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Filmmaking in Primary Schools-

Importance, evidence and examples

Film Education Journal. (2018). SIFEC: Teaching Film in the Classroom. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64AJMJYou7E

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Claymation Example Video

Babyclay Funny cartoons. (2019). Babyclay Elephant creation stop motion clay cartoon for kids. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGF7muo-6xU

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Babyclay Elephant creation stop motion clay cartoon for kids

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Stop Motion Animation example

Suraj Dighe. (2014). Stop Motion Animation Save Trees [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdW9HeqV420

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Media Arts Videos-

Yr3 Lesson Plan videos for students

Hillsmeade Primary School. (2020, July 16). Year 3 Media Arts Lessons. Hillsmeade Primary School - Narre Warren South. https://www.hillsmeade.vic.edu.au/specialist-learning-portal/media-arts-2/year-3-media-arts-lessons/

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Hillsmeade Primary School - Narre Warren South

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Lesson 10 Learning Intention To understand photography. https://player.vimeo.com/video/462587384 Lesson Information Photography – Black and White Using a camera/iPad/smartphone, practise taking …

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MOVE Primary- Art in Motion.

-Media Arts examples

Kaldor Public Arts Projects. (2021, May 3). LEARNING RESOURCES – Kaldor Public Art Projects. Kaldorartprojects.org.au. https://kaldorartprojects.org.au/learning-resources/?_all_projects=2112f584a457e5d602061502483c0abd

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LEARNING RESOURCES – Kaldor Public Art Projects

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Kaldor Public Art Projects is committed to providing opportunities for students and teachers to engage with groundbreaking contemporary art.

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For the last few weeks of the semester, we engaged in our final Arts unit, Media Arts.

Media Arts education comprises many different media forms, including but not limited to television, film, video, print media, and radio. These types of mass media have only been furthered with opportunities created by new technologies, especially in our schools. Students in primary schools are encouraged to study Media Arts to learn to engage with communication technologies, learn about digital literacy, as well as explore how meaning and intention are created through media codes and conventions (Bird & Edwards, 2014; Dinham, 2022). Media Arts is a student-centred subject that allows for a creative approach to presenting and responding to different types of media.

Media Arts literacy is especially relevant to students today as they already engage in viewing multiple forms of media in their homes and out in the world (Dinham, 2022; Learning By Inquiry, 2020). Within this subject, students become both producers and consumers, as they respond to and create their own media arts stories.

Many things must be considered before students undertake a media arts unit. These things include the availability of technology and resources, software programs, and school policy surrounding digital literacy. Media Arts programs do not need to include a wide variety of technology, though this does greatly assist the capacity of teaching and learning (Bird & Edwards, 2014; Dinham, 2022).

When looking into Media Arts activities for primary school students, I found many engaging topics, such as stop motion animation, film, and print media.

Stop-motion animation is a type of media that many people can easily identify from television shows and movies such as Shaun the Sheep, Wallace and Gromit, Coraline, and Chicken Run. Animation can be referred to as a product created by displaying still images in rapid succession to create movement or change. Within the praxis of 'making', students can engage with animation to create and display their own stories or retell a story they know (Dinham, 2022).

Animation, though now a heavily digital art, can still employ just paper and pencils to engage students in the subject. An example of this could be flipbooks, where a student will hand-draw an image, page by page, changing the drawing each time to create movement when the booklet is flipped through (Steam At Drew, 2020). Students using just paper and pen may also engage in creating cartoons using storyboards within media arts. Through creating their own storyboard cartoon, students will begin to understand the use of media codes and conventions such as symbolic codes (lighting, colour, and facial expression), technical codes (point of view, framing, layering, and layout), and narrative codes (structure, characters, setting and time) (Dinham, 2022). Students may study professional comic works before creating their own to view how media codes can be used for a specific purpose to create a specific meaning within a piece (School Curriculum and Standards Authority, 2014).

Students with access to certain technologies, such as iPads or cameras, will be able to engage in other animation types, such as Claymation. Claymation is a 3D animation with characters, sets, and props made from physical materials, usually predominantly clay. Students will create a storyboard to mark out the plot and movement points, then create the characters, props, and background before setting up cameras and beginning to take photographs. Students can use programs such as Stop-motion Studio, DragonFlame, or iStopMotion to create and edit their projects, and can even look at adding sound effects, music, and dialogue.

Film and Broadcast Media is another area of Media that all primary school-aged children can explore. Film allows students to create their own works and respond to others, whilst looking at the motivation for the use of certain film codes. This subject within Media Arts can also be used cross-curricula as students may write reports or analyse film media in English classes.

Finally, print media within the primary school curriculum encompasses students creating and analysing newspapers, brochures, posters, and magazines, looking at their purpose and what elements are employed to convey their message. Students can create print media to inform, persuade, or entertain their audience, making it an excellent tool for teachers to use to explore literary devices and symbolic codes (Dinham, 2022; “Significance of Print Media: Empowering Reading Skills,” 2022).

