Get someone to write your essay: January 2020

Saturday, January 25, 2020

Creativity And Imagination In Arts

Creativity And Imagination In Arts Three Little Pigs was chosen because children are familiar with the classic story. It is engaging for both girls and boys and allows a strong context for a range of arts activities in drama, puppetry, musical movement as well as a small world play of a series of arts activities. Activities are planned for five-year-old children as children by age 5 would have attained the basic developmental milestones of language development (Conti-Ramsden Durkin, 2011). The story of Three Little Pigs has patterns of structure. The first little pig met a man carrying straw and built his house with straw. The second little pig met a man carrying sticks and built his house with sticks. The third little pig met a man with bricks and built his house with bricks. A wolf came and said the line Little pig, little pig, let me in three times. The wolf huffed and puffed three times. The story carries repetitive catchy phrases, Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin! Ill huff and Ill puff and Ill blow your house down! So the wolf huffed and puffed and blew the house down! The moral of the story teaches children not to open door to strangers and let strangers in. The Three Little Pigs is told through dramatization and role-play using finger puppets, props and tone of voice. This paper highlights the aims and values of the activities and explains how learning is being structured and the skills that can be developed in drama. Creativity and Imagination in Arts Education We live in a culture where children are raised with passive life experiences. Their toys are highly functional and commercially constructed. But children are by nature imaginative and curious. Their imagination and creation are not nurtured and developed. Childrens play is losing significance to paper and pencil type of education that adults have come to view as important (Hendy Toon, 2001). Society needs people who are creative and imaginative to enable problem solving and make connections. Society then has to start with its youngest members to encourage their creativity and imagination. Children should be motivated and given opportunities to express their creativity. Society needs to nurture children to think creatively, play with ideas and materials, deal with changes and the unexpected, respond to such changes, take risks, learn empathy and be sociable. Creativity and imagination make us human (Duffy, 1998). Adult attitude is important in promoting creativity and imagination. Such attitudes create the right emotional environment. Equally important are physical settings and time set aside to allow opportunities for creativity and imagination (Duffy, 1998). Arts and the curriculum The arts have long been associated with a private experience of feeling good, living in a dream world, and an escape from reality. Swanwick (1988) argues that we become more conscious through the arts. Teaching the arts well promotes development in other learning areas. In drama there is physical education and language development. Music has its own vocabulary as in tempo, pulse and dynamics. Drawing is about line, texture and shape. If the arts can become part of the curriculum children have learning opportunities for personal and social-emotional development (Arts in Schools Project, 1990). According to Swanwick (1988) the arts are naturally playful and playfulness is an important part of being human. Children play. Play is what children do. In play, there are elements which promote learning through the arts. Children gain mastery of skills, enhanced their imitation and are engaged in imaginative play. Drama When young children engage in dramatic play, they take on a different identity and manipulate the character. They develop their ability to understand and make sense of the world around them by making connections (Hendy Toon, 2001). Games are adapted to the Three Little Pigs. Children listen to the name called for straw, stick, brick and house. They are told rules of the games. Children play and learn to play by the rules. When children are invited to make images from the story with their body and facial expression they step into the role of the character. They imitate the teacher in role and friends or stretch their creativity and imagination with their own body movement and facial expression. The other children in the circle make sound effects with their vocals. The simple act of dramatization allows children to master the skills of speaking to sound like another self. They learn to take turns and respect the others voice and body movement. Together and being together children make dramatic meaning (Swanwick, 1998). The teacher uses another approach of dramatization by getting children to make music and use instruments for making sound effects. Music is incorporated in the drama play. With the teachers guidance children experiment with the musical instruments until they get the sound that makes one think of the wolf blowing down the houses. For a different outcome, the teacher in role selects the instruments and guides children to listen to the tempo and act out the mood of the scene of the wolf puffing, huffing and blowing down the houses. Blowing down the house of straw is easy for the wolf so the mood is soft. The easy and soft mood changes with the house of straw and becomes heavy, angry and even dangerous when the wolf tries to blow down the house of brick. This activity is a learning point for children to take instructions, keep a consistent rhythm and work with others. It encourages children to enjoy making music and listening to music. Children are exposed to music and can develop musica l ability through their active engagement. Children delight in sound and rhythm (Sanwick, 1988). Drama should not be boring (Duffy, 1998). To add a sense of excitement the teacher tells an imaginative story that Mother Pig receives a letter from one of the little pigs. She has lost her reading glasses. Children are invited to read out the letter for her through role-play as the little pig. They decide for themselves and create their own story. Childrens imagination is further stretched when they discuss the character of the wolf. They compare the wolf to other wolves in Red Riding Hood and The Boy Who Cried Wolf. This activity promotes language and cognitive thinking as children learn to identify the animated characteristics of the wolf and compare one to the other and another. The original version of the story is told through a drama play. The teacher in role becomes the wolf who is brought to trial for blowing down the houses and eating the little pigs. Children field questions and demand explanations from the wolf to account for his crimes. Teacher and children work together to make a new story. This activity brings about a sense of tension and excitement. The teacher creates space for children to make their own small world play area. A number of skills can be developed in this play area. Children learn to make a finger puppet. They choose and pick materials to make their own puppets. They compare, contrast and experiment with colour, texture, lines and shapes. They acquire the skill by trial and error or copy the teachers puppets. Such mastery of judgement gives children a sense of achievement. When children play with finger puppet, the puppet becomes alive. They talk to the puppet and say what they feel. In imaginative play they experiment with the different cries the wolf make to blow down the three different houses. They become the little pigs and experiment with the different emotions the pig experience when the wolf calls. Children learn to be sociable as they listen to each other and take turns. They learn about cooperation and accepting ideas and wishes of another. Emotions are released in a healthy way as children use finger puppets to express their feelings and concerns. Language development is enhanced as they experiment with different voices and characters. We live in a time where learning is measured and tested in paper and pencil with emphasis in basic literacy and numeracy skills. We should bear in mind the importance of creativity and imagination in its own right and the positive impact of creativity and imagination on other learning areas. A curriculum that is enriched with creativity and imagination opens up avenues for children to develop skills, knowledge, attitudes and aptitudes in the present and for the future (Duffy, 1998). Children become the adults we want them to be resourceful, innovative and confident. As cited by Duffy (1998) quoting Oscar Wilde, we are raising a generation who know the price of everything and the value of nothing (p.14). (1469 words)

