Visual Arts

Welcome back everyone l am really excited to be teaching Visual Arts this year and would also like to welcome Mrs Lana Cordwell who will also be teaching Visual Arts on Mondays.

The Visual Arts program at Watsonia Heights Primary School offers students a wide range of skills, techniques and processes and focuses on the artistic elements of art including colour, shape, line, pattern, texture, space and form. The elements are taught though the media of painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, threads and textiles, ceramics and construction. This program also includes the study of art in history and its place in world cultures. Through their work students are encouraged to explore real, imaginary and abstract ideas as well as cultural and historical issues. They are given the opportunity to experiment with ideas, concepts and feelings. These are often linked to the integrated units currently being studied in their classrooms. This helps to enhance the unit of work and to draw upon the meaningful experiences and observations of each student. All students will have the opportunity to participate in a one-hour lesson each week. Student’s artworks are often displayed in classrooms and around the school for others to observe and enjoy.

ART SMOCKS
We endeavour to keep school uniforms as clean as possible and so the wearing of an art smock is essential. All students are required to provide a clearly named art smock, which will be stored in their classrooms.

RECYCLED MATERIALS
If you have any spare newspapers, margarine containers or ice-cream containers we are always keen to collect and recycle these and would greatly appreciate any donations.

Prep students will be immersed in the world of visual arts by exploring nature and picture storybooks. They will create mixed media pieces using a combination of paper, crayon, sequences and tissue paper. Students will have the opportunity to blend and mix paint colours, explore a range of pattern work and practice using layers of different materials.

Our students in grades 1/2 will be exploring drawing techniques as they develop skills and techniques using various marks. In conjunction with their Science lessons they will be learning about Australian mammals and discovering different ways to represent these in their artworks.

The 3/4s will kick of the year with weird and wacky blind continuous line self-portraits. They will then design and create their own dinosaur pinch pot applying the skill of slip joins. We are also very excited to announce that during the second half of the year the Visual Art program will be collaborating with classroom teachers and the library to create images for a dreamtime picture storybook, which will be published and launched in the library later in the year. Watch this space!

Grade 5/6 students are also going to research and investigate Australian animals and create their own three dimensional animals using recycled materials and modelling materials. So as students plan and design their artworks they may need to collect some items, such as, plastic bottles, yoghurt containers, bottle tops and other various bits and pieces.

We nurture students to develop their own individual style and encourage them to be creative thinkers. We look forward to working with your students this year.

Mrs Sally Beran and Mrs Lana Cordwell
Visual Arts Teachers