How To Teach Art And Drama In Schools

By Simon Oliver

Let's face it, arts and drama are considered extra-curricular activities when we think of what we expect to learn in school. In fact, arts and drama usually fall in line with extra-curricular activities, which are deemed by most as not as important as learning science, English or math. The indifference to arts and drama may have been brought about by the super high technology lifestyles that we lead. Today, many people are exposed to a culture that is so tarnished with modernity that they have forgotten just what real art and culture is like.

This is why it is important to teach arts and drama at school, to save future generations from being illiterate of what truly comprises culture. Drama often is associated with English, however it is not given any real focus.

How about dance? Dance is a part of physical education and is taught (sad to say) by teachers whose sole training was a short course that really interferes with their true inclination which is playing hockey, netball, football, or rugby. Music is also taught but only up to age 14. Let us not forget that art is a vital part of technology and should never be construed as a thing of the past. 

Music & Intelligence: Will Listening to Music Make You Smarter?

By Duane Shinn
Will listening to music make you smarter? Will learning to play a musical instrument make your brain grow larger than normal?

Questions like these ones have been popping up all over the place in the past few years, and not just in scientific journals either.

In recent times the media has been fascinated by the research surrounding brain development and music, eagerly reporting on the latest studies to the delight of the music-loving parents of young children.

But all this information - and some misinformation too - has led to generalized confusion about the role of music and music training in the development of the human brain. The bottom line is this: if you're confused by all you read about music study and brain development, you're certainly not alone.

In part, this is due to the manner in which the phrase "the Mozart Effect" has been popularized by the media and bandied about to describe any situation in which music has a positive effect on cognition or behavior.

In fact the Mozart Effect refers specifically to a 1993 research finding by Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw and Katherine Ky and published in the prestigious journal Nature. The scientists found that 36 college students who listened to 10 minutes of a Mozart sonata performed higher on a subsequent spatial-temporal task than after they listened to relaxation instructions or silence.

Prufrock, The Wasteland, T. S. Eliot and Me

by Bruce Deitrick Price...For gifted or literary students, a lively poem called THEORYLAND offers a fun way for teachers to touch on lots of topics. T. S. Eliot, for one. Our links to the past. The use of rhyme. Obeying rules, and breaking rules. Riffing, sampling, and alluding (Eliot did a lot of all three!). The power of so-called Theory on some campuses. The difficulty of writing popular poetry in our time...

Okay, I have to start with a confession. I love this poem, my poem--THEORYLAND, it's called--and I promote it wherever I can. But having said that, I want to point out that many roads come together in this poem. It's a satire of academic excess, i.e., sophistries run amuck in English Departments. It riffs fondly on T. S. Eliot--the main character is sort of a Prufrock, and the mood and title are from The Wasteland. So you've got a very smart, intellectual poem. But, look out, it's fun. So much modern poetry is boring; we almost expect it. I have written about this problem in an essay called "The Plight of Poetry" (easy to find in Google). Academics give us pretentious Theory and boring verse. My proudest claim is that people read my poem for pleasure!
A woman from France sent me an email saying that my poetry had taken her back to reading Eliot. Another woman sent me a note calling me "an overeducated rapper." Thank you! (But is this true?) A very talented sculptor in Italy MISREAD the poem as an allegory about the life of the artist--but this is completely fascinating as it tells me that academics and educators don't get so crazy in Italy. They do get crazy here. In fact, it was my study of Structuralism and other fancy-dancy isms that made me so indignant that THEORYLAND sort of erupted.

Kids Educational Craft Ideas - Alternatives to Using a Paint Brush

by Helen Thompson

Painting opens up a world of colour and communication for children and is a wonderful way for them to create. There are many simple and exciting alternatives to using a paint brush.

String painting is easy and is a great way for children to pattern paint. You just wrap some string around a small wooden block (this could be a building block that your children play with). A square or rectangle shape is better, but make sure that it is big enough for the child to hold easily. To aid in your child's learning, it is best to have a variety of different sizes handy. Prepare some paint and pour it into some old polystyrene trays or any tray that you can afford to use for lots of painting activities. Dip the block into the paint and press on the paper and you're done!

