The Arts

In this unit you will build on what you learned in Grade 6. In dance, you will create dances that respond to rhythms and pieces of music, turn your own writing and media works into movement, use theme and variations, and organize dances with pattern and narrative forms to communicate themes and moods. You'll add new Grade 7 tools: isolations, weight transfer (lunges, leaps and rolls), energy qualities like wring, dab, mould, flow and bind, percussive and fluid movement, opposition, and the performance space. You will interpret messages about your community and the world, reflect on your strengths and areas for growth, trace how dances such as Métis jigging, Cape Breton step dancing, tap, breaking and bhangra changed as people moved and met, and think critically about how dance in the media can shape character and identity.

In music, you will read the grand staff, work out key signatures and relative minor keys, and handle accidentals. You'll build major and minor triads, compose with them for a purpose, learn the blues scale and improvise over the 12-bar blues with swing, and perform with tempo, articulation and expression marks (vivace, marcato, maestoso, tenuto, fermata) and good breath control. You will analyse the tone colour of complex ensembles (jazz, gamelan, choir and orchestra), and explore how music and the media shape identity, including pride in First Nations, Métis and Inuit music, how music passes on through oral tradition, and how inventions like the piano and electric guitar changed music.

You will need a little open space with a soft floor, paper and pencils, a pot and wooden spoon, and a way to listen to recordings with a grown-up. A keyboard or keyboard app helps but is not required.

In this unit you will act and make art! In drama, a made-up story called "Shared" runs through the lessons: at Fern Lake Public School, a ten-second video of Theo practising for the winter talent show is filmed by his friend Maya and posted to the class group chat by Sam. You will explore this current issue from multiple perspectives with conventions like conscience alley, build multidimensional characters and relationships using props and blocking, stage scenes with the nine stage areas, heighten tension with foreshadowing, sound, light and technology, build a play collaboratively, create a short docudrama from real interviews, and compare the social values in drama forms from different times and places, from Everyman and kabuki to Indigenous theatre in Canada today, along with the ways theatre and festivals contribute to life now.

In visual arts, you will use expressive and converging lines and visual rhythm, draw in two-point perspective with coloured shadows and new shading techniques, work with analogous, transparent and digital (RGB and CMYK) colour, explore this year's principle of design, unity and harmony, along with the rule of thirds, read and design symbols, icons and logos, create art about issues with opposing points of view, and explore sculpture, installations, texture and how art shapes personal and cultural identity across many cultures, including First Nations, Métis and Inuit art that is living today.

You will need paper, a pencil (a soft 2B to 6B pencil helps), an eraser, a ruler, a black marker, a flashlight, coloured pencils or markers, watercolour or washable paint, brushes, coloured tissue paper and white glue, aluminum foil, pipe cleaners or soft craft wire, modelling clay or salt dough, a sponge, a few chairs and household props, and (optional, with a grown-up's permission) a phone, tablet or computer. Every lesson has hands-on activities, practice questions and a short quiz.

Curriculum expectations covered: Drama B1.1–B1.4, B2.1–B2.3, B3.1–B3.2; Visual Arts D1.1–D1.4, D2.1–D2.4, D3.1–D3.2 (The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: The Arts, 2009).