Getting Started
This Toolkit is designed to guide you through ARTS:LIVE. We'll show you how to get started with the arts and share our tips along the way. And the best thing is you don't need to be an expert in the arts, there's something for everyone. With hundreds of hours of creative learning content, ARTS:LIVE allows educators, parents and students of all ages to explore, learn and develop their creative skills in the classroom, at home and in other learning environments.
Creativity gives children opportunities to be innovative, imaginative, and to work together. ARTS:LIVE provides all the resources students need to get them going on this journey.
Let's get started!
The Teacher Toolkit is designed to help you encourage creative learning in your school or learning environment. These 'getting started' courses show you how to deliver engaging, sequential lessons and activities in music, dance, drama, visual arts and media arts. All courses on ARTS:LIVE are aligned to the arts curriculum and other learning areas, and are adaptable for early years, primary and secondary students at different levels.
ARTS:LIVE teaches the fundamentals of creativity, an essential element for 21st-century learners. Remember, you don't need to be an expert in the arts! The courses on ARTS:LIVE are developed by professional artists and leading educators with easy to follow instructional videos and interactive learning materials to help you bring creativity to life - regardless of your existing skills and knowledge.
The course lessons are in-depth and sequential, and are designed to help you:
Build your capacity to deliver high-quality creative learning programs across art forms
Address learning and teaching gaps in arts education
Deliver creative content aligned to the curriculum across a range of subject areas
The lessons and activities can be adapted for all kinds of themes and age groups -so get creative!
To get started with an in-depth look at each curriculum-aligned art form, click the links below.
Dance
Drama
Media Arts
Music
Visual Arts
We've developed a range of fun 'at home' activities especially for ARTS:LIVE. There are craft, art, media, dance and music projects for children and adults to do together or individually. There are activities suitable for one-year-olds all the way through to teenagers to enjoy. Whatever you're looking for, we're sure you'll find something fun to do after school, on the weekends or during the school holidays.
To get you started, here's a selection of our favourites:
Sustainable Songs
Painting the Music
Making the Cut
Take a look at the Getting Started video above. If you want to explore other at home activities enter 'at home' in the search bar on the Explore page.
Have fun!
ARTS:LIVE contains many activities designed for learners from 0-5 years of age. To access these activities simply filter by age or search for "early years" on the Explore page.
ARTS:LIVE EARLY YEARS resources are designed to:
emphasise the importance of communication and language, social and emotional development in children aged 0-8
encourage play-based learning by engaging parents and children in creative activities
prepare pre-school children for transition to school by improving pre-literacy and increasing their social connections
Young children learn most readily when actively engaged in a wide range of play. They learn by experiencing, discovering, watching and experimenting. Our ARTS:LIVE resources comprise songs, movement, drama, craft and sensory learning. These resources are specifically designed to stimulate curiosity and focus, encourage imagination and purposeful play and encourage early literacy and numeracy.
For parents, ARTS:LIVE's at home activities for 0-5-year-olds are a great way to have some fun with music and creativity at your place so give them a go today.
For educators, you will find a range of structured and engaging resources for any early year's class. The resources are curriculum aligned in the following way:
0 - 5 years courses are aligned the Early Years Learning Framework
5 - 8 years courses are aligned to the Australian Curriculum F - 2
Here are some links to a few fun activities to get you started:
The Shoe and the Clue
Musical Games for Early Years
Transition Songs for Early Years
Cheeky Animals for Early Years
Cheeky Dogs for Early Years
Cloud Child
Songs for Playgroups
Create a Photostory
To find more activities for young children simply filter by age or enter 'early years' in the search bar on the Explore page.
ARTS:LIVE Early Years: developing children's connection with language, expression and creativity through the arts.
ARTS:LIVE enhances learning for teachers and educators in training at universities and tertiary settings and helps prepare students for careers in education. All courses on ARTS:LIVE are aligned to the curriculum and other learning areas, and are adaptable for pre-service teachers in early years, primary and secondary education courses.
ARTS:LIVE gives teachers in training the skills to:
Work towards meeting graduate standards for teachers
Develop skills in using creativity to engage students from early years to upper secondary school with learning across the curriculum
Enhance confidence to deliver creative arts education
Use and adapt digital resources, lessons and units of work on practicum placements in schools.
