Key post 3

Reflection 

I have discovered that working with children is a lot harder than I had originally expected, although because of how much i've learnt with planning and teaching workshops I think that I have exceeded my own personal expectations with teaching and learning. Planning the workshops and going into schools were really unfamiliar tasks for me because it's not a task that I have completed before this unit. I found it difficult to begin with because I thought that I would have been more confident with going into schools and teaching the children. (LO2)
I learnt how to deal with children in difficult circumstances, and how to think outside the box with planning and teaching because all situations need to be covered and thought about. I have discovered that not every child is the same and they all have specific learning needs so it was an eye opener to adapt and perform these learning styles with the children. I have also learnt how to create a standard workshop in a small space of time with limited materials and experience. It has informed my practice by making me think about the decisions I make with my work, and how I could peruse an idea with thinking outside the box with materials and ideas. I think that this unit has made me into a more creative and resourceful practitioner, which will help me in my practice. (LO1)
Within all of the group sessions that we did, I think that my contribution was adequate and consistent because I attended all sessions and took everything in, and I also made creative suggestions and was always involved within the planning and teaching. I think that if the groups were smaller, I would have contributed more and would have put more effort into making the workshops work but because there were so many of us in the groups we all needed some input, so we all had an equal amount. I think that I could have improved on being more of a leader, I wish I had that opportunity to lead and be the person who organizes how the work is done. I want to be in control more of my work and be the organizer because I think that I thrive more in that environment rather than be told what to do, I could also incorporate this into my practice by organizing exhibitions and workshops. (LO4)
I think that if we had more time to develop and research, I think that we could have made better decisions about certain workshops, and others could have had more input into the work, although I think our ideas were fully formed and I think that it was a strong idea for the time frame given. We followed the brief correctly for both workshops and I think that we exceeded our own expectations considering the time limit and limited materials etc. (LO3)
I learnt more than expected because when I stated this unit I was naive in thinking that I already knew a lot about teaching and developing ideas. I think that it's helped me a lot to consider certain things within my own practice and also that I should probably be a bit more open minded about subjects and learn new things. Although I think that my confidence has improved drastically within the time frame of this unit, I still think that it is a thing to improve for myself and I should get an idea and go through with it with confidence and knowing i'll do well. I will put this into practice with my own work in the third year and will hopefully be a more confident person. (LO2)
The key motivations within the unit for me were using our creative input to deliver a knowledgeable workshop from where the children could learn certain skills that would make them think creatively about the decisions that they were making. This has influenced my future ambitions by making me want to teach people how to think creatively about a situation or theme, I think that this element of this unit will carry on through my development of my practice. (LO1)

Key post 2

End of week four / 4th April

I think that the collaborative aspects of the work have worked okay, I think that it could have been improved on the organisation side because I think some of the groups we worked in were too big to be able to all give in an efficient input to the work, although despite the situations I think we all worked well as a group. In the two groups that I worked in, I thought that we all got on well and distributed the work load and we all participated efficiently within the groups. I think that we have all learned how to deliver a workshop and adapt it quite quickly and I think that we've done a really good job on delivering workshops to children we've never met before and we didn't know too much about. (LO4)
I have developed a new approach to teaching children, I think that at the beginning of the project I thought I knew how to deal with and teach children although I think i've learnt from being in Holy Name and Abraham moss that the teaching style changes throughout the year groups. I have realized that keeping the children involved and engaged is harder as the year groups get older and I think that it's a difficult thing to learn especially if you are mixing between year groups. I have developed confidence in talking to children and keeping the conversation going although I did find especially in the Holy Name workshop that it was hard to keep focused on the task when each child had different needs. (LO3/4)
I think that I benefited from collaborating with other people and groups in the end because they all had ideas and we all worked well to combine some ideas together, and I think we all helped each other by giving constructive criticism which benefited us all because not many of us had created workshops before for children. I think to further my research I would have maybe tried to research teaching methods for myself, and conducted more research into hints and tips on how to keep confident and how to keep a workshop running smoothly etc. I was surprised about how difficult I found the Holy name workshop, and I did have to think on my feet a little with how I could interact with some particular students. (LO2/4)
My creative responses that I have done are all body or nature related responses within my work and I think this interests me because I've always been interested in science and how the body works and functions. It relates to my practice because I discover how the body works and putting a different perspective on it almost. My practice links with the work i'm currently doing now because it fits under the broad theme of nature or natural and I think that my practice has helped a little because i'm so used to the subject of the natural.  (LO3)
I need to research on learning styles of the children and maybe how to grasp the childrens attention more and keep them engaged with the task. I am glad that I have linked my practice with this unit because it feels like I already know the subject area loosly. (LO3)
I think in both of the groups, we manage our time well because we have lots of groups on Social networking were we are all working together and coming up with ideas and testing them which is great for all of us to see so we all know what each other is doing to a specific standard. We also use the Social networking site to arrange times were we can all meet and bring work that we have done which makes it easier for all of us to be there. The social networking site has played a huge part in our work and has aided us really well because any research that we did we sent to each other and it was really good to see websites and articles that people had found relating to the work that we are doing. (LO3/4)

Key post 1

End of week 2 / March 21st

I have discovered that working with primary school children is really fulfilling, and that it's something that I wold like to pursue further within my practice. I have learnt that working with children is a lot more complex than I imagined because each child is different in different ways. I have also discovered how to think in more detail about how to present and teach a workshop, and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be because of adapting it to various ages and abilities, and understanding my aims and objectives for the workshop. (LO2)

I think that nature has played a large part in my ideas because it was present in the work I did with Northenden primary school and with the workshop making and I think that it's a really strong subject to work around. With the theme of window boxes, there are loads of different ways to tie it in with different situations, such as in Northenden we created a forest/natural themes wall mural, and with the workshop making we decided to think about the natural shapes of a beehive and incorporating as many natural aspects into the work as possible. The theme of nature is a really good idea for working with children because they know about it because it's all around us, and the children are automatically interested. (LO3)

With our workshop making, I think that we struggled as a group to think of something in a short space of time and create it using limited materials. We loved our theme of keeping it as natural as possible and thought that the beehive shaped window box would be a more creative alternative to a standard window box. We ended up trying lots of different methods to try and create the shape, and get the materials to stick etc and it was near impossible. I found this frustrating because I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve although we couldn't because by the time we had realized that it wouldn't work as a deliverable workshop, we didn't have enough time to create another idea or make a prototype for it. For me this was a frustrating process however I know now that I should open my mind a bit more to other options instead of focusing on one idea only. (LO1)

I intend to explore the natural aspect of the workshops that we have been creating because I think that it's important as part of a window box that it has a natural aspect about it. I want to explore this idea more because I think that there are a lot more possibilities to discover within the theme and its easily adaptable. I have used the natural objects in my work such as leaves, and I've always been interested in natural forms and I've also created work on the human body which ties into the natural aspect of the work. (LO1)

I really enjoyed working at Northenden Primary school because of just interacting with the children and seeing their creative flare at such a young age is really inspiring. I never expected their work to be so good and creative, they really captured the natural theme that we were working from and delivered an exceptional outcome. I also enjoyed the talk that we had from Avril who was an art therapist, I was really interested in the link between art and psychology and how something so simple like drawing could explain so much about a person. I thought that the talk was really inspirational and gave an interesting insight of what an art therapist does and how it can help a lot of people within the community. (LO3)