Around May it was announced that towards the
end of the year there was to be a couple of days to celebrate the arts. We were
given the opportunity to come forward and volunteer to put on arts related
workshops for the younger students. I volunteered along with a friend to put on
a 3-hour workshop. First we had to research to work out what we were going to
offer to the students. I sat down with Ms. Caroline to discuss a couple of
ideas I had for my workshop and she advised me to pick something easier as she
wanted me to teach the Kindergarten. I was quite apprehensive at teaching a
very young age group especially as I didn’t know them or really their
abilities. I spoke with my partner and we put together a “My Family and Me”
themed workshop. First we were going to introduce ourselves and then we wanted
to set about asking the kids about how to draw people and the different characteristics
and components that they needed to include. I am not particularly artistically
talented by I really did enjoy putting together the workshop as it challenged
what I normally plan. I had never done anything like it. After introducing
drawing people, we wanted to get the kids to draw their families and then
eventually we would get them to tell us what components go in a house and ask
them to draw their home. We thought it was probably quite a ambitious plan as
it would be difficult to get the kids to go into a large amount of detail. As a
precaution we prepared coloring worksheets to keep the kids interested. We
wrote down our plan for the two-day arts fest, then sought out the equipment we
needed. On the morning of the first arts fest day we were both very nervous. I
am a fairly confident public speaker in front of my peers and teachers but
teaching and talking to much younger kids was unchartered territory for me. We
played some icebreaker games to get to know the kids and I made it my goal to
remember as many children’s names as possible. The plan was a success, we had
some teething problems at first as some children didn’t know what to draw and
some finished really quickly but after a while we both developed a skill of
coaxing the children to add more detail and use more color. It was really nice
to be involved in teaching the younger student especially since they were very
interested and looked up to us. I enjoyed being creative and coming up with
ways to keep the kids interested like singing songs and playing games. After
three rotational classes over the two days we got better and better at teaching
the workshop and I think its safe to say it was a success.
No comments:
Post a Comment