Media Arts is an extremely important subject to be taught in Primary School. 21st-century teaching must incorporate meaningful Media Arts interactions, as students are engaged in collaborative-based inquiry learning and gain technology literacy skills vital to life today (Dinham, 2022).

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https://www.bangarra.com.au/learning/education-resources/classroom-resources/ibis-2015/

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DANCE:

Dance is a subject within the curriculum that encompasses the development of physical expression through purposeful movement and the artistic learning process of inventing, making, connecting, and reflecting (Dinham, 2022).

Over the few weeks of this dance unit, I have become more deeply aware of the importance of dance education in primary schools. Dance is a subject that can be efficiently interwoven into many different learning areas, including but not limited to English, Drama, Music, Media Arts, and Mathematics.

Dance in primary education primarily focuses on children exploring creative movement and creative dance. Creative movement is a preamble to creative dance as it draws on developing basic fine and gross motor movement skills such as balance, strength, and mobility as well as spatial awareness (Paine, 2014). Within our unit, we have explored this using a variety of exercises. One such exercise includes asking students to create an image, shape, or movement with their body in response to a prompt (How would you move if you were a ball? A butterfly?). This exercise gets students thinking and reflecting on their own bodies and how they can manipulate them to produce an interpretation of the given question (Dinham, 2022).

Creative dance, therefore, is a form of dance that encourages self-expression and the development of self-identity (The Song Room, 2024). In creative dance, students are encouraged to investigate different types of movement through elements such as space, energy, time, body, and action (Dinham, 2022). Rooted in exploring imagination, creative dance is an excellent tool for educators to employ across the curriculum. Creative dance can be an engaging way for children to learn about literature in primary school, as stories, poems, and images can all be employed as resources to inform the creation of dance and comprehension of a text (Stevens, 2019). This form of dance not only impacts students' cognitive abilities but also greatly impacts students' social and emotional skills. By employing creative dance in a group setting, students must explore the skills of communication, negotiation, teamwork, and compromise (Dooling, 2022; Dinham, 2022). These social skills are essential for primary school students to be actively engaged in learning, as they significantly impact many areas of life.

As dance is not an arts subject I have spent a lot of time with personally, many of its benefits have eluded me and, therefore, have impacted my view on its inclusion within the curriculum. Through further research, I have linked dance to many essential teaching moments, even within my own educational career. One of these benefits I find incredibly meaningful within dance is its use as a form of expression (Dinham, 2022; Dooling, 2022; Paine, 2014). Dance can be used as a means for emotional and physical release and cultural and social expression. Allowing students to communicate and often emotionally and physically regulate through dance creates a humanistic approach to learning, emphasising students' autonomy, creativity, and personal growth in the learning environment (Duchesne et al., 2021).

Some interesting dance activities I found include the colour museum, body percussion, and dance map choreography.

The 'colour museum' is a fascinating way of looking at collaborative dance relationships. In this activity, students are given a legend detailing body parts and their respective colour (e.g., arms are blue, legs are green); with this information, students are then asked to make shapes with their bodies using a specific colour. Students are then encouraged to work together and eventually 'mix' their colours to create new colours. This activity is an excellent example of how dance can be used cross-curricula and to enhance memory and cooperative learning. Percussive dance choreography is also an outstanding resource when exploring students' ability to memorise dance phrases and understand the importance of beat and rhythm. Finally, dance maps are an easy way to introduce locomotor and non-locomotor movement and allow children to interpret given movement words individually. This activity is also resourceful, as it presents students with an opportunity to choreograph their own dances.

Through my engagement in the dance unit this term and extensive extracurricular research, I now have a deeper understanding and appreciation for dance in education. It is an exhaustive tool for learning and expression for children, and I will emphasise its integration in my own future classroom.

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-stories for children to explore movement

The Song Room. (2024). | ARTS:LIVE. Artslive.com. https://create.artslive.com/explore/teacher-toolkit/getting-started-with-dance

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-Readers Theatre Resources

Reading Rockets. (2024). Reader’s Theater. Www.readingrockets.org. https://www.readingrockets.org/classroom/classroom-strategies/readers-theater

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Key Information

When To Use This Strategy

Collect resources

Reader's theater lesson plans (with scripts)

Reader's theater scripts

See the research that supports this strategy

Children's books to use with this strategy

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With reader's theater students work together to present an oral reading of a script, typically adapted from literature, plays, or other written texts. Reader's theater is a an engaging activity used to promote reading fluency, especially oral expression.

