". |
