Art lessons conclusion

Art lessons – Conclusion by Michaela Lišková

In just five hours of art with Dorte, we had a chance to try out for many of us many new techniques and ways to create, and some of us have drawn and painted so deeply for the first time in their life.

The first lesson was in the name of drawing a portrait. First, we trained five-minute portraiture. At first it seemed impossible for us to create something a bit like a human face just only in five minutes, but gradually, drawing one portrait after another, we found out that it is still easier and easier. This exercise gave me a lot because I was always used to have a lot of time for drawing, which is not always the best, because you do not concentrate so intensively, and on the other hand five or fifteen minute portraits require immediate attention and a sharp eye. It's about not thinking so much about unnecessary details, but watching and really drawing what I see. This means that we have tried to link that what we saw with that what we draw. In other words, connect the eye with the hand and though activate the right brain hemisphere.

 I also think that this training showed us that we actually CAN draw, that it is not impossible for us to create something quite good and also showed us that we can make progress step by step if we try.

Also homework we made helped us to understand that hard work is important and if we want to improve it is essential. The first task was to draw any portrait of our fellow students or whomever. To do this we received printed materials about how to draw a nose, eyes, shape of face, lips, etc. With this assistance, and unlimited time to work, we could really learn how the human face works.

 Another hour was associated with the colours and their meanings which we later used for creating expressionistic portraits based on photos we had made.

As for my future practice as an art teacher I will certainly use the technique of five-minutes portraits and monoprints. Because both of these techniques supports a creativity of a child and helps to overcome usual obstacles like a fear of doing things wrong or not knowing how to start. This (monoprinting) technique absolutely surprised me. I knew about it before, but I had never used it that way we did. That provided us with something to start with. Because usually we start with plain white paper and it is sometimes quite hard to start with painting. And monoprinting already gave us some kind or frame or field to work with. It was like an inspiration or starting point so that all of us discovered something new in the painting.

Concerning my portrait from that day I have to admit that I over did it and therefore I am not so comfortable with my work, but I really enjoyed making it and learnt that sometimes less is more, which is always my problem and I have to work on it. And I am sure I will use this way of painting again and not only with portraits.

Also using famous paintings as an inspiration for creating one´s own painting or drawing is a great way how to work during art classes. Because already made picture is a great source of information. That is to say we can try to use the technique in which is the picture painted or colours and at the same time we can learn about the painting itself, about its author, about the technique, about the period when the painting was made and so on.

This will be very usable also during lessons about the history of art, because children can learn about certain period, impressionism for instance, and artists of that period and then they can try to make their own impressionistic painting, using same technique and colours like impressionists did.

Misha





Announcement

For better orientation on our web log, there are pages under the opening picture with each subject we had at school where you can find everything we´d written about it.

Comparative education

Storytelling (24.3.2011) - Fable

(Every cloud has a silver lining)

A FAT JACKRABBIT

Once upon a time there was a big family of jackrabbits. This batch of jackrabbits lived in a very nice place full of green grass and fresh vegetable. And every year they were collecting food to their pantry for the winter times. It was already autumn and their pantry was nearly full of good food but one day they found that somebody ate almost the half of all food there. Immediately they suspected that Jack, a fat jackrabbit did it because he was in comparison to the others of his family very fat and he was always hungry and also quite unpopular as a result of his physical appearance. Therefore the head of the jackrabbit family banished him from their house and from their village although Jack denied all the charges but no one believed him.

Jack, with his sad heart full of bitterness, wandered aimless through the countryside without any hope of living after the coming winter. As he rambled he saw a beautiful female jackrabbit caught in a snare at the point of death. He saved her and fall in love with her at first sight. He helped her to recover and finally Jane took him to her family in the North where she had lived before she was caught into the snare. Jack´s courage and strength impressed Jane so much that she fell in love with him, too.

His family banished him and he was unhappy there but now he found a new family which accepted him with love and where he felt happy as never before and also being fat was advantage in that cold North country.

Misha L. and Laura S.

