Day four.. 23/3/2015

This morning’s two lessons were two double year seven classes, it was the first day of a brand new eight week project for both the classes, the focus of this project was going to be ‘Zoomorphia’ meaning the merge between an animal and a human, I was very impressed that both classes were able to use there unitive to guess what this word meant and what the new focus of their study’s would be based on. As I hadn’t ever heard of this word or done any of my own projects on this topic I found it interesting myself, as I was also learning something new, a perfect example of something mythological that this could be, is ‘The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’ with their fictional character of ‘Mr Tumnus’ the half human, half foul creature. The focus of their topic is going to be drawing based, and have sculptured final pieces all focused on Zoomorphia. The artist that they would be focusing on is Melody Ellis.

The second year seven class I was a part of this morning was a lot more rowdy and unsettled then the first class, I was able to point this out straight away as the lesson was straight after their morning break, they came running into the class and were being very disruptive from the start. To keep the pupils engaged during the lesson, I liked how Mr Eplett got every table involved when he was doing a demonstration not only by bribing them with points when the students did something well but he also got some of the students to do live tasks in front of their peers, by putting them on the spot it didn’t only build up their confidence and got them used to talking out load about something but they became more involved which meant they were focusing on their topic more. He did a set of three timed tasks where they had to draw animal faces in so many minutes, I felt this was a brilliant task as they started to understand how to use their time wisely and not waste a single second, they all left realising you can do a lot in a short space of time this was a brilliant example of time management for when it came to their homework task. Mr Eplett also got them out of there comfort zone by randomly picking out students to go to the front of the class to do demonstrations, a brilliant example of this was two tasks, a starter task were they had to figure out where the human eyes sit on our own heads as well as during a full structure to our faces, if the chosen child didn’t quiet grasp it the first time, they had to do it again and again until it was spot on. If I was to do anything like this in my own lessons or workshop, I would consider choosing and using a number of different students to do the one task because I didn’t feel it was very fair to have the spotlight and focus on that one child, by doing each of these tasks he got all the students watching and wanting to work fast because they all knew if they did well they would get points, the rowdiness from the lesson soon calmed down when the lesson became energetic and had a focus on something else other than what they had done at break, it was very far from boring.

The final part of my day was with GCSE and A level students in both fine art lessons and textiles, Something I found interesting today was Mr Eplett creating his own sketch book entirely for the higher education lessons full of many techniques the students can relate back too and be inspired by, I thought this was a brilliant idea, and such a thoughtful thing to do, This would defiantly be something I would like to follow in the same footsteps of, as I love the idea of taking my own work with me to workshops, exhibitions, galleries/museums, work experience opportunity’s etc.. to show to other practitioners and artists my very own work, not only to get my work out there and seen but for the rewarding feeling of artist eyes being inspired by my own work, as I was very inspired by some of Mr Epletts work, even just the idea of the sketch book. By giving the students something to see and something new to try, this is exactly what I would like to bring into my workshop after Easter.     

The only negative problem I found with these lessons is the teachers time managing, he ran out of time during both lessons, I think he could improve this by not doing too many stop, starting demonstrations and having more time of the task that needs to be completed during the students one hour and twenty lessons, this is something I’ve noticed happening in all the lessons around the school.