As the Arts is such a practical subject, it was great to have our students return to school after week five. We certainly packed a lot of learning into the rest of term 2. The older students revisited and developed the skills they had learnt from previous Drama Units. Senior students explored different types of contemporary theatre. For their drama performances they learnt about Mime and practised using some of the classic techniques. Junior Secondary classes studied Melodrama. It was not difficult for the students to get the idea of overacting in a melodrama. We had quite a few ‘Drama Queens’ that caused some hilarious moments in our lessons. The Primary classes learnt about Country and Place. Their final drama performance was a role play telling a dreaming story about the black cockatoo. Shadows and puppetry was the theme for the early years and they responded well to making shadows with their bodies and hands and developing to use shadow puppets in a little puppet theatre. One of my favourite moments was when one of our students came into the classroom and said, ‘Oh, here we are in Shadowland!’

The following photos are of JS2 performing their Melodrama. The play was called ‘My Hero’. It involved a hero, a villain, his henchman, and the damsel in distress. The hero was a retired pirate living on a farm. The hero had to fight the villain and rescue the damsel who had been tied onto the railway tracks. During the JS2 rehearsals the villain’s character developed into a wolf.  JS1 rehearsed and performed a similar storyline.

The next photo shows P3 playing percussion instruments.

Dressing up and performing was the fun part of the Drama unit, however, there was much work being done and many skills to learn before the final performances. The following photo is of JS3 who were learning to create a character and stay in role. In their final performance it was pleasing to see how much of the learning and practice they brought to the play to make it a success.

There was so much enthusiasm from the Primary students for their Drama lessons. They enjoyed learning skills about movement and using body levels to create interesting performances. We played games to develop these skills and also practiced and rehearsed sequences to include in the final performance of the black cockatoo story.

This term in the Arts we are studying Music. The theme for all classes is Musical Characters. In our first weeks of Music, students are learning to read basic musical notations to perform group percussion sequences.

We are looking forward to seeing some skilful musical performances by the end of this term

Regards, Chris, (The Arts)