Welcome to The Arts at Fir Tree

Music, Dance, Drama, Art, Craft, and  Design Technology

We hope you enjoy sampling the range and variety of  the Arts on offer at our school. We have a dedicated team of young Arts Ambassadors who coordinate and organise events and activities in school and in the wider community.   There is a busy schedule of events for the year ahead which we will endeavour to capture  on here!

Chestnut Class enjoyed their first Djembe drumming lesson with percussion teacher Mr Price; we focused on learning how to create a range of sounds from the drum by varying the part of hand we used and the place we struck the drum.

Mr Price helped us to practise 2 basic notes called the bass and the slap; the bass is the lowest pitch and the slap is the highest pitch. We discovered that when the drum is struck with our hand, the skin reverberated and the shape of the hollow drum acted as amplifier; the sound was projected out of the bottom of the shell.

Then, we investigated creating rhythms with a mixture of long and short beats. We divided into 3 groups, each with their own rhythm, and practised how to layer these on top of each other to play in an ensemble. The lesson ended with a fun echo game where we had to repeat the rhythm Mr Price gave us, as long as it wasn’t ‘Don’t Play This One Back’. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves can’t wait until the next session!

In Design and Technology, we have been creating our own marble runs. We have had to think about how the construct large structures initially and how to ensure we created enough stability in the base. We then started to construct the first stage of our marble runs using the techniques we had practiced. The next stage was to consider how to form joins and progress into building bridges between towers. Next we looked at creating bends in bridges using a variety of techniques. Finally, we put all the elements of the marble run together and you can see our creations on the Cherry page of our website.

During our ‘Take One Tale’ project, Chestnut Class have enjoyed exploring one of the most famous Greek myths of all time – the tale of the Trojan Horse. To develop our knowledge of this fantastic story, we using storytelling techniques including drawing story maps to helps us recall the events of the story and stepping the story out to deepen our own re-telling.

To develop our DT skills, we had the idea of making our own Trojan Horses. To be as Nature Smart as we could, we re-used materials that had been thrown away at home (card boxes, rolls, plastic packaging).

We followed a clear process when making our horses:

• Plan – What are we making? What’s the purpose of it?
• Design – What will it look like? What materials will we use?
• Method – How will we make it? What steps will we take?
• Make – Use our measuring, cutting, attaching skills to construct our model.
• Evaluate – What went well? How well did we meet our purpose? What would we improve?

These were some of our learning reflections:

 

“I learned how to use a clamp to hold a tube l in place so that I could safely cut a roll to size using a junior hacksaw. It was fun to use a real saw!”

“I was really pleased I got my horse to roll using sticks and bottle tops – it took a few tries to work out how do it but I got there in the end!”

“I made my horse move using a motor I attached to the wheel rods, I was really happy it worked!”

“My horse’s legs were a bit wonky so I cut them to all be the same length and now it’s much better.”

"We got better at looking really closely at the detail." 

" I am really proud! Mrs Giles said this is the best art I have ever done!" 

"I kept improving the position of the eyes and their shape. I needed to add the eye lids."

"I needed to remember that  the shoulders are wider than the head."

" I took ages to do the hair but it is really effective."

(Please see tablet above)

"My artwork is a stone tablet that Mayans could have placed on a wall to add decoration. I used clay to make it. The pictures on there are a turtle and on its shell is the image of a person which I think depicts their way of life. Mayans would have used stone chisels and mallets made of wood to carve it." 

 Year 5

 

Music at Fir Tree

BBC Ten Pieces

Below is a link to the BBC Ten Pieces website.  This was an initiative last year to get more Classical music back into school. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01vs08w

At Fir Tree, each year we have nearly a week whereby each class studies a  piece of Classical music in depth to  understand about the composer and the times they lived in.  They analyse and  explore the sounds and effects in the music, create their  own sounds and response to the music, practise and perform it then evaluate the effectiveness of their work.   This can be achieved in many  cross curricular ways.

Drama at Fir Tree

Drama is explored through many curriculum subjects as well as a subject within it's own right.  We believe that harnessing creativity through drama develops self confidence, imagination, empathy  and social skills.

Children explore  many techniques such as; mime, improvisation, hot seating, freeze frame, conscience alley, Professor-know-it-all, thought tracking, flash forward, and flash back,  to name but a few.

Our productions that we put on twice a year  are exceptional!  Year 4  traditionally put on a production in term 2 and Year 6 in term 6. Children are involved with ticket and programme design, lighting, sound effects, special effects, costume design, scenery and prop making in addition  to acting and singing. Year 3 traditionally perform in the church at  Christmas.

Each year we also hold 'museum' times for parents and friends to attend school to see what we have learned about particular projects.  This is an opportunity for our children to be expert museum curators and for them to talk and demonstrate about a particular  aspect of the subject that interests them.

Art, Craft and Design at Fir Tree

 

The winners were Laura, Charley, Holly, Sophia, Alicia and Jed. Well done to all of you!

Right at the end of term, Naz, an international Artist came to lead an assembly on her artwork and discussed her techniques and inspiration with the children.   Later, some children from each class were selected to take part in a special workshop with her exploring ideas and techniques around cubism.

Term 3 has been another busy term across the school! Upper School have thrown themselves into learning all about China and explored it through drama, dance, music and art.

Pupils have made Chinese terracotta warriors from  clay after learning about Chinese emperors. Notice how each figure has a different expression and clothing!

Below is some of the impressive work that can be seen around school.

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

Well done to Lower School for a fantastic production! We were extremely proud of your professionalism throughout!

The winners of the Mixed Media Art competition......

BBC TEN PIECES

Term 2 started with all classes taking part in the BBC's Ten Pieces.

Ash Class have CONNECT IT by ANNA MERIDITH! It is a fantastic piece of music and we were able to watch clips of Anna taking about how she composed the piece without any instruments. After we listened to the piece we were able to make some of the sounds ourselves - instead of writing a graphic score we took photographs to show the notes!

Easter art using pastels and gold paint.

Below are 3 photographs  taken by children who made Mothers Day cards. Using the school cameras was an interesting activity as they really had to consider what makes a good photo.