What a wonderful learning experience


This term in The Arts, Cassy worked with our Year 1-6 students on all the ways we can interpret a song. Using Louis Armstrong’s beautiful tune What a Wonderful World as inspiration, Cassy and the students got to work.

Bringing the song to life

The students loved learning the song as individual pieces using a range of instruments (including their own voices, of course!) Not only that, their close reading of the lyrics inspired the students to create collaborative collages, paintings, and drawings. 

And here’s the best part: together, all the artworks form a beautiful mural that covers the back wall of our school hall — so that we can all enjoy the students’ hard work each day.

Links to Curriculum

When it comes to The Arts, ACARA (the body that creates and manages the Australian Curriculum,) provides scope and sequence documents, which outline the skills and techniques that students are to be introduced to from Kindy-Year 10. It’s a helpful foundation document, but the best part is that Art, Music, Drama, and Media teachers are free to be creative in the way the skills in each sub-strand are delivered.

Cassy’s What a Wonderful World unit addressed many of the substrands beautifully. Our students learned things like:

  • Analysing art and reflecting on the intentions of the artist

  • Responding to and interpreting artworks

  • Exploring ideas and improvising with ways to represent them

  • Sharing artworks through performance, presentation, or display

Not only that, many of the students had never been exposed to jazz as a genre before — hopefully we’ve got some budding jazz musicians on our hands!

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A mindful experience

Mindfulness is a very popular approach to stress reduction and resilience building in people of all ages. And when you look closely, What a Wonderful World reads like a pre-mindfullness mindfulness guide! Bob Thiele wrote the song during the Vietnam War as a way to bring hope to people suffering from the effects of war.

By noticing beauty in the world around us, we can distract the brain from something stressful or distressing. The lyrics of the song list some of the things that make the world wonderful:

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed days, the dark sacred nights
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world

-Bob Thiele (aka. George Douglas), 1967

Choosing to see beauty is one way to stay present — a key tenet of mindfulness. If you’re interested in learning about how you can practice mindfulness as a family, you may like to try some of the suggestions in this article.

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Building confidence through The Arts

At Woodbury Boston, we’re constantly impressed by the ways in which our students (even the littlest ones!) express themselves through art. Providing project-based, focused attention on The Arts communicates to our students that The Arts matter — as a way to relax and express oneself, of course — but also as a legitimate caveat for change in the world.

 

Recommended Reading

Woodbury Boston Primary School is a progressive independent school nestled in the bush between Denmark and Albany WA. We know that children learn best when they’re happy and having fun. With a strong focus on community, respect, independence and nature-based teaching, our students learn the Western Australian Curriculum and so much more. For more information or to book a personal tour, please ring 9845 1185.

Children, Philosophy & PracticeMartha Barnard-RaeWoodbury Boston Primary School