Project Outline

Title: Become an Art Detective - British Art through the Ages - Appreciating and Comparing It

Subject: Art

Year Group: 1ESO

Describe in what way your Final Project is useful or original for your students, or might represent an innovation. Describe how your Final Project contains teaching materials and practices that are effective to produce learning and how they might be adaptable to other contexts, such as different age levels or subject areas.

My final project will help to engage students in both Art and speaking English by encouraging them to discuss and compare different artworks by British artists whilst also teaching students how to approach artworks and critically engage with them.

I have selected artworks of different styles created in different historical periods but have common underlying themes. This is to show students how art and communicating ideas can take many forms.

The idea for my final project came from a conversation with the Art teacher at my school who wanted to find a way of helping the students to connect to art on a deeper level. I devised this project as a way of helping these students to discover the joy of appreciating art through guided activities focusing on improving speaking, listening, reading and writing skills.

I have really enjoyed working with students in Art lessons so far this year and am always so interested to hear their opinions and understanding about the art we study. My final project will supplement the technical skills they are learning and help improve their confidence with communicating their opinions in English.

I really believe that the best way to teach students English is to engage their own opinions and preferences which I will be able to explore fully in this final project. By ensuring they do writing, listening, reading and speaking tasks I will be able to engage students who may have differing language skills/confidence leve This project is very adaptable to different age groups as appreciating and discussing art and your opinions is something students of all ages can do. I will be focusing my final project on 1ESO students, but it could very easily be tailored to older students by changing the vocabulary/themes discussed. For example, in my second lesson I get the students to discuss work and workers’ rights, older students will have more foundational knowledge of this theme, and thus the discussions can be tailored to suit the level of understanding the students’ have.

When developing my final project, I was concerned it may seem intimidating for younger students so I developed the ‘Become an Art Detective’ theme to help them connect with the lesson more. For older students this can be removed and with some small tweaks the presentation can become more age appropriate.

I also believe that my final project could be adapted for English language classes either using the same art pieces as the basis for discussion or changing these to examples of poetry/short stories in English that the students read/listen to, then discuss.

Topic Outline

What topic are you teaching?

The topics I will be teaching are British art and critical engagement with art.

What are your objectives?

To develop the students’ understanding of art
To teach them related vocabulary to help them express their opinions more fluently in English
To teach students how to critically engage in appreciating art
To introduce them to a variety of British artists

What materials are you going to use?

A powerpoint presentation with lots of images and videos
Mindmaps
The blackboard
Printed handouts

Select the digital tools and resources you will use to elaborate your Final Project:

Presentations and slideshows can be used to enliven almost any content: to explain the rules of a game or a sport, to illustrate a real or imaginary trip, to create a display, or to introduce a workshop.
Multimedia content can be used to create a virtual museum, illustrate and tell stories and tales, create flashcards and posters, set up a photography workshop, examine famous works of art, or generate your own art.
Mindmaps can be a useful resource to organize curricular contents, to tell stories, or for creative writing workshops or projects.

What is the timing for your lesson?
55 minutes

What activities are the students going to do?

Vocabulary Builder
Focus on: Listening, Reading

This is to introduce students to key vocabulary they can use to express their opinions. Going through the key vocabulary at the beginning of the lesson will ensure students of varying levels of English comprehension and confidence are catered for.

Class Discussions

Focus on: Speaking and Listening

I have included lots of class discussions as these are a good way of allowing for lots of ideas and opinions to be expressed by the students easily. I think class discussions will lend themselves well to a creative and dynamic atmosphere in the classroom during these lessons. I want the students to feel energised and inspired by the lessons and I think class discussions are a great way to creative such an environment.

Listening Exercises
Focus on: Listening, Reading

I have included a number of listening exercises that will cater to students’ varying levels of English comprehension and confidence. By using a video as the first listening exercise, I am engaging the students positively right from the initial exercise. The video can be played with English or Spanish subtitles, which can be chosen at mine and the class teachers’ discretion.
The other listening exercises will model the lecture style teaching methods I have observed in the Art lessons in the school I have been placed in.

Mindmap and Paired Discussions
Focus on: Speaking, Writing, Listening

This is a great activity as it engages students in practising their speaking, writing, listening, and to an extent, writing skills also. It is also a way of allowing students to consolidate their new vocabulary in the class whilst also ensuring the collaborative and dynamic atmosphere of the class continues.

Presentations
Focus on: Speaking
One of the main objectives of this final project is to improve students’ confidence in discussing art and communicating their opinions in English. The short presentations are a great way of developing both of these objectives. They will also allow me to monitor the students´ improvement

Producing Artwork (Homework task)
Focus on: Creativity

I am conscious that this project is very theory focused and I want to ensure I give the students a creative outlet so that they can put into practice what they have learnt during the first lesson.

What is the teacher’s role?
The teacher will be helping to elucidate the meaning of key vocabulary and also to get students engaged in the discussion of artwork, providing technical and subject specific expertise during the discussions

What is your role as a LA?
My role as LA will be to deliver the lesson and clear and understandable English, to ensure the students practise hearing English being spoken by a native speaker.

How are you and the teacher working to complement each other?
Myself and the teacher will complement each other by modelling discussions of the artworks so that the students know how to do the tasks. Whilst my role will be to deliver the lesson, the teacher will help me to engage the students and provide behaviour management support if needed. The teacher will also have more of an understanding of what level the students are at so before the lessons I can discuss class ability with the teacher and alter my lesson to cater to all language abilities

How will you be evaluating the activities?
I will actively evaluate the activities during the lessons, monitoring the students by walking round the classroom as they are doing each activity and asking them related questions/supporting them and giving them feedback on their work/discussions. I will use class discussions and presentations to monitor student progress and engagement, ensuring I choose a wide range of students to answer questions and encourage quiet students to get involved.

How will the students know they have achieved the learning objectives?
I will put the learning objectives on the board at the beginning of the class and go through them, then at the end of the class, do a quick 2-minute roundup explaining how we have met each learning objective and asking for their feedback on how they feel they have met each learning objective.

How will you be responding to diverse learning styles and levels of achievement among your students?
By ensuring I include reading, writing, listening and speaking exercises, I am to reflect the diverse abilities and learning styles of my students. By centring the lesson on visual aids such as images I am ensuring I engage visual learners. By doing a presentation about the art works and leading a discussion, I am engaging auditory learners. By getting the students to write mind-maps and add notes to these, I am engaging reading/writing learners, and by teaching the students how to observe artworks and discuss them in the lesson I will engaging kinesthetic learners who learn best by actively doing.

In terms of ensuring students of varying levels of English comprehension and confidence can take part and enjoy the lessons I have created, I have taken many lengths to ensure the language used can be easily graded to differing levels and age groups; the use of subtitles during the opening video alongside information being spoken and visually reinforced by a matching PowerPoint slide will ensure students have the opportunity to engage with the English language in a multitude of ways.