Chisholm Public School Students use Drama and Dance to share their message! 

On Friday, May 8, grades 1-5 Chisholm Public School students celebrated ‘Education Week’ with a wonderful presentation to share their message. 

Many guests were on hand to see the school’s self-created ‘We All Belong’ production.  Students were fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Marc Richard, a Sheridan College arts specialist and drama consultant.  Marc instructs drama and dance at Sheridan, works with various groups across Canada, and  he also works closely with the Halton District School Board as a key contributor to the Drama and Dance curriculum. 

Marc instructed Chisholm students on how to use dramatic movement in order to express themselves. Over the course of five sessions, he coached and guided students on expressing and communicating their knowledge of what it “means to belong”.  The series of  presentations developed were based on the creations by the students.  While exploring many elements of the dance and drama curriculum, students used their understanding of topics they’d studied in other subjects such as Social Studies, Math, Health and Language Arts, in order to create works of art with rich subject matter.   

The presentations explored what it looks like to belong to a social group, a class, as well as a great school like Chisholm Public School, and what it looks like to belong to a multi-cultural community like Oakville and a country like Canada.  Some younger students provided a dramatic interpretation of what it means to belong to a family, through singing and dancing.  The grade 4 students explored a variety of dramatic forms to put together short scenes depicting what it looks like to belong or not to belong. 

Dance, Drama, Music and Visual Arts are expressions of the ideas, values and concerns of individuals and societies.  It is therefore important for learners to become literate in the arts – to develop an understanding and appreciation of the creative process.   

Chisholm students learned there are many ways for communicating learning, such as Drama.  They also learned they can achieve great things when they focus and put their minds into their work!