Marble painting is another way for children to have fun and also learn hand eye coordination whilst creating different patterns. Prepare some paint and put it in a container that has deep sides, such as an old baking tray or a shallow cardboard box. The top of a shoe box is an excellent example providing that it is still strong and intact. Put some paper in the bottom of the tray with a small amount of paint (you can use two or three different colours at a time). Drop a marble in the tray and let the children move the marble backwards and forwards, sideways etc. to create their own work of art.

But Practice Is Soooo Boring!!!!

By: Suzie Hammond

Are your students loathe to practice as much as they should? OK, you can stop laughing and pick yourself up off the floor now. I know it wasn�t the brightest question.

But I asked it to make a point, of course. Haven�t you been guilty of that misbehavior? I personally am a lifetime repeat offender. As adults we all know intellectually that if you don�t practice something, you don�t get better. We tell our students and ourselves this until the bile rises in our throat threatening an embarrassing episode. So why do we keep putting it off?

In the darkest recesses of your psyche a nagging whisper gives you the answer. It�s not fun. And in this day and age nobody wants to do anything that�s not FUN!

Crescendo Now, Pay Later

In the hierarchy of musical priorities, dynamics have often appeared to me to be relegated to fairly low niche and left there to languish, their immense potential for beauty and expressiveness being overlooked and ignored. Even in recordings of professional orchestras it is not at all unusual to here a crescendo or diminuendo begin and end without any unified idea of where it is heading. Concerts or recordings where the music making is otherwise of a very high calibe all to often approach the dynamics with far less care and intelligence than other musical matters.

Every musician knows what dynamics are and will tell you that when they see an mf on the music, by golly they play mezzo forte! And when they see a crescendo to a  fff, watch out, buddy! 

Crescendos (or crescendi, for our purist friends) seem to bring out a primal Darwinian, survival of the fittest impulse in many of us. If you can do it, e.g. low brass, most percussion, etc., then do it. If you can’t, e.g. low register flutes, middle register clarinets, etc., then get out of the way. It is quite understandable. After all, you flutes and clarinets get all the great melodies and technical calisthenics while we timpanists and trombonists are stuck back here counting rests. So, when we are finally allowed to speak, our voices will be heard! Then to our delight and to the delight of our audiences, excitement happens! Everybody wins, right? Absolutely. The only casualty is the music.

The World Does NOT Revolve Around You

“Listen, you spoiled little cretins, the world does not revolve around you,” I patiently explained.

 “You’re kidding right?” hooted my students derisively.

“Pick up your instruments, start together on the downbeat and count carefully.”

 How many music teachers have had the first part of that conversation?  Almost none, at least not out loud.  The second installment is an every day plea for many.

Our youth-obsessed culture seems to make a liar out of me, but lest you think your work is in vain, let me present you with a few ideas.

One of the things adults commonly complain about in their later years looking back on school, aside from a lousy prom, was that they felt ‘alone’ and like an ‘outsider’.   The band and orchestra students that I have canvassed don’t often feel that way.  Isn’t that interesting?   I’m lobbying to have my son do a graduate research project on this issue.  I’d love to see the results, wouldn’t you?

Common sense, that harbinger of things ‘everybody knows’ insists that if you learn to be part of a group that needs you in order to get something done, you will feel valuable and worthwhile. Anecdotal evidence supports this concept.  

Adding A Dance Program To Your School

By Phyllis Ventresca

There's nothing like dance for adults with its agility, strengthening and fitness rewards. So why not add it to your school? Kids, in particular girls, will line up to get in on the exercise. As we all know from teaching gym classes, girls can often miss out on fitness segments because they are under motivated to join in on competitive sports.

Here are some key considerations before launching such a program.

1. It's really important to send a few staffers out for a semester of dance at a dance school. You wouldn't expect your teachers to teach Math without some preparation, so why would dance be any different? In choosing a class, it would be excellent for a few staff members to take adult hip-hop and cheerleading. Adult hip-hop is very in and can often great fitness benefits. It is also a quick sell for kids. Cheerleading likewise is easy to turn into a lunch or after school program.

