Performing Arts Focus
Performing Arts in the Junior School
Hello, it’s Rosie here (filling in for Keri for term one). It’s been an absolute pleasure teaching in my old Performing Arts room this term and getting to know our junior years a bit better.
Foundation, Year 1 and Year 2 have been starting their performing arts lessons with ‘listening diary’, putting the special starry lights on and gathering in a circle listening to a different song each week. We draw what we think, feel or imagine from each track as well as showing changes in the musical elements of pitch, dynamics and form. We will be sending the listening diaries home at the end of the term – students are very keen to share their newly-found musical discoveries with their families.
As the term has progressed, we’ve been gradually adding more instruments to our classes. This week, Year 1/2s used boomwhackers and drums to play along to Harry Belafonte’s, ‘Banana Boat Song’, and Foundation are learning to recognise rhythms using a rhyme about a ghost eating toast! A hugely popular game in our drama activities this term has been ‘museum burglars' – sneaking around the space and using our imagination to avoid the security guard and seize the treasure, set to the iconic Pink Panther theme. Foundation students are learning to control their movements and create different shapes in a calming ‘origami dance’ that we have been refining each week.
Choir
The ‘Kenergy’ craze has hit choir – resulting in a record number of signups at the start of the term. Hopefully we can share this all-singing-all-dancing hit with you at a performance soon.
Looking forward to my last few weeks with you all and handing back over to the wonderful Keri.
Keep singing!
~ Rosie Wositzky-Jones, Foundation – Year 2 Performing Arts Teacher
Performing Arts in the Upper Years
The upper years started the year with a drama unit. During our warm-ups, we learnt a variety of movement games to get us started and our muscles loosened up! We used the topic of being cyber safe as a stimulus and learnt about different aspects of drama. We had a go at creating comedic and dramatic episodes using slow motion. The students are excited to share their work. Can you guess the scenes which they are enacting?
Another dramatic technique which we have been practising in our classes is tableaux. The art of tableaux involves having a team of students using their bodies to create a freeze frame to convey an event or situation. This involves collaboration, discipline and a whole lot of imagination! Students were asked to create tableaux using the concept found in a Christmas Carol—“internet past”, “internet present” and “internet future”.
Looking at what the students have produced, you can see that their thoughts about cyber life and the meta verse is very accurate and insightful. We rounded off the unit by students creating and performing skits on internet safety and the Year 3 and 4 students learning a song about internet safety, which we would love to present to you soon.
Big Band
We have such a lovely bunch of new recruits and veteran talents in our Big Band. We have gone for a rebrand with the evolving popularity of instruments that students are learning. We are in the process of refining three musical arrangements and cannot wait to share this with all of you.
Brass Lessons
Brass with Sean Nihill from Thornbury High has kicked off to a flying start. We will start recruiting new members for this program later next term!
~ Olivia Li, Years 3 – 6 Performing Arts Teacher