Key Blog Post Three

We finally did it. After all the ups and downs this unit have threw our way the sense of achievement feedback from the year 7’s is overwhelming. After such a shaky start I am extremely proud of myself and our group.

I feel my engagement within this unit has been of a good standard and I have appropriately contributed well. I missed a workshop due to a hospital appointment, it was one I was looking forward to. Other than that I feel I have engaged well. Over the past week I had noticed that one of the girls hadn’t felt quite right so had a quick look at her blog just to check. It was clear from her blog that she felt left out this was quite upsetting for me. I felt like I had to talk to her. We had a conversation and she expressed to me she felt out of the loop, this is something I wouldn’t want anyone to feel. We had a conversation and talked it out, after this our group dynamic improved immensely. This was something that felt like an achievement to me as in the past I would have taken things personally in a negative way. But working in this group I have learnt to think before I speak and look at things from every side because noone is always right. I feel in group work I have had my say whilst letting everyone else have theirs. However at times I could see that other people’s ideas weren’t being heard. In future I will try and help people get their ideas and opinions through into the group.

 As a whole I feel the place that most needs improving for future is time management and communication. This was clearly in need of Work an example of this was the run through day, it went miserably. Tim management, communication, planning were off, due to people not doing their set jobs. We got it together at the end but it would have been nice to not worry. In the future I would not presume that everyone had done their jobs, and I would have my own backup plan. I would ask throughout if they were getting on alright and if they wanted any help. After all this is a collaborative unit and it’s not fair to place the blame on other people for not doing the work because me personally and as a group should have communicated better to make sure everyone was okay. This was a key factor that arose from this unit and is something that I will most defiantly improve and use in future.

When doing our workshop we had to think on our feet. We were put into an unfamiliar and ambiguous scenario that we had to find a way out of. We had planned to have the paint Olympics outside and got the okay off the school. However we didn’t get permission on the day due to the mixed lunch times. We had a disaster plan ready and covered the room in dust sheets. We didn’t fully take into account the paper used to cover the floor so there was a bit of tidy up time but we did protect the rest of the classroom and the walls.

The choices we made in terms of artistic media we based on the key motivations we had from DACA. The children didn’t have room to show their own artistic flare and that they only seemed to use acrylic paint and work on small pages. We chose A3 for the children to work on and chose a variety of media including; chalk, oil pastel, food colouring etc so that the children could expand their create mind with new things. This clearly worked as one child said “we only work on big paper in groups” and how many of them had never used food colouring, oil pastels or chalk within the school.

I feel like the theme worked well with the year sevens “colour and emotion” as it was clear and easily understandable. A motivation I personally had was how to make the workshop relevant and I feel we did this by using art direction and the Frozen film. We got each child to pick a film genre and colour there frozen poster in the colours that you would perceive to be from the genre. This was an enjoyable part of the day for me as this was new to me and I also learnt about art direction. This is something that I plan to look more in depth with in my own practice.

Federation House

So after a stressful time planing the federation house workshop we came up with a plan that we all agreed on. To have 4 questions and then for all the students to give their feedback on unit x.

Federation house plan

This pan never worked out as we weren't sure what the teachers were doing and what the students were doing. We also decided that we didn't want to make feedback the key part of the exhibition and that we did in fact want to showcase our DACA work so we decided upon using our boiler suits and t shirts. We still had a feedback section but it was only a sideline of the exhibition; a piece of canvas which could be unrolled and written on by all the students with their feedback of the unit.

The exhibition

We wanted our exhibition to be bursting and full of colour but we had to work with the rest of the exhibition and fit in as theirs were all minimalist. We incorporated cardboard as that's what was used in the rest of the house.

DACA: The Workshop

So today was the day, we actually got the workshop done. It was amazing, there were a few hiccups but nothing we couldn't handle. We started off the day by getting an earlier train so that we would have 40 minutes or so to set up the classroom. We had another run through of our script on the train and had a little "we can do this team" whilst traveling. I was slightly nervous but after getting the kick we needed last week I felt ready for it.

The day started great we had plenty of time to upload the powrpoint. It was a good job that we did come earlier because we had a slight problem with a link on our powerpoint but we got it sorted, we got the afternoons powder paint ready to go. We even had time for a brew before the kids got there.

We had sent a letter home and teachers had told the children that they should wear old clothes. Some had them on and other had them in their bag so we had to wait around 10 minutes while the kids changed into their clothes as a result of this we cut the starter games down, so they took less time.

The media we chose was because when we were in DACA the kids only seemed to use paint so we wanted them to experiment with chalk,oil pastel, food colouring, ink, powder paint etc.

Kids drawings of emotions

example of envy

The morning ran exactly to plan and smoothly, all the kids were really engaged with the activities we had planned, getting stuck into it. We gave them an emotion and they got on with their personal drawings which they were told they had 15 minutes for. Some kids finished early so they just got on with another emotion. At the end we spoke about our drawings within our small groups and why we did what we did. Everybody really got stuck in on the Elsa task (making frozen another film genre) we also got involved in the workshop. We had incentives, the idea I took from DACA. So the best 2 frozen posters got a box of maltersers. This really helped with keeping the kids involved but also because the film we chose was relevant to their age group. We did this so each small group picked a winner then the class picked a winner out of the smaller groups.