Drama in the classroom - Tips to Get Your Students Educated by Bringing Drama Into Their Lives

By Peg Herring
Plays are great for an after-school project, but classrooms are the perfect platform for drama as well. There are many ways to incorporate drama into subject matter that may capture the attention of even the most apethetic students.
� Scriptwriting: what better way to bring a subject to life than to let students make a skit to teach or demonstrate it? There are several advantages to skits in the classroom:
� Depth-Students can be required to do some digging to make their skits truthful. Emphasize in the assignment that facts must be the basis, even if exaggeration is used.
� Writing practice-Students who would hate writing an essay or even a paragraph are often eager to write a skit.
� Real-life feedback-Students see the audience�s reaction and know how successful they were with bringing their idea to life.
� Cooperation-Students often do better writing their skits in groups, and they learn the give and take of ideas as they work together.
� Multiple Intelligences-Skit writing also allows more expression for kinesthetic learners, visual-spatial learners, and even musical/rhythmic learners if they�re allowed to add background music, sound effects, original songs, or rap.
Some interesting ways to go from there:

Effectiveness of Drama in the English Classroom

By Kate Marie Ryan
How effective is the strategy of drama in teaching extended written text within the English classroom?
This report is divided into three parts - What, Why and How;
'What' identifies the significance of this inquiry for English teachers, it also contains the definition of extended text and its link to the English in New Zealand curriculum.
'How' identifies the strategies English teachers currently employ when teaching extended text, it also describes the shift towards using and incorporating drama strategies
'Why' discusses the research to support the effectiveness of incorporating these drama strategies into the teaching of extended written text.
As we are about to embark on a teaching career we as English teachers need to be aware that our students will not always share the same enthusiasm and passion we have for reading.
It is no secret that many activities divert students from reading. Student's understanding of humanity comes from commerce-driven images of television and movies and teachers worry that students might read this information unquestioningly (Allen, 2001). With increasing competition for interest and time we as English teachers have a daunting task in encouraging our students to dedicate time to read any written text, let alone the curriculum specified 'extended written text'.

THE PERCEPTION OF TALENT IN PIANO PLAYING: AN INVESTIGATION OF VIEWS BY ESTABLISHED GREEK PIANO TEACHERS

Georgia G. Markea
Post-doc and PhD in Music Education,
University of London, Institute of Education
School Adviser for Music Education
Based in Athens

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Professor Graham Welch under whose guidance I conducted my post-doctoral research (Markea, 2005) at the University of London, Institute of Education.
This research focuses on how a number of influential piano teachers in Greece define the meaning of talent in piano playing and how it is influenced by the Greek environment. Before describing the research methodology of the current study and the analysis of four interviews, the results of research conducted by myself in 2002 in Athenian conservatories1, and the views of Greek piano performers and teachers on ‘talent’ will be presented. Further information arising from the literature follows in the next section.
TALENT AND MUSICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MARKEA'S RESEARCH (2002)
In 2002, I tried to explore ways in which seven influential Greek piano teachers and performers perceive and define ‘musicality’. The interviews were based on a number of teaching episodes in Athenian conservatories and were selected from 200 hours of videotaped piano lessons with the interviewees and their piano students. I found that ‘musicality’ could be developed in four layers in accordance with Swanwick’s (1983) model, and that there were five contextual issues that impinged upon the teachers’ work and may influence a piano learner’s musical knowledge development. These include teacher, learner, conservatory, family, and society (see Figure 1). Among the piano student’s characteristics influencing musical knowledge development, according to the teachers, is ‘talent’.
Greek piano teachers believe that ‘talent’ is innate and that talents are as numerous as individuals (Kingsbury, 1988). All the elements seem to be necessary to talent. These include musicality and dexterity combined with a student’s love and passion for music itself and for its study. ‘Musicality’ can be acquired, when not innate, and its development can be influenced by the student’s environment.
According to the participants, ‘talented’ students can make a teacher’s task a lot pleasanter and bring success even if the teacher is lacking in talent. Talent and industriousness seem to be closely linked and teachers expect more from ‘talented’ students in developing a good career in music and other matters. Teachers identify the notion of ‘musicality’ with that of ‘talent’, but think that if a student does not have it, it can be developed by teachers or environment. This, of course, is a logical paradox.
FURTHER LITERATURE REVIEW ON MUSICAL TALENT AND ITS CONTEXT
Definition of talent

Are You Feeding Your Child's Inner Artist?

