Day Two At DACA - Fine Art

Today has been a really good day for me as I feel I was a lot more engaged eith the children and helped them a lot more than yesterday. I have been in fine art with some year nine's helping one boy with his final pieces of his exam coursework.

His work involved cans that were crushed and had made clay models of them. Their teacher asked us too sit with one pupil and help them finish off their work.

In this lesson, as it was just us helping finishing off, there was little teaching going on which makes it hard to reflect on their practice but I did manage to get some information about the school off the boy I was with. Even though he wasnt very chatty he did tell me a few things that really helped me, he said that this school has really helped him with his art and that he likes going there, that art is his favourite lesson because he is able to do some work which he enjoys. He also said that he would like to do more art than he would be able to do because of their scheme where they can only do art once in either year 9 or 10. This is a real shame as I think he would be able to go further if he was able to do it for another year.

Even though the teacher was not teaching and was in and out of classes covering for an A-Level exam they were all quiet and seemed to know that they had to get their work done and that their teacher probably wouldn't be happy if they messed around. Whether that was because they knew they had to get it finished or because their teacher was someone who kept the class under control is unknown but I got the impression it was a bit of both. For the breif time he was in the lesson he seemed to take the approach where he can be the nice teacher who everyone gets along with but if you misbehave then he will shout. For this they seem to have respect for him which meant they did their work even without his presence.

 Even though he enjoyed art, I felt he didn't really know what he was doing and what his project was about. When I asked him what his project was about and where he had started etc, he did not seem to understand what I was saying and what the question was which I was shocked at. Eventually he realised what I had asked and he was very vague in his explanation but it seemed to be that they were given around 5 subjects to choose from and go from there.