Teacher’s Course: A Visual Arts Approach 22 - 26 Aug 2016
This is a five day Department of Education and Skills and EPV-approved summer course for teachers.
The aim of the course is to enable participants to start the new school year with an enhanced tool box of skills and knowledge, in order to effectively deliver the visual arts curriculum in the classroom. Participants will be engaged ‘hands-on’ throughout this course so learning will be through doing. Working in teams and individually, you will cover a range of curriculum strands including drawing, painting, print, 3D construction, fabric and fibre.
A strong emphasis will be on building skills and confidence. The group will also explore how visual art can be used to engage with aspects of the English, SPHE, History and Maths curriculum, as well as to promote visual literacy approaches. School self-evaluation exercises will be incorporated as an integral part of the course.
This course will appeal to teachers of all levels of experience and will be facilitated by the visual arts and education specialist and founder of Art to Heart, Jole Bortoli. This is a continuing professional development opportunity not to be missed!
Course Schedule
Day 1: Making Your Mark
Exploration of teachers’ current level of skill within the art form of drawing. Creative warm-up exercises aimed at enhancing observation skills. Discussion of assessing this skill in your students.
Day 2: The Paint Box
Developing imagination through the use of paint, form and colour. Linkage with English (poetry and narrative) and SPHE. Looking at how to evaluate a child’s development of visual expression.
Day 3: This is the Story
Gaining experience in print-making and understanding of graphic processes. Production of a printed short story in booklet format. Using this to track a student’s visual and verbal literacy development.
Day 4: Journeys
Exploring imaginative worlds in 3D media. Linkage in with English, History and Numeracy. Construction of travel cases and making of 3D models of artifacts. Using these processes to gauge students’ development in tactile & spatial awareness.
Day 5: Fabric and fibre
Developing craft skills and sensitivity to textures, line and shape. End of day groups self evaluation using creative processes explored in previous days. Applying this to school self-evaluation. Discussion of overall approaches to assessment of students’ visual arts development.
About Jole Bortoli
Jole has extensive experience in working with children and with adults who work with children through the arts. As well as her work at The Ark, Jole
has art-directed the interior design of children-centred spaces such as the A&E Department in Temple Street Children’s Hospital and the Office for the Ombudsman for Children.
Jole is also the founder of Art to Heart, an organisation that provides art courses for children and adults in educational, community and art settings. She is currently working in Dublin and the Burren, Co. Clare and every week she leads workshops for children and adults. In Dublin she regularly works with The Ark as artist-facilitator in visual art programmes and also with the Sanctuary, a spirituality Centre in the heart of Dublin city, where she is collaborating in their Youth Programme.
In the Burren, Co. Clare she runs workshops every fortnight and every summer she holds several weeks of training in her workshop.
In the last couple of years Jole has started to illustrate and write her own stories, which she self-publishes. Her first book Iria was launched in April 2010 and she’s now working on her second.