The Arts at Hackham East Primary School

The Arts Term 3

Dancing with colourful scarves! Twirling with ribbon sticks! Drumming with chopsticks on chairs! These are some of the activities you would be seeing if you popped in to the Arts room this term.

Using the book, My Many Coloured Days by Dr Seuss, the Reception to Year 4 classes have been exploring how to express feelings and actions through mime. They have also been listening and responding to a range of instrumental music. Through movement tasks and playing untuned percussion instruments, students have been developing an understanding of beat, tempo and rhythm as well as learning how a piece of music is structured.

Mrs Dealtry's students using pom pom balls and scarves to help them move to Comedian Calop, an instrumental music piece with a fast empo

Mr Kaesler's students using scarves to move and dance to The Entry of the Gladiators (circus themed music)

Holly Unit students have been involved in beat and rhythm activities through chair percussion drumming. We have been learning a chant entitled “UNIQUE” to help us develop rhythm patterns. We have attempted the musical concepts of imitation (echo), canons and ostinatos (repeated patterns). In small groups, students have started to improvise and arrange their own version of the chant using some of these concepts. The next steps will be drumming on buckets with rhythm sticks to James Bond and maybe some AC/DC.

Students adding untuned percussion instruments to their UNIQUE chant version

Students using chairs for drumming improvisation of the UNIQUE chant

Another piece of exciting news is the formation of the Singing For Fun Choir. Every Thursday at lunchtime, a group of enthusiastic Middle Primary students, together with myself and Miss Hay, meet and learn to sing a variety of songs from modern pop to national anthems. The choir hope to perform a couple of their favourites later in the year.

Melissa Thiele, Arts Specialist teacher