Teaching Visual Arts
Visual Arts promote healthy emotional development in learners. It provides the child with an opportunity to express feelings and to interpret their world in unique and creative ways.
As their social awareness also develops the learners awareness of individual differences between human beings. They have now abandoned the geometric shapes used in earlier drawings and express the wish to draw things that ‘look real’. They are more aware of detail and will start to observe differences in tone, shape and colour if encouraged to do so. They often resort to using stereotypical images based on what they have seen, for example, Garfield-type eyes or two dots to draw the nose and may repeat this in their different drawings.
They still find it quite difficult to show the movement and actions of the human figure and their drawings often appear quite stiff and rigid. The child’s experience of self and of the real world should be enriched through visual, physical and sensory stimulation. Where the topic deals with the movement of the human figure ask them to act out the movements and ask the kind of questions that will bring about a greater awareness of how the body moves, for example: • How did it feel to lean over so far, to pick up a heavy object, to hug a friend? • How does the body change when you perform a specific action? • Where do you see sharp angles in the body? • Can you name all the parts that make up the hand, foot, body of a person? • What happens to our clothing when we change position? It is at this stage that the teacher must consciously develop their ability to look carefully at what they are drawing. Aim to deepen the child’s experience of the world through discussion, open-ended questioning and sensory stimulation. Ask questions that will develop their critical visual perception: • Can you name all the parts that make up the eye? • How does the shape of our faces and our facial features differ from others’? • Can you describe the different textures and colour of hair that we can see in our class? Stress that no-one will be allowed to be hurtful or make negative remarks. This is a valuable exercise in teaching children respect for each other’s culture and appearance. They are now becoming more aware of the relationships of shapes in space and differences in size of shapes. The child can now relate his own size to that of others. They are now able to understand concepts of overlapping, of shapes that become smaller in a distance and of compositional considerations like using the format of the paper effectively. In order to teach Visual Arts effectively use the following guidelines:
Visual literacy
Consciously teach the art elements of line, shape, texture, colour and tone. Use the vocabulary of art when introducing an activity. Visual literacy should help learners to identify and consciously use: LINE: to define shapes, differing in quality from thick to thin, lines that express feelings; like short jerky lines can express anger. SHAPE: the difference between geometric and organic or natural shapes. Shapes are usually flat or two-dimensional.
34 Section 3: Teaching and learning Life Skills
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