Friday, January 17, 2020

Break Up of Marks for Formative Assessment

Thursday, January 9, 2020

Sojourner Truth And Maya Angelou Essay - 1505 Words

While they were born in different centuries, Maya Angelou and Sojourner Truth led parallel fights for African American equality. Despite living in different time periods, both of these women laid the groundwork for activists to come. Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in 1797, she later escaped which led her to become an abolitionist to fight for the freedom of others. Maya Angelou was born almost 150 years later in 1928, and faced much of the same hate-fuelled racism. Living in the south during the Civil Rights Era pushed Angelou to become an activist to fight for those without a voice. Through peaceful protest using poetry, both Truth and Angelou made progress in their fight for equality of African Americans and complete socialÃ¢â‚¬ ¦show more contentÃ¢â‚¬ ¦Angelou was born in Missouri in 1928. She spent most of her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, pre Civil Rights Movement with her grandmother and her older brother. Angelou is most known for writing the poem Caged Bird. In the f irst stanza about the caged bird, Angelou declares that the bird, Ã¢â‚¬Å"can seldom see through/ his bars of rage/ his wings are clipped and/ his feet are tied/ so he opens his throat to singÃ¢â‚¬ (Caged Bird). Angelou uses the bird as a metaphor for oppressed African Americans during this time period; the bird is held back by a barrier, just like African Americans were held back by unjust laws, a corrupt legal system, and their white peers who saw them as inferior. Similar to the bird, Angelou felt held back by others, but she did not let the Ã¢â‚¬Å"bars of rageÃ¢â‚¬ hold her back from her potential so, like the bird, she Ã¢â‚¬Å"opened her throat to singÃ¢â‚¬ and used her voice to protest for herself and those who could not advocate for themselves. Before and during the Civil Rights Era, the United States was extremely biased against African Americans, and especially against African American women. Not only was Angelou black and female, she was also growing up in Stamps, Arkansas, during a time when the south was not welcoming of African American rights. In her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou describes her upbringing and states,Ã¢â‚¬Å"If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, beingShow MoreRelatedThe Negro Movement1364 Words Ã‚ |Ã‚ 6 Pagesthe 1920s. In a 1925 essay entitled The New Negro , Howard University Professor of Philosophy Alain Locke described this transformation as not relying on older time-worn models but, rather, embracing a new psychology and new sprit . Central to Locke s prescription was the mandate that the New Negro had to smash all of the racial, social and psychological impediments that had long obstructed black achievement. Six years prior to Locke s essay, the pioneering black film maker

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Jfk s Alleged Assassin By Geoff Hamilton Claims - 1223 Words

of JFK s Alleged Assassin in Recent American LiteratureÃ¢â‚¬ author Geoff Hamilton claims, Ã¢â‚¬Å"He learned to register more keenly than others the maddening and stultifying tendencies of the culture, and his lessons are written into the substance of 22 November 1963... his historical role infinitely larger than anyone would like... who [Oswald] can tell us most about what s killing us.Ã¢â‚¬ (pg.664). Nobody knows for sure who killed the president because Lee Oswald, the only suspect for the assassination, died before being taken to court. From JFKÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s autopsy and over years of discovering new information, it is known how the president died. Ross Moy, from the Department of Academic Emergency elaborates further on the death by stating, Ã¢â‚¬Å"The firstÃ¢â‚¬ ¦show more contentÃ¢â‚¬ ¦The whole country was shocked and disheveled by the news and the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, was on a search. The investigation of the assassination of JFK caused panic to American citi zens as they were looking for someone to take the blame. Though America had been through three other previous presidential assassinations, the United States has never experienced an event like this before. Immediately after the president was pronounced dead, he was taken to Air Force One in a casket to be buried back in Washington D.C. On the plane, the now widowed Jackie Kennedy, still covered in her blood stained outfit, was standing next to the new President of the United States and his wife, Lady Bird. In the book, The Kennedy Assasination--24 Hours After : Lyndon B. Johnson s Pivotal First Day As President , author Steven M. Gillon wrote, Ã¢â‚¬Å"At 2:40pm just a little more than two hours after the shots were fired, Judge Hughes, her voice shaking and hands trembling, asked Johnson to recite the oathÃ¢â‚¬ , as former Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson had officially became the 36th President of the United States (pg.139). After the president was taken to Parkland Hospital, cops and FBI agents went searching for the suspect. The police department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had already suspected Lee Harvey Oswald to be the killer due to his background and absence from work that day. In a Dallas Police report made