Recent Question/Assignment

ECE 140 Creative Arts 1. Young Children and the Arts.
Assignment One: Arts Education Advocacy: A position statement.
Why is it important to introduce young children to the Arts in an early years teaching and learning environment?
The Assignment Task
Please Note: The assignment presentation is in the form of a website, in which you should integrate images, video and text.
The aim of this assessment task is to enable you to outline the role the creative arts (visual art and media arts, and music and the performing arts) play in the aesthetic and creative development of the young child in early childhood and kindergarten settings.
You are required to write an advocacy statement that supports the inclusion of the arts in early childhood centres or in a kindergarten. You should include:
• A clear and succinct introduction that states your support for the inclusion of arts experiences in early childhood setting.
• Clearly define the importance of the arts in young children's creative, cognitive and physical development and demonstrate the nurturing role that the arts play in enhancing aesthetic, sensory, perceptual and expressive development in early childhood.
• Support for your statement with scholarly literature, e.g. prescribed text ‘It’s Arts Play’ and 2-3 other academic readings.
• Support for your statement with images and media, e.g. photographs of children's arts making and participation in arts activities or examples of activities you have experienced in your workshop activities
• Your own personal professional experiences or refer to exemplary practices you have witnessed or participated in – these could be in the form of media clips
• Reference to Early Years framework documents, e.g the VEYLDF and Early Years Framework, Belonging, Being & Becoming and also other policy or directive documents from your community.
• A reference list of all readings, images and media
The unit study materials will help you to identify key theorists to support your approach to Arts teaching and learning. These include Vygotsky, Gardiner, Malaguzzi, Dinham and Koster, Scarlet and others to develop frameworks that support your ideas about teaching the arts.
You should use the Early Years Learning Frameworks, the prescribed text, Its Arts Play and the online (CloudDeakin) study materials as resources for this assessment task.
The main focus of this assignment is developing your own personal professional overview of the importance of the arts in the early childhood curriculum and an ability to support this position of intent with research and knowledge.
A suggestion for how you might go about writing an Advocacy Statement.
Please note: The following aligns with the chapters in the prescribed text, Its Arts Play
Section 1 ARTS ARE.. Begin with an introductory paragraph that introduces the general focus of your advocacy statement ensuring that the focus is on the Arts. Ensure that you make reference to the Arts Curriculum documents, and any other policy documents. Make a strong statement that highlights how much you now know about why the arts have been mandated and are very present in early years education. This should be a short page with your digital or digitized artefact included for IMPACT.
Section 2 NATURE This section should describe what YOU believe it is like to learn in and through the arts – a paragraph on learning in the arts and a paragraph on through the arts. This section should focus on describing the nature of learning in and through the arts.
We advocate for the arts by providing quality arts experiences – ones that value the arts as ways of knowing; ones that nurture creative thinking and creativity in general. Make sure you provide some examples of what quality arts experiences ‘look like, smell like, feel like and sound like’. In this section there may be opportunity for you to highlight your own positive/not so positive arts experiences. It also helps to describe the unique sensory attributes of the different expressions of the arts. The nature of music is that it is invisible and experienced through the ear. Drama is about telling stories and of beginnings, middles and ends. This is a very helpful thing for you to do – to nail down what the essence of each arts learning area is.
Section 3 NURTURE This is what the arts nurture in children’s growth and development. Write a section that outlines how you believe the arts contribute to children’s growth and development.
This aligns with the chapters in the text Its Arts Play. These two sections should fit on the one tab/page
Section 4 BELONG, BE, BECOME Write a section linking the arts with the EYLF. There should be 3 parts or subsections: How children Belong through The Arts; How they experience Being themselves through arts experiences and How they are Becoming their future selves. Our framework documents describe learning for the child …. This section should be one page of your site with three sections.
Step 5 THE ARTS REMAIN: Finally, you might restate your main points and leave your readers wanting to join you in the cause. The arts remain an important and necessary part of what it is to be human. For that reason alone the arts remain.