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the kids Frozen pictures

We made colour the over riding theme of our workshop first with what colour means in general with the ball game where we chose a colour and the person who caught the ball said an emotion that linked to it. Then what colour and emotion personally means to the individual through the emotion painting. We then looked at colour semiotics, art direction i.e. frozen and how companies use colour to influence what you but. We did this by getting the kids to do a label for a drink they were going to make then they had to add food colouring to drinkable water to make the colour of their drink. They then had the chance if they wanted to drink their drink. This really engaged all the student as everything about this activity was new to them. Some asked are you sure were aloud to try this drink. Because it was a foreign concept to them the kids seemed to all join together all speaking among themselves. Asking whats your drink called? And are you going to try it?

Making the labels

All the kids drinks

Adding the food colouring

one of the winning bottles

trying the drink

During the morning we had back up activities in case anything didn't last as long as we thought but they weren't needed and everything ran smoothly. I the afternoon we hit a few bumps we had been given the okay to perform our colour Olympics outside bu on the day we were told we couldn't due to it being lunchtime for other years. This could have stopped us in our tracks but we planed for in case this happened so while the kids were on lunch we got dust sheets and covered the room. This protected all the walls and surrounding area of the classroom. However as our plan was, we rolled paper and canvas on the floor so that it would catch the paint and create a background for our collage.

This didn't work as there was too much dust so we had to roll the paper up and throw it away we managed to salvage the canvas and went with that. The floor was covered so we flipped a dust sheet over so it had a clean surface for the kids to now work on. I had to think on my feet as the kids would be back soon so this was the best way at the time.

mid way through paint fight

shows dust sheets

Kids doing the collage

after the floor collage we knew that we had to start some kind of clean up so we thought on our feet and get the kids all come on one long table. We rolled out a long piece of paper and each child had a section each and thy were to tell us about how they felt the day went in there own way. This meant that we were getting feedback and we had all the kids at the front so some of the MMU students could clean up the back. After it we went along and each child told us what they has done on their section and what it signified.

final feedback collage

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close up of one child's section

To end the day we gave the kids a fabric pen and they wrote feedback of the day on our t shirts this was a great way of getting feedback. It wasn't a simple questionnaire and it was relevant for the ages group and got them engaged. We finished the day with the ball game from the beginning of the day and it was great to see how much quicker the ball was being thrown because now knew some emotion and colour links. Overall I feel the day went well and personally felt like a great accomplishment for our group, we pulled it together and worked as a team.

our DACA group and kids

Both DACA groups and kids

Looking into Government Policy

At the general election has just been, and I have seen how it impacts schools such as DACA through the educational policies i.e. Early entry. I wanted to look more into the educational policies. The Department for Education is responsible for education and children’s services in England. They work to achieve a highly educated society in which opportunity is equal for children and young people, no matter what their background or family circumstances. DfE is a ministerial department, supported by 9 agencies and public bodies. The DfE have 20 policies areas including:

• Academies and free schools
• Arts and culture within education
• Childcare and early education
• Children outside to mainstream school
• Children's health
• Children's social workers
• Education of disadvantaged Children
• Equality
• Family justice system
• Further education and training
• Looked after children and adoption
• Poverty and social justice
• School funding and accountability
• Qualification and curriculum
• School behavior and attendance
• School building and maintenance
• Special educational needs and disability
• Sports participation
• teaching and school leadership
• Young people

Now Arts an Culture has been mentioned the the policies however this has clearly failed and DACA is an example of this. DACA is know for it amazing art work and grades produced by the ids but in my opinions the government has let these kids down. They have to drop art for an entire year due to a governments early entry. 

I found that this link to the guardian answer quite a lot of my queries on the conservative education plans

 http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/apr/21/conservative-education-policies-schools-nicky-morgan

One thing I found interesting was on the conservatives website when I searched education. Instead of their policies, the search results were conservative slating other party's educational policies.As the picture shows.

Overall I am quite apprehensive about my future and I hope this term of the conservative government will finally put down some sort of fixed plan rather trying out all different polices for example early entry, social experiments and academies of which DACA is one.

DACA: Workshop Run Through

Yesterday we had our DACA workshop run through. It was absolutely terrible. The didn't start off great anyway because the jobs we had each been assigned, most people didn't get done. So we had no power point for the whole day. However I don't just blame the group member that didn't get their jobs done I also blame myself because I and the group as a whole should have made sure that we had some type of back up.

