The Performing Arts gives students a chance to display their flair for performance in solo, group or class settings. Taught in line with the Victorian Curriculum, it is a place for singing, dancing, acting, performing, playing and exploring the possibilities of the Performance Arts!
In junior school, students work first on finding their four voices – talking, shouting, whispering and singing. Once established, folk songs are learnt in a progressive manner to slowly improve abilities in singing and listening. Many songs have an associated dance or game to accompany it. Instruments are regularly used to support student learning. Students are introduced to song books as another avenue of reading and singing music that further expands their understandings and musical vocabulary.
In drama, students are exposed to many different types of performance, including improvisation, pantomime, mime, storytelling, self-written dialogue and re-creating an existing story. It is expected that the size of one’s ‘comfort zone’ will expand greatly by children pushing their limits, striving for new levels of confidence and learning from every opportunity or performance.
From middle school, there becomes a greater emphasis on students reading music and further understanding the musical elements explored. These include pitch, dynamics, tempo, tone colour, structure, texture and duration. A wider variety of instruments are played which assist in building ensemble skills, music reading, aural skills and fine motor skills, including Boomwhackers and djembes.
In Years 5 and 6 students have the opportunity to use iPads in music classes to compose and arrange music using apps such as Garage Band. The time in class is intended to provide the tools for students to further explore the app in their own time to continue the music making.