Line and colour

This week, I've been helping with set design for our summer mission team. I've been on this team for the past few years and each year, we have a different 'theme' to decorate to.

This year, it's 'art gallery'/'art studio'.

For the studio part, we have oversized paintbrushes, crayons, paint palettes, paint cans, an easel...

For the art gallery itself, I've had fun designing random canvases (on cardboard, lids mostly - it's cheaper and we're on a budget) to hang up on the walls. If you want to use cardboard, just make sure you prime them with white first - otherwise you'll get holes in your painting, particularly if your cardboard is 'shiny'.

Hopefully I'll be able to show you once everything's up and done on mission, but I thought this particular one might be a fun, relatively quick activity with a class:

All it involved was basic experimentation with patterns and shape (I just started with random circles...and then began patterns around it), then acrylic to fill out the colour patterns...and finally, it was all outlined with permanent marker.

TIP: Make sure your paint is completely dry before you outline it - so you end up with a clear outline, instead of just scratch marks.

I rather enjoyed putting this one together - it was really random to begin with, but the more I look at it, the more it grows on me. I wasn't sure how it would look at first, but it's pretty ok now :)

MissT

Watercolour Weaving

Here's a lesson I did as a casual (or 'sub'), when I was meant to be doing weaving with my Stage 3 (year 5/6) class. This was to be a precursor to them actually doing some wool weaving to create a little mat which would eventually be a bookmark.

This was the first lesson, and I had been told what to do, seen a sample from some other stage teachers...but couldn't find any coloured paper. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention - so we went one step further.

And just quietly, it turned out great :)

Here's a couple of snaps of the weaving half-way through. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a picture of the completed products, but that's ok: this gives you a general idea.

First Steps

It's funny how times flies. It seems like only yesterday that I set foot into my uni for the first time, unsure and slightly afraid of what the next few years were going to hold. Was I going to make friends? Would this be the career that I'd really want to stick with? Would I survive?

I'm happy to report that I did make some wonderful friends, it's definitely the career I want to stick with, and...I guess I survived.

And now? Well, I can say that I'm taking my first few steps as a 'real' teacher. Scary stuff.

In beginning a new chapter, I thought this would be as good a time as any to create a new space for my teaching and learning journey as a record of my thoughts, findings, lesson ideas and little moments. This is in a bid to keep me reflecting, sharing and widening my world of ideas and thinking to ultimately help me to refine my own teaching practice.

To kick-start things, I have a question for all the teachers out there: what's the best thing you've learnt about teaching?

Miss T