Hello!
A few days ago I had an amazing opportunity to take part in The power of... art and craft Webinar led by Mrs. Katarzyna Biernat.
Mrs. Katarzyna Biernat is a teacher in the Monnet International School. She has presented a few characteristics of the school like following International Educational Programme (IB) and Primary Years Programme (PYP), providing bilingual education and implementing Polish National Curriculum into those programmes. The mission of the school is "The joy of learning and teaching".
During this webinar Mrs. Biernat has shown us many different ways to get creative with our students. She has presented a lot of ideas and inspirations. We also had a chance to get creative while doing the warm-up activity. Our presenter asked us to draw 9 circles and change them into... something! I decided to turn 2 circles into a bike and the rest of them I turned into the sun, clock, ball, happy face etc. These drawings gave us the opportunity and reason to talk. We could describe them and explain why we made them. This would be a very nice activity to conduct in the classroom.
Mrs. Biernat has also told us about the benefits of doing arts and crafts in the classroom like:
- developing speaking skills while producing art,
- developing hand-eye coordination,
- turning it into introduction or revision of the topic,
- providing relaxation,
- practicing focus and attention span,
- providing student-student and teacher-student interaction.
The presenter has mentioned some do's and don'ts when it comes to implementing arts and crafts in the EFL classroom. First of all we should not engage children in such tasks in every lesson. This type of the activity should be unexpected and unpredictable. We have to always be enthusiastic and praise kids' work.
I really like that Mrs. Biernat has shared with us - where does she find inspiration? What was surprising - inspiration can be everywhere - in books, songs, stories, seasons, calendar. She has shown a few photos of her kids' work. I enjoyed the sock bunnies and snowmans the most!
Do you implement art and craft into your classroom? How?
Looking forward to your comments.
Zuzanna
Thank you Zuzia for this beuatiful review. When it comes to your question, yes I try to engage my students in art all the time. Regardless of age, we work with colors, materials, crayons, posters. With young learners it could be anything and I am always surprised to see how creative they can get. With older ones, we usually work together preparing posters reflecting on the topic we have studied. Nevertheless, it could be anything really. I think art just makes our lessons more engaging but it is also a very powerful tool to learn sth new :)
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