One of my friends from home, Molly, is studying Primary Education and is currently on a work placement at Wheldon Infant's School in Castleford; she asked me if I'd like to come along and teach the children about illustration; perfect timing!!!
I snapped up this opportunity straight away as it would be a perfect way of practicing leading workshops and testing out potential ideas for my project.
Prior to my visit, I met with Molly (Miss Wise) and discussed what was scheduled to be taught that day and how I could fit in things that I wanted to teach the children. As it is world book day this week, the year two's have been studying James and the Giant Peach, and the year one's have been looking at a book called 'Oliver's Vegetables'.
What will I be teaching?
A large majority of the results from my survey suggested that mental health awareness should be taught in schools. Obviously I needed to be extremely tactful about how I would tiptoe around the unpleasant aspects of mental illness, yet set down really simplified foundations that could be enlarged on through later school life.
I thought that focusing on bullying and unhappiness at school would be an appropriate place to start, as it is based on an environment that the children are familiar with without complicating things too much. As well, a lot of mental instability stems from difficulties at a young age, particularly with incidents of bullying within school; therefore I believe making children aware of the impact it can have on others wellbeing would plant a moral seed that will hopefully grow as they develop as individuals.
The day would work out like this:
Morning:
Year One: Turning vegetables into characters workshop
How we can characterise inanimate objects and use imagination to bring the character to life. Starting with what is required to make a character, e.g. different body parts, activities done, habitat etc.
Year Two: Character study; James and the Giant Peach
Studying more in depth the different aspects of character, e.g. meanings of facial expressions and how characters are designed to reflect personalities.
Afternoon (my lessons):
Year Two: Using characters from James and the Giant Peach to illustrate dialogue and communication about recognising suffering in peers wellbeing (aka how to recognise when a friend is upset and what we can do to help them)
Carpet time: Happy and sad column; ask the children how do we know if someone is happy or sad and how we would draw this-construct a happy and a sad face to demonstrate expression and emotion
Activity: Choose two characters from James and the Giant Peach, show that one is happy and one is sad by using appropriate facial expressions that we have just discussed.
Write a short paragraph explaining why one of the characters is upset, and how the other character can comfort them and make them feel better. (This encourages children to recognise when their peers are upset, and encourages them to talk about the problem and devise solutions to comfort them and make them feel better)
Year One: A simplified version of the above: Draw what makes them happy, and write a sentence explaining why
Carpet time: Happy and Sad faces; ask the children to think of a list of words in response to these two images.
Activity: Draw yourself doing an activity that makes you happy and write a sentence explaining why. The aim of this is to recognise activities that uplift and encourage children, and potentially use it as an escape from things that make them sad.
Other things I explored
Summary of the day
- CHILDREN ARE SO ENERGETIC
- I really loved teaching! I was surprisingly more confident than I thought I would be at delivering classes especially as I've not done it on my own before
- I guess mental health and wellbeing is a bit of a difficult subject to be taught to children as young as five, it would probably be better aimed at for example 9-10 year olds or transition age for secondary school to prepare the children for big upcoming changes
- I noticed how much the education system has become SO CONSERVATIVE which has really upset me. The children do Maths and English EVERY MORNING, and most of the emphasis is placed on academic subjects. Many of the children struggled a lot with their reading and writing skills, which really obviously affected their self confidence in other subjects, especially creative ones. The 'can't do' attitude was so high among the children, which was such a huge shame, as the less academically gifted children were categorised as not being good at anything
- I want to change this so much. Every talent within a child should be celebrated, and they should absolutely not be made to feel like they are not good at anything because they struggle with reading, writing and maths, ITS SO OLD FASHIONED.
- I'm guessing that attempting to change the way that core lessons are taught would be biting off more than I can chew...but the children were so much more enthusiastic about learning about characters and behaviour through creative methods. WHY ISNT THIS DONE MORE!!??
So basically I have discovered that there are a LOT of flaws within the education system, and I really wish I had the power to change it and introduce more practical based methods of learning core subjects that can so often be viewed as mundane and boring. Also, it is really really difficult to inform how important mental wellbeing is to children as young as five. I might give my age range a re-think and also the subject matters that I intend to get across.
Plan of action
- Visually reflect on today
- Think of what kinds of subjects are aimed at particular age ranges
- Keep researching!
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