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By Mohamed Azhar Mohamed Noor, Teacher, Greenwood Primary School |
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| Five
teachers from the North 7 Cluster on Teacher Work
Attachment with LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts. |
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If you can imagine how excited a child would be in a candy store,
then you can imagine my experience at LaSalle-SIA College of
the Arts. As a one-stop art institution, LaSalle-SIA houses
all the various art disciplines under its roof. During the five-day
attachment from 5 to 9 September, five teachers from the North
7 (N7) cluster experienced at first hand art critique sessions,
printmaking, jewellery design, computer animation and design
classes amongst others.
As a trainee back in the National Institute of Education, I had enjoyed printmaking and now I miss the working atmosphere of a print studio. When told that printmaking was scheduled as part of the attachment, I was eager to learn how best I could adapt techniques for my class.
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| Back
to the classroom... discussing ideas with a LaSalle-SIA
teacher. |
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| Trying
out a range of unusual musical instruments. |
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We shared many thoughts and discussions with the lecturers while
we were there. And when we left the studio, we were buzzing
with ideas to share with our pupils, to spark their creativity.
With some improvisation, pupils in the lower primary can also
begin exploring basic printmaking processes. I found, through
all these experiences, that the arts should not be viewed as
finished products, but as a continuous search of tools for thinking
creatively.
As an institution that houses both the fine arts and performing arts, the college believes in gathering students from the various faculties together for collaboration. My work attachment convinced me more than ever that art activities should be integrated into classrooms to improve the quality of learning.
A display of project work by LaSalle-SIA students, on the theme
of mosaic patterns making up what is called a tessellation,
had caught my eye during the attachment,. Building around the
works of M C Escher, I decided that pupils in class can move
from appreciating Escher’s art, to relating them to tessellations
and symmetrical constructions for Mathematics.
There is a now a greater awareness of how the community outside of school can be a very rich source that teachers can tap to add a new dimension to learning. The collaboration between N7 Cluster and LaSalle-SIA has made arts learning borderless. I, for one, am certainly now more aware of the need to create and design integrated arts-based activities in both traditional and alternative learning in our classroom.
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