Music, Art and Drama play a large part in the children’s time here at St Augustine’s.
We are delighted to announce that as of September, the school will be funding music tuition for all of our pupils in Class 2 and Class 3. They will be taught by an amazing teacher called Mrs Omar who I have worked with for many years and also provides tuition at our other two schools. In the lessons the children will be learning about the rudiments of music and singing new songs. In Class 2 they will be playing the Ukulele and in Class 3 learning how to play the Violin! She also puts on termly performances for parents to attend and enjoy.
Class 3 attended a violin concert with other schools across Staffordshire at Uttoxeter Racecourse this term. They were fabulous and everyone was very impressed with their playing and singing! Well done Class 3!
Over previous years the children have enjoyed learning the guitar and have taken part in concerts with other Staffordshire schools.
Singing is also a big part of our music curriculum with daily singing during worship plus many concerts which the children love to participate in throughout the year. Many of these have been for the parents, guardians and grandparents to also enjoy. These include The Harvest Festival, Carol Singing at Far Filamore Care Home, Light Up And Sing at Christmas, the Easter Bonnet Parade, Mother’s Day Service, the School Production of Alice in Wonderland, the Oscars Ceremony and our Afternoon Tea Party to name just a few! The children love these putting on these productions, it really helps our school unite and helps the children’s confidence grow. They are always inspiring, a pleasure to watch and be involved with. We are always very grateful to the pupils and staff for all of their hard work and dedication in putting on these productions and are immensely proud to be able to present them to the community.
Drama takes place on a Thursday with our drama teacher Mr Quinn. Every class has a lesson with Mr Quinn and the children flourish under his guidance and expertise. Over the past number of years the pupils and staff have engaged with Mr Quinn of Fired Up Theatre in a number of projects both curriculum and non-curriculum based. Mr Quinn has devised and delivered drama workshops designed to enhance skills in creative writing, confidence building and wellbeing. In addition Mr Quinn contributes towards character and improvisation techniques for the fabulous end of year production. Over the past years our productions of Edith’s Wartime Scrapbook, Cinderella Rockerfella, Alice in Wonderland, and Aladdin have been nothing short of spectacular with so many positive comments from the audience. Every child in the school is assigned a part in the play and costumes are made in house, donated or sourced through the school. A real team effort!
Art Week
KS2
During Arts Week, we held an Art Gallery in school to show our loved ones what we had been up. We also focussed on one more artist, Frida Kahlo, who we learned was a feminist and felt strongly about women’s rights. She also portrayed herself as strong and powerful in her self-portraits with big, bold background patterns. We used this as inspiration for our own self-portraits. The Art Gallery was an amazing opportunity to share our new learning and skills!
KS1
In art, we completed a unit on portraits. We started off by drawing self-portraits using mirrors to look at our features and add detail. We created a few portraits that were inspired by artists like Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. Our Pablo Picasso artwork focused on the importance of using different colours to portray different emotions, whereas our Andy Warhol artwork focused on using bright colours to show how colours influence the portraits. We enjoyed being adventurous and creative with our colour choices! We also hosted an art gallery where we displayed this work, in addition to our work on the painting ‘Castle and Sun’ by Paul Klee, where we used different shapes to make our own versions of the painting. We then used blocks to create a real-life representation of our castle pictures.
Early Years
We used our wonderful skills to create amazing dragon eyes, printed castles and coats of arms during our ‘Art Week’.
Class 2’s Platinum Jubilee artwork