School Session - Week One!

So today I went back to school - for the first time in 5 years I had completely forgot how different school was ever like, the art room walls covered in work, the hallway displays full of photos, the morning assembly.

Getting the train to Upwey I had no clue what to expect, luckily i had met Sue (the teacher running moving tides at westfield) at the kinetika weekend at AUCB so any awkward introductions were out the way and we had a clear understanding of exactly what was expected from me with the sessions.

Before Class started I was invited to morning  to morning assembly, it was being taken by the head of art, who was giving an assembly on the cultural Olympics, in which she give me a special mention, showed my design to the school and explained the work i was doing through out the 3 sessions i was there.

Meeting the children was an interesting experience, I hadnt been around disabled students since I was in school back in 2007, even then I was a class mate not a teacher. There disabilities ranged from physical to learning difficulties; however I was confident in my design and lesson plans and safe in the knowledge that i had the support of Sue and Mandy who knew the kids extremely well.

I was surprised and excited by the amount of knowledge the children had about carnival, when faced with the question "what is carnival?" they delivered a range of answers from "Dancing down the street", "wearing funny costumes" to "celebrating with friends". We went onto discuss carnival costume the children were keen to talk about colour, pattern and movement - however at times it felt i had to pull some of the answers out of them asking questions like "what kind of things will you like to see at a parade?" and "what will make people stand out from everyone else". By asking questions like this the children started discussing costume and visuals more developing from each others comments.

When my prototype was introduced the children responded well to the height and the movement of the head dress as well as the fins on the t-shirt. This again confirmed my faith in the design which meant at this point all nerves were completely forgotten and I was able to focus fully on the sessions. 

Starting the pattern work, at first the children were using very basic techniques to create patterns, sticking pre cut shapes onto the seahorse pieces, I felt it was key to force the idea of individuality in the costumes, although they are all a collective each seahorse could have their own personality. This was created by getting the children to work into there patterns more, applying pen and collaging different colours and orders. By doing this the children's confidence grew in their own ability to create pattern work which was the main focus of the first session. However I may have been to flexible towards the things the children were apply to the pattern thus having a lot of seahorses with hearts and flowers which is not really to the sea theme, i dont however think this will effect the costumes to much as the overall shape of the head dresses will very clearly be the same seahorse design. 

I feel it was a good idea to only have a half day session for my first day, this allowed me to get to know the children with a quite simple quick activity, and i will now know which children work fast and which need a bit of extra help to get the work done on time.