NOTE on images and media
You should include examples (images/video) to support your theoretical framework. You can use your own images or search and locate and cite images from Google images, or video that supports your viewpoint. Remember that if you are using your own images, you need to have permission to show children's faces or you can cover them, or show back views. Or you can just use images of children’s art works, songs or movements.
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What is an advocacy statement?
An advocacy statement is a written or spoken expression representing a particular viewpoint or stance regarding a specific subject, topic, viewpoint or representation by one person or a group to a wider audience. The focus is on informing or persuading the audience to consider the content of the advocacy with a view to acceptance or change. It asks for action from the audience: their time, their attention, their consideration. It may be written or spoken.
An advocacy statement that is delivered in written form and enhanced with images, video and audio, has the potential to endure in a way that a spoken one tends not to, because it's tangible.
Why we do this - what it is that drives this process
We advocate because something matters...and to US. Good advocacy statements must move the audience: it gets to care. In other words, the audience attends to something because they react to the content and the images presented to them. At the same, the writer must stay balanced. Emotion to excess can distract from the content of the advocacy.
A procedure for writing an advocacy statement
An advocacy statement is designed to gain support from readers regarding a specific subject, in this case the importance of the arts in children’s education. Advocacy presentations are used as a call for action or can be intended to raise community awareness on a particular topic or issue.
Writing an advocacy statement requires the writer to demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the subject.
• Research your topic so you are well informed. The more knowledge you have, the better prepared you will be when it comes to write or develop your presentation. Use the text Its Arts Play or the words from the questions as a type of template/framework for your paragraphs and section headings.
• State the focus of your advocacy clearly in an introductory paragraph. Give the general background of your position and why the readers should care about it. Your introduction will provide a general outline for your statement, and the rest of the site will provide details.
• Provide added depth, background story and details about your subject in the body of the presentation. As you explain a particular point, bring it back to the goal of getting the readers involved in your subject.
• Provide resources (images/video) and quotes to support your written focus in your advocacy statement.
Your writing has more legitimacy if you quote from known and respected entities in your field than if you simply give your own opinion.
Learning in the arts should be full of wonder, play and ….should engage the senses and excite….Sentence starters with the wording – “I would advocate for arts learning experiences that… because….OR I would advocate for beginning with experiences that entice and invite children to play and explore and this is because…. Malaguzzi also advocates for experiences that begin in this way. In his….
Your conclusion should quickly review the issues you have already discussed and leave readers with a final statement to stick in their heads about how they can join your cause.
Include a page of references showing where all of your facts came from. Alphabetize it by last name of the original author. This can also give your readers resources where they can learn more.
How to submit.
FILE 1 enter all text into a word document, check, edit, save and submit to the dropbox.
You are required to write all of the text parts into a word document and use this to check your grammar, spelling and your citations. This is very common practice and will also ensure that you are able to submit your text through turnitin. It also makes sure that if something were to happen to your website you have all of your written work safely stored on this file. Please name this file with the UNIT CODE, CAMPUS of study and YOUR NAME trimester and year. This file must be submitted to the dropbox.
e.g. ECE140_CBD_Fiona Phillips_T1_2019
FILE 2 Assignment submission form.
Navigate to the assignment dropbox
Download the assignment submission form from the assignment dropbox. At the top of this document is a space for you to paste the url (website address).
Navigate to WIx and to your Website. Open it in edit mode.
You have to submission options you may either
1) In EDIT MODE navigate to the Site Menu and select the third option from the dropdown menu “Get Feedback”
Choose to share your site. Copy the unique link and then paste this into your assignment cover sheet.
Or you might choose to 2) PUBLISH your site. Navigate to the Site menu and choose the 4th option from the drop down menu. “Publish”
Click on View site and check that all is working in your site. Copy the unique link (url) and then paste this into your assignment cover sheet.

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