Schoo visits - Ungdomsskole (18.3.2011)

School we visited today was the school specialized in children with behaviour problems, not good social background, bad attitude to school or adults or those who failed at other schools , Ungdomsskole (Christianfeldvej 8A, Haderslev 6100).

Lasse Johanson (head of the department) introduced a basic idea and principles of the school to us. His speech started with him unexpectedly jumping on the table to show us and illustrate one very wise thought which is very important at the school we just were: “Another view point creates a different focus. When one chooses a different view point, one sees other persons in new light.” (L. Johanson). In other words regular schools aim their focus on pupils from one point of view which creates a certain frame and those who cannot fit to this frame therefore have troubles,  Ungdomsskole is trying to focus on its students from different perspective than the regular schools to give those children a chance to develop.

After this introduction Jasper (one of the teachers) took the floor and told us details about the differences between Ungdomsskole and common schools and their pupils.

Ungdomsskole has two classes and in total 30 pupils. Children who got to this school are kids with difficult background, low self-esteem, negative attitude to school system and teachers, experiences with drugs and alcohol and usually unsuccessfully tried a lot of school before etc.

Therefore the aim of this school is to change their attitude to school, teachers and grown-ups, to break bad habits and offer another opportunity for them or at least they try to do it so however it is very difficult sometimes.

I and Laura visited English lesson with James (teacher of English, Art… and very nice person). There are usually about 6 students at the lesson but today there were only two girls, Caroline and Simone. Simone was very shy to talk in English but Caroline´s English was very good and she told us about her hobbies which were horses.  She seemed as an ordinary teenager without any serious troubles or something but actually she tried six school and one year spent at home before she got there. James led lesson in very relaxed mood which is necessary for these kids. It was based on discussion although they also use written exercises to train in grammar and vocabulary.

After this lesson there was lunch for everybody us included, which was very nice surprise. Lunch was prepared by pupils in a cooking class.

And finally I would like to say also something about EGU class led by David, the second class at Ungdomsskole. This class if for pupils from 16 to 20 and is something between school and trainee jobs. The main purpose of this class is to prepare children either for further education or for jobs. During the first year weeks are divided into two activities. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are trainee days, students work in a company to get experience in work. Tuesdays and Thursdays are schools day.

The second year of EGU is only working, trainee.

Usually about 60% of students are successful in further education or finding job after being at this school. Although it is not 100% still it is a great success.

I am very gratefull and happy that I could visit this school and experienced something different from common schools.

M

Global citizenship with TorbjØrn (8.3.2011)

Comparative education: Multiculturalism and Open society

Anke Jacobs

Laura Szombathelyi

Marcello Pera :

Marcello Pera tried to incestigate the problem of multiculturalism. Their for he used 4 resorces to explained the problem and to find a good solution fot it.

The first was Derrida’s view: Deconstructing, decontstructivism

This part of the article is about conditionally and unconditionally hospitality. conditional hospitality means we should intagrate foreign in our culture, but this means that we make them no longer foreigner.

Unconditonally hospitality ont he other hand means that we should abandon our current policies of integration and adopt instead a programme whose task is the realization of „rainbow societies” This what’s Derrida believes.

Second was Taylor’s view.

This is about survival pronciple which is mean the survival of a culture is a good in itself and societies must be active in defending the rights of minority communities. He also agress that cultures can be compared and evaluated and this not all culture is equal.

Marcello says „Trough we allow that personal identity depends on a sense of belonging to a culture, this does not imply that the culture in question must necessarity be the one in wich individuals were born.

He also agress that we shoul have respect for dying communities but that not mean we have to put them in sort of protected social zoo.

The third view is the liberalism.

Liberalism has 3 principals:

1. Multiple divisions: individuals, and individuals alone, have natural rights.

2. Neutrality of the state: are free to pursue their own ideas of a good life.

3. The compassibility of all values: all values are composibble, that is not in conflict int he public sphere.

Marcello does not beleive is that work because this is where that public and the private come into conflict.

