Planning Teaching: What should come first?

One of my main teaching struggles comes from knowing what to teach first. This is not a problem that is exclusive to my art teaching, but my teaching in general. In this blog I will focus on my Exploring Drawing and Illustration course.

You have learners, you have times and dates and you have content which needs to be covered. However, when teaching unaccredited courses, you are left without a module guide or instruction from an awarding body. There are no assessments, with learning outcomes to be met either, meaning that you are left with an abundance of material and nothing to guide the structure.

The first tool I use to help guide how the course will proceed is by starting with the need to carry out initial assessments to gage each learners starting point, week one is the best time for this to take place. Working within adult community learning the starting points between learners can be vast. I use two types of initial assessment; one based on theory and the other on practical skill (Education and Training Foundation, 2019).

Within the first, I ask the group to complete a match and pair game around the theme of types of line drawing techniques. They must match the name of the line drawing technique to an image example and a written description – while the learners participate in the task, I take note of each learners’ contributions to assess their knowledge, I will also as one-to-one questions relating to the task. I find this to be a useful activity as it works in a more than one way; firstly, as the initial assessment, but also as an ice breaker activity, encouraging learners to converse in the first ten minutes of the session in a way which is not intrusive (Hartley and Dawson, 2010).

If a learner becomes stuck during the match and pair, I will get them to share the part of the puzzle that they have with the group and prompt them to ask their peers if anyone can suggest what it might correspond to. This allows me to make use of any more knowledgeable others within the group (Vygotsky, 1978), allowing all learners to complete the task. This is a benefit by having a group of learners of mixed ability work together (Seethamraju and Borman, 2009).

Depending on the size of the cohort I may split the group up and have the same activity being completed in smaller groups – with the use of random allocation, as at this point, I do not know the learners enough to use any other grouping method (Hartley and Dawson, 2010). Ideally sized between 3-6 learners (Wheelan, 2009). This ensures that all learners can actively participate in the task.

The second initial assessment is based upon the line drawing techniques outlined previously. However, it looks as assessing their practical skill set. The importance of the theory task coming first is that the assessment introduces the techniques to all the learners, which is particularly important for those learners that have not come across the techniques before. Once the first assessment is completed it provides them with a crib sheet on what the line drawing techniques are and what they look like.

Going forward after the first session my aim to create a manageable chunk of leaning, drawing on mastery learning (Bloom, 1971). While in longer courses these chunks would materialise as different units which might take place over an academic year, I look at these as each week of the course. The Exploring Drawing and Illustration course can run as either five weeks or ten weeks.

The subject matter of Drawing and Illustration is broken down into small chunks which then need to be timetabled into a logical series. This requires me to step back and consider what skills need to be covered first. This is what led me to cover the basics on line drawing in week one; on both lengths of course, as these techniques are referred to in every subsequent session. If I did not cover these first and simply referred to continuous line drawing without covering it this could leave learners without any prior knowledge confused and at a disadvantage. As there are no previous qualification requirements to enrol on the course it cannot be assumed that they have covered these in a previous course. As a way of managing a group of learners who can vary in ability individual learning plans are utilised.

At the start of each session learning objectives are set out, which tell the learners what it is they will be able to do at the end of the session, for example learners are told in the first session that they will be able to:

The learning objectives are also set to Booms revised taxonomy (Anderson, Krathwohl and Bloom, 2001) to encourage higher-order thinking skills, starting with lower level cognitive skills (Bilon, 2019).

Session two for both course lengths covered using view finders, this is covered early in the course as it is a method that learners may want to continue to return to throughout the subsequent weeks. Using a view finder can help the learner to better frame objects/the picture and to block out any distractions (Guptill, 2014). Week three sees the introduction of the grid drawing technique, again as this may be needed going forward. Other skills introduced early in the course include pencil measuring – week four.

While it would be useful to learners to be introduced to all the skills in the first week, I am conscious not to overload them with material and to instead introduce them in meaningful patterns of information with the intention that this is mean they are more likely to retain the information (Miller, 1956). After these skill sets have been covered, the running order for the rest of the sessions becomes less important, as the skills are less basic.

The rest of the course differs depending on the length of the course. Within the five-week course the final week, week five (week ten of the ten-week course), is dedicated to creating a final piece based on the new skills they have learnt. While in the ten-week course for the remaining weeks other topics are covered such as; drawing with anything but a pen and creating repeat patterns.

References

Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl and Bloom, B.S. (2001) A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: a revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Longman.

Bilon, E. (2019) Using Bloom's Taxonomy to Write Effective Learning Objectives: The Abcds of Writing Learning Objectives: A Basic Guide. Kindle Edition.

Bloom, B.S. (1971) Mastery Learning. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Education and Training Foundation. (2019) Excellence Gateway – Toolkit: Initial Assessment. [online] Available at:  https://toolkits.excellencegateway.org.uk/functional-skills-starter-kit/section-3-developing-effective-practice/assessment-functional-skills/initial-assessment. [accessed 14/11/19].

Guptill, A.L. (2014) Rendering in Pen and Ink: The Classic Book on Pen and Ink Techniques for Artists, Illustrators, Architects, and Designers. Watson-Guptill; 60th Anniversary ed. Edition.

Hartley, P. and Dawson, M. (2010) Success in groupwork. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (Pocket study skills).

Miller, G.A. (1956) The magical number of seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97.

Seethamraju, R. and Borman, M. (2009) Influence of group formation choices on academic performance. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 34(1).

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wheelan, S. A. (2009) Group size, group development, and group productivity. Small Group Research 40(2).