Internship Reflection #5

3) Contents of the lesson

Lesson 3 – DADA Poetry

I would like to deal with Dada poetry lesson as reflection #5. Since I didn’t have any background information about Dada movement when I participated in this lesson for the first time, I didn’t understand well about the meaning this activity includes. After inquiring into Dada movement, then, I could critically observe and be fascinated by this lesson. Due to characteristic of Dada that includes various concepts from performance art, postmodernism, pop art, surrealism, this lesson would provide a great chance for young students to understand the diversity of art. Dada movement considered almost anything to be art, especially anything involving a random element so students could take this basic method and build on it in a variety of different ways.

1.     Direction

1.     Stand on the same side of the table as you tablemates.

2.     Carefully cut out 10-20 words (no need to be picky) from magazines and/or newspapers. The words may be short, but BIG.

3.     Place all of the words facing the same direction.

4.     Move to a new table and select 10-20 words to keep for your artwork.

5.     Return to your seat.

6.     Cut out 10-20 more words to combine with the words you just selected.

2.     Big Idea-Openness (Anything could be art)

I believe the big idea of this lesson is openness. It took some time for me figure out the big idea because it was a little bit vague and hard to be judged in terms of big idea. The reason I chose openness as a big idea of this lesson is that the most important idea of this activity is about diversity of art. It really draws me to select “openness” as a big idea. There are still many people who have particular prejudice about art. They easily consider that art is special, difficult, elegant, elevating and inaccessible. That’s not true. And I strongly believe art is open to anybody, any form, any style or any purpose.     

The lesson includes a discussion for having better understanding about Dada even though I couldn’t observe the process. The main question of the discussion is “Do you think Dada is art? Why or why not?”. This could develop students’ abilities to understand about openness of art. Then the teacher shows the examples of Dada-like art and poetry which exist in our popular culture such as music, commercials and videos. This process would be very helpful for students to apply the concept of Dada to real life. They might have flexible view toward art through this experience.    

3.     Objective

The objective of this class is to:

Discuss and understand what Dada movement is

Communicate ideas by selecting and applying art elements and principles.

Experience connection with performing arts, communication arts, math, science, and social studies

Be able to understand the role and functions of art in history and culture.

Be influenced by cultures and time periods in which they live.

Become familiar with changing the way they think of art.

4.     Students’ examples

While working on Dada poetry, I found there were two types of students. Some could enjoy the activity without hesitation and, on the other hand, others had difficulties to select and arrange the words. The students who were not confident about the activity tended to be too careful to keep up and follow the directions. Their hesitation might be from being too much obsessed to making meaning or being afraid of what they don’t know about. They might need stronger support or encouragement. But the kids who were fully engaged excited about the lesson tended to be an open-minded and active learner. They chose the words even though they don’t know about that. They asked me the meaning, pronunciation of the word rather than kept hesitating. Anyway, working with different kinds of kids would be a good experience to me.

After finishing making the poetries, the teacher had them to read it with their gestures. That was not only reading but also performing. Students were so into it. Teacher chose the best ones and recorded their performing with Dada poetry. While watching video, I was so excited as much as students were. It was a great strategy for them to understand the concept of Dada movement which includes openness, flexibilities and diversities toward arts. One thing obvious is that the lesson has influenced me a lot. It helped me get rid of the prejudice about art.  

Besides, the lesson was efficient enough especially in terms of language and social studies because this works basically deal with words. Since words tend to have particular meaning in the view of history or culture, the students could get benefits in various ways by thinking or describing the meaning of words. It would be helpful for young students develop critical thinking skills as well as language skill.