News from Performing Arts

Performing Arts - Grade Prep and Grade 2

Prep

In Prep students have been demonstrating their creativity and imagination in their Performing Arts classes. They have been exploring emotions and developing their skills in using their face, voice, and body to express different emotions. They have also been having fun with the story of Little Red Riding Hood, acting out the different characters and working towards a small scene performance in class. Through this, they are developing their skills in characterisation and storytelling.

Grade 2

In Grade 2, children have been exploring scripts and showing different characters using their expressive skills. We have been reading about Coco Chanel and David Attenborough from the ‘Little People Big Dreams’ series and acting out their stories in drama. Students have developed their expressive skills by adapting their voice, movement and facial expression to effectively show different characters. Students have performed their scripts and will watch their performances next term to recognise what they did well and how they can continue to improve their drama skills. 

Music - Grades 1 and 3

This term, children from Grades 1 and 3 have focused on activities centred around four key components of music. These are ‘Skills’, ‘Sing and Play’, ‘Compose’ and ‘Connect’. Music can be explored through a range of areas such as listening, singing, dancing, playing and reflecting and it is always interesting seeing students enjoy a variety of these. So far, students had the opportunity to learn to play a range of instruments to some short songs by following the music notation and listening by ear. These songs culminated in an ensemble of each song and students rotated instruments to play all the different parts. Students also built up their skills and confidence to sing along to these songs. Overall, they did a wonderful job with these and understand the importance of teamwork and focusing on your part as a piece of the music puzzle to the overall song.

Incursion with Greg

During our Planning Week, students in Grades 1, 2 and 3 took part in an engaging incursion with Greg, centred on electronic instruments. While Greg is our librarian, he also has a strong passion for these instruments and even creates some of his own. He generously shared his collection, giving students the opportunity to listen, explore, and experiment with creating their own sounds, beats, and patterns.

Working in pairs, students moved their way through a range of instruments at their speed, collaborating and discovering new ways to play each of them. It was wonderful to see their confidence grow as they embraced trying something different and realise there was no single “right” way to approach each instrument. Their reactions to the variety of sounds and volumes—often filled with laughter and dancing — highlighted their enjoyment, while their teamwork and willingness to share ideas were equally impressive.

At the end of each session, students reflected on the sounds they heard, the range in the pitch and the different ways that they could create music. Some of these students have had this opportunity to use these instruments before and it is great to see them develop their skills with them as they progress through the years.

Thank you, Greg, for providing such a fun and valuable experience for our students.

Grade 6 Band

After a few weeks of auditions, the Grade 6 School Band for 2026 have been completed. It is always great to hear the talents and skills of all the students who auditioned, and we hope they all continue to have music as part of their lives.

The students selected for the band will commence rehearsals of songs selected to learn next term. We look forward to hearing them work together on these songs and perform them throughout the year.

Drama - Grades 4, 5 and 6

Grade 4

The Grade 4 children have had a great start to the year in Performing Arts. This semester we have been focusing on Drama. We started the term with exploring our expressive skills and how important they are as an actor portraying the thoughts and feelings of a character. Grade 4 have also been experimenting with incorporating meaningful dialogue into their performances, with great success. Finally, they have been showing how they can add contrast and use of space to enhance their performances and add interest for the audience. Next term in Grade 4 Drama we will be learning about using props in a performance, adding exaggeration and experimenting with body puppetry. 

Grade 5

This term has been very busy in Grade 5. This semester the focus area is Drama. We started the term off with a very exciting integrated project with Visual Arts - Puppetry. We started creating our native animals sock puppets in visual arts, ready for next term when we will get to write and perform a play using our puppets. While we patiently waited for all our puppets to be created, we continued to build on our understanding of the expressive skills and how to use them to enhance our performance particularly in a Tableaux (freeze frame or motionless figures representing a scene from a story). In Grade 5 we have also been learning about and understanding the link between narrative writing and drama where both areas use SITUATION (5 W’s - who, what, where, when and why) to help tell a story. 

Grade 6

It has been a fun term in Performing Arts in Grade 6. They have started the year off focusing in the area of Music.  Grade 6 students have been working particularly hard in learning their Rock Drum beat for the classic song Billie Jean and performing it with correct rhythm and beat. This term Grade 6 have also been experimenting with using digital technologies (GarageBand) to compose a piece of music to accompany a short video. This process has demonstrated great flexibility in all the students as we know…technology doesn’t always work the way we would like it to!!! The Grade 6 students will complete this project next term and then move onto Drama as they get ready for the amazing GRADE 6 SHOW later in the year!