Hello to all and I hope everyone has had a great week. My last two weeks have been really quite busy, and I am feeling like I have a lot of work to catch up on!
On Tuesday of last week my school had an information evening for the students and families of 2015 Year 7. It seems quite early to do this, but the parents soon have to nominate which high school they are sending their child to and that means time for publicity for us. For this particular evening each faculty sets up a display of what students do in their subject. This means that science likes to blow things up—and they did; TAS ( Technology and Applied Studies) cooks lots of amazing food as well displaying lots of Senior Projects, other faculties have lots of information for those wanting to know more. What it means for CAPA is that we have lots of work on display, students performing and instruments for people to have a play on.
I was very happy with our display, and with all of my staff who helped put it together. Not to be biased at all, but ours was the best faculty display of the evening!!!! What was very popular was a combination of several things. Our Year 10 Drama students wore their blacks and put on masks that showed very different characters. These students were instructed to not speak, but only to interact as their character mask would have them to do so. It proved very interesting watching the reactions of the performers and the people that were there. Some people enjoyed it, some little ones were frightened and some adults found it very confronting! It proved an invaluable learning experience for our students as they had not ever done any street theatre before.
For our Visual Arts and Photography classes we had lots on display both physically and digitally. I had collected lots of photographs of student work and put them together into a Power Point Display. There were lots of people who took the time to stand back and watch, which was very encouraging. The Music students were brilliant on the night, I had a collection of 12 students who took turns performing throughout the evening. Again a lot of people took the time to watch and enjoy their musical talents. One thing I also did this year was to set up our Electric Drum Kit and a Piano Keyboard, both with headphones, and then gave the students a go on the instruments. The Electric Drum Kit proved most popular with both parents and students, everyone wanted a go!!
The display included lots of student work samples from each year group, for all of our subjects. Another popular part of the collection was the display of instruments that our Year 7 Music students made for their assignment last year ( the assignment is to be completed by this year’s cohort for the beginning of next term). This assignment is part of the Tone Colour and Performing Media Unit based on the Instruments of the Orchestra. The assignment requires students to create, make and then perform on their instrument. Students are also asked to complete a written component of a Procedure on how their instrument was made as well as some reflection questions. Both the Unit and Assignment are available on the Teachers Pay Teachers website.
Link to the Assignment here.
Link to the Unit of Work here, the Unit includes the Assignment and all Marking Rubrics in it.
Link to the Music Bundled ( all three of my Year 7 Music units) set here, included are all of the Assignments and marking rubrics as well.
For the parents I displayed all of the Junior Units of Work for both Year 7 and 8 in Music and Visual Arts. The parents were happy to see exactly what their students would be doing in class, and it really was a way for parents to see the Academic side of our subjects in Stage 4.
Another part of the display was this poster that I found on Pinterest. Even though these are American statistics, I find the same things happening here.
Over the last several years, for the students who complete any of our CAPA HSC subjects, 90% have their highest mark in CAPA. On top of this, our CAPA students overall do better academically compared to those students who do not do a CAPA subject!!!! I love this poster so much that I have given one to my Deputy, Principal and each of my staff members to display in their rooms.
Yesterday my colleague, friend and Drama Teacher accompanied me on a trip to Cabramatta in Sydney. It was a long day, but one with a very definite purpose. In Cabramatta there are a lot of cheap fabric shops, and we went down there to purchase the material for our costumes for the upcoming production of Bye Bye Birdie. It was sooooo worthwhile! We had a plan before we went as to what we were looking for, for each character. When we got there, we took our time looking around each shop and took photos of the fabrics we liked so we could remember what was from where later on. After looking at all the shops we sat down and had lunch. Once our bellies were full and our feet were rested, we looked at the photos and decided which shops to go back to for the fabrics we liked. This part of the day took the longest! It was several trips to and from the car with loads of material, but the effort was financially well worth it. Most of the fabrics were $5/m and under, and as we needed large quantities it became cheaper again. We spent nearly $800, on approximately 180m of fabric! I priced the same material up here today and we would have paid more than triple the prices, so the savings were huge. I will have pictures of the costumes as I make them soon.
Until next week, have a great one
Julia from Jooya.