ARTS:LIVE assists lecturers to:
Access the most comprehensive resource for teaching the arts - ideal for course reading lists and practical experience
Embed arts resources into university teaching units and assessment
Deliver practical engagement activities in lectures and tutorials
The Song Room also runs professional development sessions delivered in universities and a range of other learning environments. These PD sessions are designed to help pre-service teachers use creativity in the classroom to improve student engagement and behaviour management and to develop an understanding of how creativity intersects with other subject areas and disciplines. To find out more about The Song Room delivering a professional development workshop in your University, get in touch at support@artslive.com.au.
Students' development as creative thinkers, collaborators and skilled problem solvers is at the centre of ARTS:LIVE. All courses are designed to support creative teaching and learning within a curriculum framework, with hundreds of hours of interactive, expert-led activities that engage students across all learning areas.
All courses on ARTS:LIVE are aligned to the arts curriculum in five core subject areas of Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts to allow students to develop and apply their creative skills through an exploration of traditional and contemporary arts practice across art forms and year bands. Through ARTS:LIVE resources, students experiment with techniques, materials, processes and technologies.
Although ARTS:LIVE is aligned to The Arts curriculum, the resources can easily be embedded across the curriculum in other subject areas, such as English and Mathematics. The "Curriculum Alignment" and "Maximising Outcomes" tabs in each course offer guidance on how teachers can deliver the content in their classrooms. Each art form and cross-curriculum subject area is also fully searchable via the search bar.
As with most disciplines, each art form has its own conventions, terminology and approaches to learning and development. These are addressed in the Getting Started videos for each of the art forms. You can introduce yourself to these core capacities through the Teacher Toolkit videos:
Dance
Drama
Media Arts
Music
Visual Arts
ARTS:LIVE is explicitly aligned to the Australian Curriculum, and all early years content is aligned to the Early Learning Framework. Each course has been developed with the curriculum at its core, and includes content descriptors that provide links to curriculum focus areas.
In the Australian Curriculum: the Arts year levels are separated into bands of two or three year groups. See below for the equivalent age groups.
Year Band F-2 = Ages 5 - 7
Year Band 3-4 = Ages 8 - 9
Year Band 5-6 = Ages 10 -11
Year Band 7-8 = Ages 12 - 13
Year Band 9-10 = Ages 14 -15
Content descriptors in each course outline the knowledge, skills and understanding appropriate for students in each band.
Arts education is linked to enhanced academic achievement, and evidence shows that it can help improve numeracy, literacy and other subject areas. The arts also positively impact on "soft" skills, including crucial attributes such as collaboration, perseverance, problem-solving, innovative thinking, empathy and self-reflection. New groundwork, including the inclusion of creative capability assessment as the innovative domain of PISA 2021, aims to address creative capability assessment. We look forward to integrating a creative capabilities assessment into future ARTS:LIVE releases.
The professional standards for teachers
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership
The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) provides national leadership in promoting excellence in the profession of teaching and school leadership. Check out the resources section of the AITSL website.
The Australian Teacher Performance and Development Framework
'The Framework' focuses on a supportive school culture for improving both student and teacher outcomes. It stresses the importance of effective implementation and culture change.
The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers
Underpinning the Framework are 'the Standards' - seven interconnected standards that are organised into three domains:
Professional Knowledge: knowing students and how they learn, and knowing the content and how to teach it.
Professional Practice: planning, maintaining a safe environment and assessing for student learning.
Professional Engagement: professional learning and development.
Source: Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL)
Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians
The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians captures what Australian education is working to achieve. It creates a vision of Australia as the best performing education system in the world.
The Melbourne Declaration is guided by two very important goals:
Australian schooling promotes equity and excellence.
All young Australians become successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens.
Produced by The Song Room with support from the Australian Government Department of Education
Talent in video: Diana Nguyen
References
Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), http://www.acara.edu.au
Australian Curriculum: The Arts, Foundation to Year 10, http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/the-arts/introduction
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), http://www.aitsl.edu.au