Arts education

Arts education comprising Music, Visual arts and Drama, engages children in artistic expression and response, and emphasises the creative process.

Music

Enjoying music, and enabling all children to participate fully in a wide range of music-making activities, are key features of the music curriculum.

It comprises three strands:

1. Listening and responding

2. Performing

3. Composing

These are interrelated, and activity in one is dependent upon and supportive of understanding the another. In the music curriculum children will have opportunities to listen and respond to a wide range of music styles and traditions, including the many forms of Irish music. Responses will occur in various ways, for example moving, dancing, illustrating, story telling, discussion or making a drama. Song singing is a central aspect of the music curriculum and from this, children will be introduced to music reading and writing in small steps, and the playing of classroom instruments.

Composing is a new and exciting aspect of the music curriculum. The children will enjoy exploring sound, playing with simple musical ideas and experiencing the satisfaction of working alone or with others to create their own simple compositions. Teachers and pupils will also encounter the musical elements or 'building blocks' of music and will be enabled to develop conceptual understanding of music thought active engagement in each of the strands.

 Visual arts

The visual arts curriculum emphasises the importance of both making arts and responding to art. There is also an important focus on the creative process and on developing an understanding of visual concepts. Schools will be able to play a creative and enjoyable programme based on the six strands of the visual arts curriculum. These are:

1. Drawing

2. Paint and colour

3. Clay

4. Print

5. Construction

6. Fabric and fibre

Three vital starting points for arts activities will be observation, imagination and the child's own experience. Children will experiment with a range of stimulating materials and tools that are widely available, such as pencils, paint, crayons, papier maché clay, card and wool. Other appropriate materials which are less often associated with visual arts will include for example, old clothes, polystyrene or buttons; and natural objects, such as stones, such as features or twigs in a variety of colours and textures. In using these material separately or together, children will be enable to develop an awareness of the elements of art and their pictures and inventions will gradually reflect their growing understanding.

Children will also be encouraged to look at and respond to a wide range of arts works at first hand, from local traditional crafts to contemporary Irish art, and art works from other countries.

 Drama

Drama in the primary curriculum - A unique way of learning

Drama in the classroom involves children in the spontaneous making of drama and is always based on a story or a fiction. Through the interaction of characters in a particular situation children make up the plot as they go along and in the course of making the drama they address choices, dilemmas, issues and problems, and solve them. Aspects of life can be explored closely enough to afford and effective learning experience, but distant enough to provide safety for the child.

The content of drama is life itself and involves:

- things children experience, imagine or read about

- aspects of life from the past, present or possible future that arouse children's curiosity

- children's needs, preoccupations and concerns

- particular issues the teacher may wish children to explore

- content from any of the other curriculum areas.

What is special about children's learning through drama is that it harnesses children's imaginative potential and leads them to new knowledge and perspectives not available to them in any other activity.

Drama contributes to the child's development by giving each child the opportunity to approach new knowledge through imaginative activity and experience.

It also:

- creates motivation and interest that stimulates the child and fosters creativity

- helps the child to relate knowledge in a special way to previous experience

- facilitates imaginative, cognitive, emotional and physical development

- gives a rich oral language experience

- gives the child experience drama as an art form.