Communicating with the Specialist Team

We look forward to partnering with you in 2024, and welcome your input:

Penelope Lang (Performing Arts) penelope.lang@education.vic.gov.au

Wominjeka!

Thank you to everyone who applied to be the Performing Arts leaders for 2024. I am delighted to introduce you to Charlie and Bonnie who will be very busy this year assisting with our whole school production, choir performances and hopefully coming up with some exciting new ideas for Performing Arts at USPS. Congratulations to both of you.

VSSS 2024

We had our first rehearsal with the talented Kim Van Hoorn and showed all of the participants how to use google classroom to access the dance videos. Please make sure your child has joined the VSSS classroom and is rehearsing as much as possible. Last Thursday we hosted four other schools in our gym namely, Macclesfield PS, Scoresby PS, Tecoma PS and Karoo PS. We rehearsed as a mass group for the first time and the students got to ask lots of questions about how VSSS operates and what they can expect on the night. I think the photos below show how much fun we had! I was so proud of our dancers who showed resilience, respect, responsibility and buckets of talent on the day. Please make sure you have now paid and consented on Compass for your child. Our next rehearsals are as follows:

14th May - rehearsal at school

20th June - rehearsal at school

5th August - hub rehearsal at Officer Secondary College

12th and 13th September - technical and dress rehearsal at John Cain Arena

14th September - Performance day/night

Instrumental Lessons

At the end of this page is information about our school's Instrumental Program that is run by Groove Foundations. We offer lessons on most instruments and have an outstanding team of musicians who deliver this program to over 100 students. The first 'trial' lesson is free of charge and your child will get the opportunity to perform in an end of year instrumental concert if they want to. Feel free to contact Jordan Scotney who would be happy to answer any of your questions.

School Choir

Junior and Senior choir have now started. The Senior choir meets every Wednesday and the Junior choir meets every Thursday. If your child has decided to commit to being a choir member (there was a 2 week try-out available) then it is very important that they bring along a plastic wallet or binder with pockets so that they can collect the lyric sheets for the songs we are singing. Both choirs will be performing at the end of term assembly. Some students have found it challenging to remember what line they need to stand in....so this week I took some photos to remind them (and me!)

Learning in Performing Arts

Foundation:

The students have continued to gain confidence through singing in unison and making up their own lyrics to the song, 'If you're Happy and you Know it'. We discussed different ways of moving our bodies, namely fast and slow, soft and strong, up and down. Some students enjoyed making up their own dance moves in our improvised dance circle and we discussed what it means to 'mirror' someone. This will prepare us for next term when the students start to lean their song and dance for our school production. There is a lot of 'mirroring' that will take place. We played the game, 'Car Pool' where the students had to cooperate and build different cars with varying numbers of seats. We are now beginning to explore facial expressions and changing our face to express different emotions.

Year One and Two:

The students have continued to practise the 'Sasha Dance', a folk dance from Russia. Some of the Year 2 students will be delighting you with this at our end of term assembly. We have recently been learning a new dance, the 'Mexican Hat Dance' and it has been great to see the students collaborate, focus and try hard things. I saw lots of problem solving, the sharing of ideas and heard lots of singing and laughter. We can't wait to share this dance with you soon. The year two students are now working on choreographing their own short dance sequence, focusing on moving in time with the beat. The year one students have been enjoying some free dance improvisation and have now started to learn the 'Heel and Toe Polka'. This has been fun but challenging. We are not giving up! All students enjoyed our fun game 'Pass the Sombrero' and continued to work on learning verse two of, 'Advance Australia Fair'.

Year Three and Four:

The students in Year 3 and 4 have continued to work on their short scripted scenes from our school production, 'Cinderella and Rockerfella'. It has been great to watch the groups respond to feedforward from both myself and their peers. We have been focusing on using a clear and loud drama voice and adding tone that suits our different characters. Some students have been adding gesture and movement (and even extra lines) and some have been able to retain their words and put down their scripts. We have explored using different facial expressions to express emotions. We then worked on using self-control in the game, 'Honey I Love you' which required students to use a neutral face (no laughing and no emotion). This was very challenging, almost as challenging as our warm up game, 'Jump in, Jump out'. Some students will perform at assembly next term.

Year Five and Six:

The students had one final lesson to prepare for their school production auditions and it was great to see them collaborate and help each other. People who planned to be backstage crew kindly assisted out actors in learning lines. Great teamwork. Ms Oliver and I were so impressed with the standard of acting that we witnessed at the auditions. So many students wanted the BIG parts (which is unusual) highlighting the incredible bravery and self-belief in this cohort of students. The show has now been cast and rehearsals will start next week after the scripts are finalised. We have been doing some improvised acting during Performing Arts which required the students to become one of Cinderella's pets, but a pet with a glitch. The performances were incredibly entertaining but also provided invaluable stagecraft lessons for those watching as well as performing. This will be very important in term three.

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