BIS Arts Through Distance Learning – April 3, 2020
Visual Art through Distance Learning
This week Grade 6/7 Visual Arts students have been researching skateboard deck designs and selecting designs that interest them in order to gain inspiration for their own designs. Ayden has identified and discussed his selected inspiration. Emma and Noemie have begun to develop their own ideas using digital drawing processes and Jasmine has already finished a fantastic digital illustration of her first design idea. Well done virtual Visual Artists.
A Focus on Distance Learning in Music Classes
It’s been a wonderful experience to see students respond to music assignments on Seesaw or Google Cla. I understand that some students have instruments at home and some don’t. All the music assignments are designed so that music skills can be developed with or without musical instruments. I am expecting that all the students continue their learning journey. Here are a couple highlights from the Music Distance Learning Programme in Primary.
Grade 3
Students are practicing their scales on the recorder. Different colors and letters help students learn to read music. We use this method of reading to improve note transition and fingering.
Grade 1
Students choose any music activity they love at home. They may work with their parents, siblings or friends to complete the task. Music brings us together for sure. Playing music together with loved ones helps us to connect to others emotionally, develops the awareness of melody, rhythm, beat and harmony.
Thank you for your support to extend their learning at home, much appreciated. And thank you students for keeping this up. Feel free to give feedback to my email iproboningtyas@baliis.net
Best,
Ibu Isti
Grade 10
Music students have been embarking on a musical journey exploring the history of protest music, and the role of artists to provide a voice for social change in society. Each student has chosen a global issue to address and their music and lyrics express their concern and passion for the wellbeing of our planet moving into the future. Once their compositions are complete, they will move on to create music videos as a means to connect with their intended audiences. We look forward to sharing their works of art in the next week or so, but for now here are some photos of them busy at home creating their songs. Stay tuned!
Feel free to give feedback to my email eandrews@baliis.net
Theatre and Drama Distance Learning – Week 1
The Arts subjects are inherently practical subjects by nature and so we as a department have had to dig deep into our creative brains to look at ways in which we can deliver our subjects remotely, online and yet retain a sense of ‘doing’ and ‘experiencing’ to deepen our students’ learning and understanding.
One of the challenges with Drama and Theatre is that we tend to work not only practically, but also collaboratively and interactively in the vast majority of tasks and units. This obviously has had to be reworked! It has been a steep learning curve and solidifying of technical skills on my part to help facilitate this and look at ways these amazing platforms can support my students to create challenging and creative theatre.
Grade 6 and 7 were working on a Mask Theatre Unit and we have continued to delve into the key conventions of this style of theatre by focusing on our mime skills, gestures and body language in a ‘mime game’ last week, and this week the students have watched a Mask Theatre performance by Vamos Theatre Company and recorded their own theatre reviews on Flipgrid presented by their own wacky eccentric self costumed theatre critic characters! Students will feedback to their peers on their performances and the content of their review.
Grade 8 and 9 were working on a unit called ‘Devising from Starting Points’. I have reworked this so that we are now collaboratively devising a digital based performance as a class. This week students selected two starting points (poems, articles, imagery etc) that have resonated with them in light of the current situation and explain the reasoning for their choices. After looking at each others choices and responding to one anothers’ starting points, students have selected one and started to brainstorm some ideas for character development – next week we will begin to consider the process of creating a character and crafting a theatrically intriguing monologue.
Grade 10 have started a ‘Production Unit’ and again, this has now transformed into a digital based performance piece. Using aspects of Brechtian theatre theory to underpin the style of the piece and deepen the students’ theatre knowledge. The piece will explore the notion of connection, disconnection and what it means to ‘go viral’. This week students have completed an Edpuzzle introduction to Brecht responding to a video, researched one specific aspect of Brecht’s theory and given one another a mini-lesson on Flipgrid to teach the class about their aspect. Next week we will meet on Zoom to brainstorm ways we could embed Brechtian technique into the work and reflect on the learning so far.
Grade 11 have continued to study aspects of what it means to be a director and a designer by searching for images of striking set designs and explaining their choices, watching a video about the Directors Tools and responding via Flipgrid to demonstrate their understanding, and the HL student has also embarked upon some preparatory work for Solo Theatre by looking at a theatre practitioner and understanding how to extract specific aspects from their work. Grade 12 received their official feedback to their first submission of their Solo Theatre Reports and are now finalising them to complete their course!
