The Arts

Visual Arts & Performing Arts

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The Arts are valuable creative curriculum area. Visual Arts, Music, Drama and Dance allow an avenue and outlet for creativity, divergent thinking, relaxation, expression, enjoyment and performance. The Arts enable students to develop their capabilities by learning about the different practices, disciplines and traditions that have shaped the expression of culture locally, nationally and globally. Students are both artist and audience in the Arts. They make and respond and learn to appreciate the specific ways this occurs in different disciplines. Performing Arts learning is designed to promote enjoyment, engagement, skill and language development and understanding. Students learn through a range of activities, games, songs and dances. They use voice, movement, technology, body percussion and instruments to partake in a range of activities. The Arts contribute to the development of confident and creative individuals and enriches Australian society.
All classes attend Art and Music specialist sessions each week.
Students enjoy a painting experience together

Visual Arts

The Art facilities at Eltham North are spacious and light filled. It is in this beautiful environment students’ growth as artists begins.  The Art teachers ensure the children are engaged in stimulating activities where they can explore with guidance, a wide range of media and equipment.  Throughout the year, all students explore the artistic areas of drawing, painting, collage, printing, modelling, construction, threads & textiles. Within these areas an emerging knowledge of skills, techniques and processes are formed. All children come to Art sessions with a wide range of abilities and these are fostered in a caring, positive, creative and interesting learning environment.

Eltham North Primary School has a wonderful and enduring relationship with local artists and artistically talented people. Students enjoy the opportunity to work with Artists in Residence programs and they have completed beautiful pottery, metal, fabric and painting works that are on display around the school.

Rationale

Visual Arts includes the fields of art, craft and design. Students create visual art works that communicate, challenge and express their own and others’ ideas. They develop perceptual and conceptual understanding, critical reasoning and practical skills through exploring and expanding their understanding of their world and other worlds.

Learning

Learning in Visual Arts involves students making and responding to artworks, drawing on the world as a source of ideas. Students engage with and develop knowledge of visual arts, skills, techniques and processes, and use materials as they explore a range of forms, styles and contexts.

Sequence of Learning

Foundation (Preps)

Foundation students are involved in making artworks that express and communicate experiences, observations, ideas and feelings about themselves and their world. Initially, the Preps become familiar with Art room routines, while experimenting with and exploring new media. The students develop a beginning understanding of the Art elements line, colour, pattern and shape. Students are encouraged to use these terms as they share and reflect on their artistic creations.

Year 1 & 2

In Year 1 and 2 ‘Creating and Making’ encapsulates the program. Students are required to make and share art works emerging from a range of stimuli and starting points. The creative process in Level One and Two involves the use of imagination, experimentation, planning, Art elements, media and equipment.  Reflection and discussions about artwork enables students to self-evaluate and refine their work.

Year 3 & 4

‘Creating and Making’ and ‘Exploring and Responding’ provide the framework for the year 3 and 4 program. Students use a range of skills, techniques, processes, media, and equipment to create artwork. Students explore and respond to art by identifying key art elements, techniques and processes used. Students are required to discuss feelings and purposes of artwork.

Year 5 & 6

Students independently experiment with and apply a range of skills, techniques and processes using a variety of materials and equipment to plan, develop, refine, make and present art works. In their art work, they communicate ideas and understandings about themselves and others, incorporating influences from their own and other cultures and times. Students discuss traditional and contemporary art works using appropriate language. They interpret and compare key features of art works. They identify and describe influences on their own work and the purpose for which various art pieces are created.

Two students with art smocks enjoying an art class
Students in art class
A class of students completing an art activity.  Teacher in the background
swipe or click through some images from our visual arts program
Teacher in fancy dress, dancing with students.

Performing Arts / Music

Music Program is designed to introduce students to the creative world of performing arts in a fun and energetic way through activities that promote enjoyment, engagement, skill development, understanding and a sense of musicianship.

Sequence of Learning

Foundation (Preps)

The Foundation Music Program has students explore music through their own voices, percussion and pitched instruments, rhyming and rhythmic games, improvised movement and structured dance.  The program facilitates the development of performance skills in addition to the use of fables and folk tales to stimulate imaginative discussion as a primer for theatrical story telling and puppetry.  Music terminology is modelled in context with the lessons and students are guided in developing awareness of self within space.  

Year 1

The year 1 students begin a journey of basic notation and its connection to beat their own movements.  Student will also conduct a unit of work on soundscape.  This unit will have students explore music in nature and the world around them and how they can create music from everyday sounds.  

Year 2

The year 2 students will be introduced to the orchestra through the brilliant Music of Sergei Prokofiev and the story of Peter and the wolf.  This study will give students an understanding of how high and low frequencies can be used to represent actions in characters and how instruments can be linked to drama. Students will lastly be a part of the whole school choir program and have performances throughout the year.

Year 3

The year 3 students are studying the many aspects of the orchestra through Garage Band, classics for kids and Final note pad.  Students explore each section of the orchestra, how they sound what they look like and how sound is produced with a goal of understanding how they relate to each other.  Students will then use Final note pad to compose a small orchestral musical score.

Year 4

The year 4 students are conducting a unit on how to play in a band.  Students are reading basic notation while playing on pitched and non-pitched instruments in a variety of styles.  Students learn skills in listening, playing to a beat working in large groups and following a conductor.

Year 5

The year 5 students are beginning to explore time signatures with a focus on understanding simple and compound meter. Students will explore time signature and there relationship to music they listen to today.  Through the new whole school coral program students will be exploring the uses of harmony with hands on experience of how it works and how to apply it.  Towards the end of term one students begin rehearsals for the end of year musical.

Year 6

The students in year 6 are extending their knowledge of time signatures through hands on application to music and exploration in garage band.  In conjunction with time signatures students look at more complex notation and the introduction of dotted notes, and dotted rests.  Students will also explore how to read complex rhythms through instrumental workshops and exciting games.  Towards the end of term one students begin rehearsals for the end of year musical.

Students perform in the 2022 School production
Students on stage in the 2022 School production
Students back stage in the 2022 School production
swipe or click through some images from our visual arts program