We looked even worse because the other group went first and although there was areas of improvement to be made it was allot better than ours. I take blame for part in our run through as honestly I felt ashamed of what we were showing the tutors which actually made me slightly angry and so I stood in the corner. My body language was all off from learning about Amy Chuddy and how body language was everything, I knew what I was doing but I couldn't stop myself and get back into the workshop. Below is the link for the Amy Chuddy body language seminar.

https://youtu.be/Ks-_Mh1QhMc   

We went back for our feed back and Clare and Anna gave us some humiliating news that at this point they were not willing to let us perform our workshop at DACA. I was devastated, this is what I want to do with my future and now I have flushed it away is what was going through my mind. However Clare then told us that if we pull it together we could meet at 1 o'clock today to show her what we had come up with. If she felt it was good enough she would let us do the DACA day. They gave us some points to think about; Be on time, Be louder voices, Support each other as a team, Work on the structure etc but more importantly that the learning outcomes are the core to any workshop.

We had been doing this all wrong thinking about what we wanted to do first. When in fact we should have thought of the Learning objectives and then what were going to do. We worked firstly with Clare and then continued on our own last night and this morning and came up with our Learning objectives:

• To understand what colour can mean in general, and to us as individuals
• Think about how emotions can link to certain colours
• To explore how different cultures use certain colours, and how this varies across the world
• Application of colour within your own work

We worked through out the night and this morning and got it together. we made sure that each activity was based on one of the learning objectives and had an introduction to tell them what we were doing, this could be PowerPoint or handout. An activity for them to do and an interaction with them to make sure they have learnt, this could be a group discussion.

group work on lesson plan

group work on lesson plan

hand written lesson plan

hand written lesson plan

hand written script of my personal part

typed script and lesson plan

resources list with who gets what

After seeing what we had done Clare said she would allow us to do the workshop. There was a huge sense of relief and although we should have got this together earlier on I am just glad that now the team has pulled together to create what I feel is a great workshop. Now hopefully everything goes right on the day.

Key Blog Post Two

The collaborative aspect within this unit x in my experience have been up and down this came as a huge surprise to me as I have previously never worked in a group with people from different disciplines and so I expected everything to go perfectly.

 As I expressed in my blog post during the last day DACA we all put our name on a sheet except from one person. That was the starting point of the down fall. The group minus one spoke over the holiday about the workshop and the girl posted on the unit x group so I quickly added her to the group chat. I feel like she felt slightly left out but I tried to get hold of her and I didn’t no her name. There were eight of us that were added so I can’t believe that she didn’t, or one of the other eight didn’t know each other’s name so it could have been resolved in the holidays. In hindsight I now realise I could have emailed Clare or Anna to ask for her name. We sent the research we had done and at that point everything was fine. Until we were trying to make group meetings and in my opinion some people had their priorities messed up for example; not being able to meet because they was traveling and wanted 9 hours sleep and if they came to the meeting it would only be 6 hours. Another example of this was someone who couldn’t meet because they wanted to go and get a tattoo. 

This process of trying to find times we could all meet was extremely frustrating as it left and unfamiliarity within the group. But it wasn’t all bad I have took some things away with me for example that from the start make sure everyone is involved and always have set meeting times in advance and setting up an easier way in which information can be relayed to people that weren’t there instead of long confusing Facebook chats.

This also meant that if the whole group wasn’t there we weren’t working collaboratively and everyone’s personal art discipline didn’t impact on the workshop as a whole and also on me personally. This was something that really interested me and so I hope I can do this from now on.

When we finally got together we began to roughly plan the workshop, writing everything that needed to be done and giving each of us a job to do including; power point, financial organiser, letter home, photographer, lesson plan/time management,  risk assessment etc. This made me feel like there was a set plan and I got on with my job of financial advisor looking for protective body suits etc. for the children to wear during the workshop. Hopefully everyone will stick to their job and carry it out so the day can go off without a hitch.

http://www.diy.com/departments/tools-equipment/workwear-safety-equipment/workwear/DIY638887.cat?&prodNum=158&fromUtil=true&fromFacetForm=false&searchMode=and&sortOption=price-ascending-numprop&pageSize=12

 I feel like there needs to be more communication and work on the workshop as I personally and some others in the group feel that the plan isn’t set and the time management for it isn’t properly set up. This is a let-down of our group I feel time management we have had set backs throughout for example people not making group meetings. I can’t say that I myself have been a complete angel as I missed one meeting due to a hospital appointment. I have enjoyed working within a group and would like to do this in my future practice but in a familiar or smaller group so that time and communication can be properly managed.

From now we need to push forward with additional meetings sorting out and exact plan and a script so each of knows exactly what we are saying and when. I also brought it up to the group that we should make it more relevant so I need to research into how we could do this. The key development of our group meeting have been learning how to work collaboratively and hear everyone out. We are planning to create some abstract emotional pieces in our workshop as well as use the powder paint. These are both new things to me and I am looking forward to learning new processes and using new media and seeing if I can relate it back to my own practice.

1st rough plan

We also got a plan together for Federation house this took a while but we came together as a group of 18 and came up with a great feedback activity. The plan now is in the group to push forward to make plans and personally to carry out my financial job.