Specialists Programs
Specialist Programs Term 1
Visual Arts
Throughout the year we will be investigating what and who inspires us to be creative and how we can inspire others.
Prep
Foundation students will explore what it means to be an artist. The students will share their understanding of line and colour. Through experimentation they will discover that lines can be straight or curved, thick, thin, zigzag, scribbly, short, wandering or scrambled and lines can be repeated to create patterns. We will be looking at what inspires us as creative people. Many of our projects will be inspired by other artists and music. Through play and investigation with paint the students will experiment with primary colours.
Year One /Two
Year 1 and 2 students will be shown how to use the elements of line and shape to produce the structure of a face. Using their knowledge of the facial structure, the students will create a self-portrait using a combination of paint and pastels. Students will revise the skills of mark making, using these in various pieces of work. They will create their own chart of different marks for reference and discuss how marks can show how a texture feels. Inspiration will come from various artists to create many pieces demonstrating the progression of the students' understanding of line and colour. Students will review their understanding of primary colours and the fact that with paint, they can be mixed together to make secondary colours.
Year Three /Four
Students will identify the many elements and aspects of our lives that inspire us. Year 3/4 students will investigate the history behind portrait making. Using their knowledge of shape and line, they will create a self portrait using mixed media, inspired by the artist Gustav Klimt. Students will explore mixing primary colours to make secondary colours as well as blending white and black to change their value. Students will investigate the art movement known as Fauvism to inspire their work.
Year Five /Six
Students in Year 5 and 6 will investigate what are the many things that inspire us and create an art piece inspired by their holidays. During the term, the students will be introduced to tertiary colours and to techniques for creating shade, tone and tints. The students will work with complementary and contrasting colour wheels and monotone painting. They will use a variety of drawing tools (eg. ink, pen, pastel) and explore different surfaces (eg.cardboard, paper, fabric, foil).
Deirdre Cosgrave
dcosgrave@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au
Italian
Prep
This term the prep students will learn introductions, greetings and express how they feel when asked, “Come stai?”. They will listen to the traditional story of Pinocchio and will play games and sing songs to learn the colours and simple language.
Year One/Two
This term the students will revise the colours and numbers to twenty. They will be encouraged to learn beyond twenty, this will include simple addition and subtraction.
In Italian we will also revise the of days of the week and months of the year to reinforce what they know from the previous year. A brief introduction to Italy’s geography will take place towards the end of term one as a preliminary to Term Two.
Year Three/Four
This term the students will explore the children’s Italian folktale story “Strega Nona”. Written and illustrated by Tomie De Paola. They will discuss and make connections to the story and will adapt some of the language and ideas derived from the text to guide them with various activities and games.
Rosetta De Amicis
rdeamicis@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au
Chinese
Year Five/Six
Students wil be introduced to the following vocabulary and topics:
basic greetings, introducing themselves, counting from 0-20 and forming numbers to 100. They will learn how to write Chinese characters, following the correct stroke order and practise writing the numbers 1-10.
In Culture students will learn about; Beijing, Spring Festival/Chinese New Year, The Great Wall of China and the Panda. They will also take part in two activities related to Chinese culture; paper cutting and wishing others a Happy Birthday by singing the Chinese birthday song.
Ange Crowe
acrowe@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au
Performing Arts
Preps
I love the enthusiasm and innocence of my new Prep students who are willing to give anything a go. We will explore how songs and movements associated with each song can be used to tell stories, set the mood and teach us about animals and other topics. We listen to stories and then see how we can act out parts of them and we discuss how we would feel if placed in their shoes. We begin learning the basics of mime through exploring how different animals are shaped, how they move, and finally we give voice and sounds to them.
Year One/Two
These students will be reminded of the importance of songs to teach us greetings, everyday expressions and learn to sing and add movements and actions for each song. They will also explore the basics of miming and will mime everyday activities such as getting ready for school, finding someone to play with on the playground and what happens when we go on outings, such as the beach, the city and camping. Students will roleplay an effective group and how important it is to work well as a group. Using the story, Lost and Found, by Oliver Jeffers, they will identify the different emotions from the story, what it means to be a good friend and how we can be kind to one another. They will retell parts of the story using movement, music and voices. Students will undertake a Music Appreciation Task in which they will listen to Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev and identify what instruments are being used, what story is taking place and what they like and don’t like.
Year Three/Four
Students will begin with lots of games and activities that aim to develop their skills in collaboration and working efficiently as a group. They will begin miming different activities and sports and learn how to develop the mime from a simple one, to one which has a clear beginning, middle and end, with a problem and resolution. Voice will then be added and using puppets, they will experiment with how they can change and disguise their voices to make them sound like a puppet character. They will explore how we are connected to one another and perform a series of short role plays to show the connections. Using the story Fox, by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks they will undertake a unit of work looking at themes such as friendship, power, envy and betrayal. They will place themselves in each character’s shoes and write short scripts imaging what life would be like to be one of the characters. They will retell the story using music and movement and masks.
Year Five/Six
Students will explore the elements of Drama; structure, mood, characters, and time and will devise role plays and improvisations based on each topic, utilising the skills of mime, movement, gesture and voice. They will use Stanislavski’s Method Acting techniques to identify with a character from the story Voices in the Park. They will explore different perspectives, prejudices and empathy through first and third person narratives and will go on to write a short monologue for a character of their choice from the book. They will workshop their monologues and offer support to their peers by analysing what is working well and what needs improvement. Each monologue will be rehearsed and polished (giving thought to setting, mood, costumes, script, etc) for a class performance and students will offer observations and feedback to each other.
Lou Devoy
ldevoy@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au