ð in the private sphere you can do whatever you wants but not int he public sphere.

The last view is Popper’s.

He answer to the question „how can we construct a societ which respects individual freedom as much as possible without at the same time leading to its own destruction?” Is the method of dialogue.

He says the Open society is a hard nd difficult society where commitment to dialogue is fundamental and only those who really want to engage in it may become citizens.

This requires respect from everyone, Not only the citizen of a country should except the imigrants. The imigrants should learn values and traditions of the host country.

Marcello beleives that Popper’s view is the most fuithful one, because he claims that the principal of commitment to dialogue encorugaes traditions to demonstrate their merits.

Art class 16.3.2011

Another one from amazing art classes. We just kept going in selfportraits in different ways. This time we had received pictures of already made potraits and our goal was to get inspired by this and try to situate ourselves into those pictures. It was really interesting. Everyone could do what he felt to do. Just take a look at it!!


body painting?



or colour fighting?

mirror monoprint

OK, back to work...

these are few of our modified monoprints

Our recipes

honey and curry vinaigrette

 

Preparation :

20 minutes

Difficulty :

Very easy

Cost :

Very low

For 4 persons

8 carrots
2 granny apples
2 tbsp of fresh chopped parsley frais hâché
2 tbsp of fresh chiseled chive

Vinaigrette
2 tbsp white whine vinegar
1 tbsp of curry powder
2 tsp honey
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp of groud pepper
¼ cup rapeseed oil

 

PREPARATION

Step 1

Step 2

Mix the vinegar, curry, honey, salt and pepper in the food processor. Blend. While it’s blending, add the oil in a thin trickle. Go on mixing until the oil is blended properly with the vinaigrette, which should thicken a bit. Pour it on the vegetables, gently mix and marinate them in the vinaigrette for a few minutes. Split the mixture among the verrines and serve.

Prep time:  15 min.

Cook time:  25 min.

Ingredients for 2 persons:
200	g	Mealy Potato
400	g	Celery root
20	g	Butter, salted
1	dl.	Skimmed milk ~ 100g
1	tsk.	Salt ~5 g
2	knsp.	Pepper ~0,8 g
1	dl.	Parsley
		Extra-virgin olive oil

Directions

Drizzle with a healthy dose of olive oil and serve.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                                                                                Prep time: 3 minutes

                                                                                                   Cook time: 75 minutes

Directions

Put the whole chicken onto to a baking bowl (pot) filled with 1kg of Danish sea salt or rustic

Food and sports 17.3.2011

This lesson was the final lesson of our cooking project! I thing we had lot of fun with cooking but especially with eating what we created. As I had described ago, we were cooking very interesting meals according to New Nordic Diet..just take a look to our booklet!! Enjoy it!!
Thanks, Eva for good leadership!!

Optionals

Food and sports 10.3.2011

We started in the gym where we have absolved a couple of  physical tests. First one was testing our minimum hearth beat after a relax time. Next one is called step test and we had to do keep stepping on the banch (up and down) as longest as possible. The last one also was the hardest one. Common name is „Leger test“. You just have to run as longest as possible from wall to wall and you have to make this distanse in a time limit stated by computer. Time limit is periodicaly shortened. It showes your athletic abilities (especialy oxidative and unoxidative endurance) but also the power of will. After every excercise we received number which shows how fit you really are in a different ability.

Next part of subject was about food. We finished our plans and recipes for the dinner according to the New Nordic diet programme. Each of those groups has prepared special recipe. You can take a look on the whole recipe booklet!!

Optional physical education with Martin 7.3.2011

We have had a greate oppourtunity to taste how the danish p. e. students work like!

The lesson consisted of worm up part, main part, student performances and the slow down part. During worm up we were playing a few games in purpose to get red and well prepared for the next activities. The main part started by building the let’s say „monkey lane“ . When it was done, we just went throug it in many ways. Everyone for his own, in teams or all together. Just lot of varieties and it was horribly funny! The greatest thing about this was an equipment. We don’t even have a half of those materials which make p. e. much more interesting. Especialy the gymnastic air belt. Really usefull thing. Next part belonged to the students. Their task from erlier class obviously was to think about the animal movements subscribed in the document they’ve been given. Afterwords we all tried to do it in their way and later in the correct way according to the video. Lot of fun.

