At Dawson Park Primary all students from PrePrimary to Year 6 are engaged creatively in a vibrant Visual Art Program.
Students work with a Visual Art teacher in our Art studio for 1 hour each week. In keeping with our whole school philosophy, students are explicitly taught skills and then offered creative choices which allow application.
The program is guided by the WA Curriculum, with students both making and responding to artworks. The visual art curriculum supports critical and creative thinking, and develops an understanding of art in society, both past and present. Students use visual art language discuss their own and others artwork. Embedded within the program are the Australian Curriculum’s 3 cross-curricula priorities; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures; Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia; and Sustainability. Visual Arts provides a meaningful, relevant context for students to explore these bigger picture ideas and represent their understandings in a creative, personal manner.
Students in the Early Years focus on mastering the basic elements, whilst exploring a range of materials and processes in an engaging, play based approach. Middle and upper school students build on these core concepts and expand their skills with mediums such as drawing, painting, textiles, ceramics, printmaking and mixed media.
In addition, students have the opportunity to:
- Create artworks for significant school calendar events such as NAIDOC week, reconciliation week, outdoor classroom day, and Book Week
- Regularly display artworks in the Art Studio, Library, other school areas, and the local shopping centre. This includes biannual school art exhibitions.
- Enter artwork into competitions such as the Kalamunda Show and Perth Royal Show
- Work collaboratively on visual art projects with students from other schools in the Darling Ranges Learning Community.
- Integrate technology, with the use of digital platform seesaw to upload artworks and responses, and engagement with art related ‘apps’.
- Develop a visual art portfolio in Years 5 and 6, which is particularly useful for those students’ seeking placement in specialised art programs
- Dawson Park Primary has a collaborative relationship with the Gifted and Talented Visual Arts Program offered at Kalamunda SHS, and in past years we have had several students accepted into the program. We have also had great success at exhibitions, with prize winners across year levels.
Confidence, curiosity, imagination, and enjoyment; benefits and lifelong skills founded in the Visual Arts.