The Sparkle Times
ARTS TEAM
Hi! My name is Kaela and I am one of your performing arts captains for 2023. I am really looking forward to this year and all of the responsibilities that come with my role. I have always loved the arts and I think it brings a sort of magic to any environment that nothing else can provide. Last year I joined our Senior Performance group and performed at the annual Visual Art Exhibition. I also performed with our group at the Starry Night Christmas festival, which was lots of fun and helped put me in the festive spirit. Last year I auditioned for production and I was part of the ensemble group. This year I have jumped at the opportunity to join the Senior Performance group again, and it is an experience that I will remember forever. We have already performed at our school picnic and assembly. I am excited about all of the arts opportunities that are presented this year including, but not limited to the Production, other performances and the Visual Art competition. I cannot wait for the amazing year ahead of us!
GRADE 1
Year 1 Drama Unit
“Who goes trip trap over my bridge?”. If you have heard these words coming from the Performing Arts room, don’t worry a troll has not moved in! In fact, it is our wonderful Year 1 students who have been doing Drama this Term in Performing Arts. The students have been learning about scripts for the first time, and have been putting on the play “The 3 Billy Goats Gruff”. They have been exploring the different movements and voices of each of the characters and learning about using sets and props in their performances. Students especially loved adding sound effects with musical instruments and wearing costumes for their final performance! The best part was everyone joined in and had some fun!
Georgia 1A- “I think drama is fun cause you get to act more”
Bennet 1A” It was fun! I loved wearing the costumes!”
Christian 1A “I loved wearing the costumes and being the troll”
GRADE 2
Year 2 Instrumental Boomwhackers Unit
This Term, Year 2 students have been learning to play Boomwhackers. Boomwhackers are tuned percussion instruments and support the year 2 Inquiry Unit of Forces. Students have been learning about pitch, the 7 letters of the musical alphabet, how to read colour-coded musical notation, including crotchets and quaver notes, and the forces of push and pull. Students have enjoyed learning to play lots of songs, including “The Canoe Song”, a song written to honour the First Nations people of Canada and their love of the waterways. Students demonstrated perseverance, focus, teamwork, responsibility, creativity and passion, as they worked as a team to learn the song. The Year 2 students did such an awesome job that they added even more instruments to the song including xylophones, drums and triangles, to create their own mini orchestra. This was a truly amazing experience for the Year 2 classes and they should be very proud of what they accomplished. We spoke to some Year 2 students about their experience and this is what they had to say:
“I like listening to different sounds and playing different songs. I like the colours of them and the different types of notes and learning the rule if it is longer it makes a low sound and if it’s small it makes a high sound.” Madeleine 2B
“What I like about Boomwhackers is it is a fun instrument to play and you get to hit it and I like to hit it. I also like percussion instruments, and I know what percussion is and it’s when you hit something for an instrument. What we learnt about it is we can do it in groups and I like working in groups” Charlie 2B
GRADE 5
Year 5 Drama: Scripted Plays. By Adele and Gwendolyn 5P
Hi, we are Gwendolyn and Adele and we are two of the Year 5 students for 2023. Today we will be telling you about what the Year 5s have been doing in Performing Arts. This term Year 5 have been completing a Drama unit and have been learning how to project their voices, show emotion and characteristics and how to show movements to bring out character and emotion. Towards the end of the unit, we were put into groups of six to perform a scripted play called ‘The Sleepy Bear’. This play is linked to our Unit of Inquiry on natural disasters.
In ‘The Sleepy Bear’, there are 6 characters, Maggie, the baker, the innkeeper, the mayor, the teacher and the bear. The play is set in a town called Chaosville that is suffering from earthquakes and tornados. Nearby is a forest where a bear lives in his cave. To bring this play to life we added scenery, costumes and props, including moving the sets to create the different scenes of town and forest. To switch the scene from town to forest, we practised turning around the sets at the end of each scene. We have been rehearsing the play for three weeks, improving our line delivery and stagecraft skills. We are really looking forward to performing it this week. We loved this Drama unit and learnt a lot about staging and performing a play.
GRADE 6
Year 6 Drama: The Jabberwocky- By Kaela and Mimi
In Year 6 Performing Arts, we have been learning about ways we can use our bodies to add sound and movement to enhance a performance and also how it engages an audience. We used the poem ‘The Jabberwocky”, by Lewis Carrol, to create the scenes and characters (basically we used poetry as a script) and we recited and performed it to our grade. 6C will also be performing it at the assembly in Week 9.
Before we could perform it, we first had to decode this nonsense poem.
‘Twas brillig,and the slithy toves,
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe,
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe’
That is only the first verse and it was already confusing the 6s.
What did brillig, slithy toves, gyre, gimble, wabe, mimsy, borogroves and mome raths outgrabe mean? Our absolutely incredible performing arts teacher, Ms Nugent, helped us decode this poem. First, we tried to find out what type of word each word was, like slithy would be an adjective describing toves, which would be a noun. Then we guessed what each word sounded like. For example “frabjous day” could be a fabulous day. When we decoded a word as a verb, we also tried to recreate what we thought the movement was. For example, what galumphing would look like. We asked our fellow Year 6 students what they thought about learning the performing “The Jabberwocky”:
“It was really fun and it helped me to learn how to collaborate with other people. It was difficult to memorise the lines” - Malia 6K
“It was a great experience to use poetry as a script and really fun to decode the words and imagine what shapes we could create with our bodies.” Alfie K, 6J
“At first I found it really hard but then came to realise that it made me more confident because it’s a nonsense poem and when we were showing them you could just be yourself” - Laurine 6C
“It was challenging to learn the lines. It was really fun when it was time to perform it” - Luka 6J
“It was challenging to create the atmosphere and the theme. I liked the weird and new words since it’s a nonsense poem” - Parin 6J
STREET DRUMMING CREW
What is street drumming you ask? Street drumming, or bucket drumming as it is sometimes called, is a style of music that involves drumming on plastic buckets and other objects to create melodies. The most common object used by bucket drummers is 20-litre plastic bucket. This year, as part of the many opportunities Murrumbeena students get to participate in extra Arts groups, MPS started its first street drumming group. 35 Year 5 and 6 students joined at the start of Term 1, and attend weekly lunchtime rehearsals in the Performing Arts room with Ms Nugent. They learn different rhythms and ways to hit the buckets to create different drum sounds. “I learnt new things and you could feel the sound when we were all doing it together”. Alfie B, 6J. They also learn to layer different rhythms over each other and work as an ensemble to create a really cool sound. The drumming group had their first performance last week at the Harmony Day Parade and it was a huge success. “It was really fun. It was a bit challenging but you kept practising and it was great when you got it. It was awesome” Luka K, 6J. The students put on an awesome performance with their drum beats filling the schoolyard. The feedback from parents, teachers and students was unbelievably positive with most never seeing bucket drumming before. “I loved it! It was absolutely brilliant! I’ve never seen anything like it before”. Mrs Clark. Everyone was awestruck by the student's ability to remember rhythms, keep in time and work together to put on a wonderful performance. “The Street drumming was just AWESOME! It blew my mind!” Lior D 2R
ENVIRONMENTAL ARTWORK
MPS Environmental Artwork on public display
Remember to check out our amazing Grade 6 student’s Environmental Activism Artwork on public display at Ormond Uniting Church on the corner of Booran Road and North Road, Ormond. The artworks will be on rotational display throughout the year. There will also be an upcoming article in the Glen Eira News in May which will include quotes from our fabulous students about the process of the project. We will keep you all updated for when that article goes live!
A picture from the launch earlier this month.