ÒüÈËÖ±²¥

Visual Art from Prep to Year 6

In Art students are encouraged to play, problem solve and explore many ways of seeing and experiencing the world. While not everyone will grow up to be an artist, we firmly believe that developing confidence in one’s own creativity is an essential skill that builds capacity in all learners. Students work with a broad range of materials, techniques and ideas in these years and we strive to provide opportunities where resulting artworks reflect individual engagement and enjoyment.

Prep to Year 6 Art Exhibition

The Prep to Year 6 Art Exhibition is a great example of how Art can bring a community together. Parents, grandparents, friends and family are invited to view the Art Show where every child is an artist.

Art, Design and Technology from Year 7

During Year 7 and 8 students complete two semesters of Visual Art, one of Makerspace Design Technology and one of Food Technology. These units give students a general experience of the major Art, Design and Technology disciplines including two-dimensional art forms of Painting, Printmaking and Drawing and three-dimensional practices of Ceramics, Food Technology and Makerspace Design Technology.

Year 9 and 10 students elect from a range of Art, Design and Technology semester long studies. Subjects offered include Studio Arts, Photography (darkroom and digital), Product Design Technology, CAD CAM (Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing), Food Technology and Visual Communication & Design.

At VCE level, students choose from Studio Arts, Visual Communication and Design, Product Design Technology and Food Technology. The school curates and collects high quality art work. The work of our talented VCE students is often shortlisted and chosen to feature in the prestigious Top Arts and Top Designs exhibitions, which form part of the state-wide VCE Season of Excellence. Many of our students graduate from Fine Art and Design courses and return to enrich the learning of current students as visiting guest speakers.

Our students work with dedicated, staff committed to quality teaching within generously resourced studios and workshops. The Art Design Technology Faculty is a lively and dynamic hub within the School which holds many activities throughout the year aimed to engage and extend creativity and studio-based practices. These include exhibitions, gallery visits, artist-in-residences and workshops.

Digital Learning at ÒüÈËÖ±²¥ enhances the meaningful integration of learning between subjects, the curriculum, learning activities/tasks and assessments across the school to individualise learning and allow for student choice and voice. The use of technology amplifies the learning of each student by empowering them to experiment, create and make. Technology is used with learning in mind and as such is used in ways where students are active creators and makers of learning with various technological tools.

Our classroom spaces are equipped with the latest in digital technologies to support our students learning and personal growth. Our innovative approach to learning technologies sees us create a culture around the willingness to embrace new ideas and proactively use technology as the building blocks of current best practice learning and teaching.

MakerSpace

Seeing a clear need to help our students develop the skills they will require to flourish at and beyond school, ÒüÈËÖ±²¥ embarked on a journey to develop the dispositional outcomes associated with making.

Using over 10 years of research from Harvard Universities Agency by Design Research Unit we have developed a program where our boys and girls use a framework to look closely, explore complexity and find opportunities. At the heart of our program is this pedagogical framework which sees our students understand how to look closely at objects.

Our purpose-built MakerSpaces is where this learning occurs and links with our classroom learning. Encouraging agency and building character within our boys and girls around making, creating, exploring, inventing and developing helps them to prepare for the future work they will undertake. Making explores the very essence of what it means to be a learner. It is all about curiosity, being playful, a willingness to take risks, a willingness to take responsibility, being persistent, being resourceful, sharing and having optimism. (Edward P. Clapp, n.d.)

makerspace handout (pdf)

Design Thinking

Design thinking at ÒüÈËÖ±²¥ is used extensively throughout our learning programs to discover problems to solve through a creative process. Given the importance of creativity, we see design thinking as a key methodology for our students to explore, ideate, prototype and test their ideas using various toolsets, mindsets and skillsets.

All students at various stages of their learning journey at ÒüÈËÖ±²¥ will experience the processes and thinking dispositions that are involved with design thinking to explore their own thinking. We believe that all students have the capacity to be creative and here at ÒüÈËÖ±²¥ we help our students reach their own creative potential. Our students develop real world projects by uses various problem definition techniques that will make a genuine impact on others.

Challenging our students to take action on their ideas we help them work on problems through an intense immersion process. We encourage them to take creative risks, play, experiment and fail. We co-learn and co-create solutions to help our students be ready for the future work they will undertake.