Los Angeles, CA- When children start pre-school, it begins. They dabble with construction paper, finger paints, and glitter. They bring art work home nearly every day and we proudly plaster it across the refrigerator. But once most children start elementary school, the deluge of childhood masterpieces slows to a trickle, or in some cases, simply disappears. Thanks to shrinking budgets, many school systems have drastically reduced art instruction or eliminated it completely. So, if your child isn't taking art classes in school, how can you be sure their inner artist doesn't waste away?

Art teachers are quick to explain that art is more than just a fun outlet for students; it's an essential element of learning. According to the National PTA, art cultivates self-expression, imagination and creativity, as well as critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. 
Jason Dobkin and Erika Gragg, co-creators of the new children's book "Snobbles the Great: A Snooze Patch Story," (Grabkin Creatives, LLC www.snobbles.com) credit their love of art as a driving impetus behind the book. Snobbles is a fruit-eating snake who is ridiculed by the other snakes in the Snooze Patch where they all live. While the story is sure to elicit giggles from both children and adults, the clever and unusual artwork will grab your attention from page one. Unlike many children's books, the story was inspired by the artwork, not the other way around.

Learning Through Music; Practical Suggestions for the Elementary Teacher

Music has been a testimony to the journey of my life at any particular moment. I fondly remember the songs my mom sang to me when I was ill as a young child or the catchy tunes my teacher sang with us as we learned our multiplication facts and our states and capitals. Of course I could never forget learning my ABC’s to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.I remember with crystal clear clarity the song that played on the radio when Derek Cave finally gave me my most anticipated first kiss, and the lyrics of the tune in the background when my future husband awkwardly asked me out for the first time. These songs are my mental scrapbook that allows me to remember and relive my special moments and memories.

ALL CHILDREN BY NATURE HAVE A MUSICAL BRAIN

The children’s brain in Primary School is biologically musical. The embryo in the third month can hear and remember musical patterns and can associate them with feelings which they provoke. As infant he or she has developed to a certain extent musical skills. Studies have shown that what makes the difference is the way in which musicality can be developed in the environment in which a child grows up. For example, the parents’ musical preferences, as well as if the child is involved in Music from earliest years and with a teacher suitable for this, influence decisively the musical education the child will receive. Studies show that the earliest contact with music studies improves significantly the development of an already musical mind. Indeed this influence does not relate only to the development of musical skills but also to different skills related to sciences and arts. This proposal aims at the description and analysis of views of neurological researchers about the extent to which a child’s musical abilities constitute an innate imperative but also can be developed by the teaching itself.
Are we all musical?
‘We are all musical; we just need the opportunity’, claims Welch (2001) and certainly he is right. Music is a language and expressing it in words constitutes a natural activity for us; so also our need to sing derives from our very same nature. Music was born with speech. In ancient Greece indeed our language was called ‘prosodic’ because it was sung. As characteristically mentioned by ancient writers on harmony, ‘Greeks used to sing through words and speak through song’.
International research has shown that when children are born not especially gifted in music, if they begin from an early age to study a musical instrument they will develop further skills, with positive results not only in music, but also in whatever other field they choose. Indeed recent research (see Gorman, 2005) shows that involvement with music can check the destruction which occurs in brain cells with Alzheimer’s disease.
Nevertheless, the human brain in each case is musical. Consequently we are all able to sing, whether in tune or out of tune. Also, irrespective of the level of our musical abilities, we all have the same disposition to express musically, listen to, or perform ourselves the melodies which touch our hearts.
The fact that Music educators have students to teach who biologically are always in command of a musical brain significantly facilitates their work. In each case the Music educator can trust to the abilities of all his students regardlessly, as well as expressing high expectations for them. On the other hand, students could develop their skills to the highest level if at the same time they did the requisite practice (see Picture 1). This readiness to study is inspired in them chiefly by their teacher or by an individual from their background (family or friends) who they really love and through their progress want to please.

Picture 1 Musical talent is developed with daily practice