Overview of Junior Arts Program
The expectations for Grades 4 to 6 focus on the development of students’ knowledge and skills in the arts and their ability to use the arts to understand, explore, and communicate feelings and ideas from and about their multicultural, multimedia environment.
Arts instruction in the junior years is designed to engage students in meaningful interactions with a wide variety of forms and disciplines in the arts. Junior students learn to identify and explore multiple perspectives, question the messages in works of dance, drama, music, and visual art, and consider the issues raised in them. They analyse the structure and elements of a variety of art forms, explore a range of interpretations, and communicate their own ideas and opinions for a variety of purposes and audiences. Junior students develop their ability to monitor their own learning and select appropriate strategies to help them make sense of and create increasingly complex and/or challenging works for personally and socially relevant purposes. They reflect on and talk about the strategies that have helped them construct and communicate meaning and identify steps they can take to improve.