The last part was just relaxing and stretching. Tak for it! Very good experience!

Drama class with Fleming 11.3.2011

                Fortunately we have met Fleming in Abenra!

We didn’t know what to expect from this lesson because we have never tried this before. But now we can say that it was so perfect and we were enjoying every single minute with Fleming.

At first we went throug introduction and we also have been informed about the area we were and about Flemings activities. Thank we had warm up part which meant playing a couple of funny games. Chase and catch, fox and rabbit, bomb and shiels and so on. The purpose was to get rid of shyness and nervosity and, man, it worked! :-) After that we have made a circle and tried to play with the implulse. Hard to explain..have to try..:-) it was about hand claping in the different ways, eye contact. But the greatest circle activity was sending imaginative object. Heavy and light. First time of acting. Also interesting activity were working with statues and live scenes. The live scenes were based on themes. Our groups task was to make „beautiful“ and „ugly“. The other group had to guess what that scenes mean and they could recognize it! Yes!:-)

The final activity, to which the whole lesson had aimed, was „from image to play“. We have been shown the image of girl and in the group we made a play according to the feelings and the music surroundings arround us. Really interesting. Both groups worked wery well and seriously - thumbs up – and all of us were enjoying the class a lot. Big applaus belongs to Fleming!!!!! He has got us for the activities. At home we say: „If you want to light the fire in the others, you have to already burn!“.

Fleming, we could see that! :-)

English class with Elizabeth (11.3.2011)

Class started with something unusual as usually, with video from Youtube “Full Yogic Breath – Pranayama”. See link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TWnDHafou4

1. SENTENCE ANALYSIS

The successful applicant must have experience in sentence analysis.

S/NP – subject/noun phrase

V/VP – verb/verb phrase

O/NP – object/noun phrase -- H/n  

                                                  --  PoM/PP ----   P/Pprp (preposition)

                                                                     ----     PC/NP   ------    H/n

                                                                                             -------  Pre/n (noun)
                                                             

 She wants to marry a Norvegian who is rich.

2. PHONETICS

After sentence analysis phonetic exercise followed.

Training for the diphthongs.

day /dei/

ear /iǝ/

boy /boi/

buy /bai/

house /haʊs/

cold /koʊld/

tour /tʊə /

hair /heǝ/

3. CORRECTING MISTAKES IN SPELLING
A spelling correction of an essay writtne by Danish student from 9th grade.

After having spendt (spent) 11 years in a danish (Danish) “folkeskole” I wanted a change of senery (scenery) I was lucky and got a job as a cliner (cleaner) on a boarding school in England just after christmas (Chrismas).

spendt – spent                danish – Danish               senery – scenery

......

4. THE ORGANS OF SPEECH

To reach correct pronunciation is necessary to know where is each sound created and it is even more important if you want to explain the pronunciation to pupils.

Here is a short video illustrating the process of creating sounds:

After this followed exercise with ´Sound pictures´. Our task was to find thinks in the picture which are pronounced with diphthong /ai/ or /ei/.

/ei/	/ai/
painting	bike
cake	cake
suitcase	suitcase
railway	five
train	wine
plate	typewriter
table	kite
radio		pipe
rain		mice
skates		tie
weight		sky
tape
label
frame

For more practice see page: http://www.englishphonetics4u.blogspot.com/



http://www.tuninst.net/Romabama/Bur-Gramm2/prop-con/prop-con.htm



Then we were practicing pronunciation of certain words (pleasure, zoo, fairy, shout, Thursday …) and investigating where is each sound made in our mouth.

Phonetic alphabet:



So if you want to pronounce English correctly, it is a good idea to learn phonetic alphabet to be able to use dictionary and read words the right way.



M