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-Teacher in Role examples of text

Farmer, D. (2019). Teacher in Role. Drama Resource. https://dramaresource.com/teacher-in-role/

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Teacher in role (TiR) is an invaluable technique for shaping the dramatic process and developing students' learning. Simply put, the teacher or facilitator assumes a role in relation to the pupils. This may be as a leader, an equal, or a low-status role - whatever is useful in the development of the lesson. The teacher may ask questions of the students, perhaps putting them into role as members of a specific group and encouraging them to hot-seat her in return.
Why use it?
The teacher is able to directly participate in the dramatic process and influence it from the inside. This makes it possible to present challenging and controversial points of view and to stimulate thought, discussion and action by pupils. Teacher in role validates and supports the children's involvement in a make-believe situation by enabling the teacher to work and 'play' alongside them. It is an instant way of setting a scene and directly involving the pupils. Children are used to stepping into and out of role in everyday play and are likely to be keen to participate.
How to do it
Teacher in Role does not require great acting skills. It can be seen as an extension of the ever-changing role-play that we all experience - whether as parent, child, teacher, student, colleague and so on. The strategy simply involves 'stepping into somebody else's shoes' for a while to put forward their point of view. This can be done by subtly changing your tone of voice and body language to communicate key attitudes, emotions and viewpoints. If you can use different voices for characters when you tell a story then you are certainly able to carry out teacher in role.

A role can be adopted quite simply to communicate the key attitudes and emotions of a particular character. It won't take much for most children to believe in your character although the use of a token prop or piece of costume will clarify when you are stepping in and out of role: "When I put on this scarf I will be Anne Frank", or "When I sit in this chair I will be the King". Although not essential, you may wish to place furniture and props to represent a different place - but keep it simple.

If you are unsure how to begin, try hot-seating first. This will give you valuable experience of assuming a role in relation to the students and responding to their comments and questions. You can progress to teacher in role by encouraging the students to participate and becoming more active as the character. Reply to their questions as though they are also in role and encourage them to become involved in occupational mime activities.

Teacher in role can easily be used right across the curriculum. In Art, you can take the role of a character from a painting; Geography provides opportunities as an aid worker or explorer; History lessons can be livened up by a Roman centurion, an Ancient Egyptian child, a workhouse overseer or an archaeologist; in Literacy, stories provide the greatest source of characters - ranging from the Gruffalo to the Minotaur, from Red Riding Hood to Oliver Twist, from Anansi to Cyclops.

This is an adapted extract from Learning Through Drama in the Primary Years by David Farmer, where many more examples and lesson ideas can be found.

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Teacher in role (TiR) is an invaluable technique for shaping the dramatic process and developing students' learning. Simply put, the teacher or facilitator assumes a role in relation to the pupils. This may be as a leader, an equal, or a low-status role - whatever is useful in the development of the lesson.

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-Body & Breathing Warm-ups

Voiced + unvoiced Fricative warm-ups

Hearle, A. (2012, August 27). Vocal Warmups. https://www.stagemilk.com/vocal-warm-ups/

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Having a strong and healthy voice is essential as an actor. Your voice is one of your strongest assets and it is absolutely trainable. You can improve your range, dynamic, volume, lung capacity, articulation and resonance. I have listed below a great vocal warm up to do either as part of your morning routine or before performing.

You don't always have to do the full warm up and you can vary the warm up and interchange different exercises, but this is a great base. I have split the vocal warm up into four main sections: alignment and body work, breath support, resonance and freeing the sound and articulation. I have done this as each section leads naturally onto the next; each section is a useful warm up for what follows.

Alignment/Body Work

Alignment is very important for voice. If your body is aligned and grounded it means that the sound can be released without impingement. When you are aligned you are forced to let go of any personal habits and tensions which in turn helps free your voice.

1. Lie on the floor with your knees bent and a book under your head. The position is known as semi-supine and is fabulous for allowing your spine to completely rest. If you lie like this whilst warming up in can be very useful. Alternatively doing 10 mins a day will drastically improve your posture/alignment.

2. Now come to standing, and imagine a helium balloon is attached to the top of your head. Lightly lifting you up.

3. Stretching is great to free up the muscles and let go of tensions. Yoga is fantastic.

4. Spinal Rolls: standing up roll down through the spine a vertebrae at a time, then roll back up again. Hum as you rise. (if you aren't familiar with spinal rolls, do not try without having been shown the proper technique)

5. Roll shoulders. Gently rolling your shoulders is a great way to release that all too common neck tension.

6. Massage your jaw to release any tensions. Many of us hold a lot of tension in our Jaw. Massage the jaw muscles gently, feeling the release.

Tip: throughout all these exercises humming is a great gentle warm up you can do simultaneously.

Breath Support

1. Fricatives: fricatives are unvoiced sounds like th, ff, sh, and ss. You can do these in all positions: supine, semi-supine, standing and some yoga positions.

2. Sigh out on open vowel sounds: uh, ah, oh, oo, ee (adding an 'h' sound can really help)

3. Counting as far as you can, then releasing and trying again. Repeat 3 times.

Resonance and freeing the voice

1. Resonance scan: hum and feel the resonance in various spots around your body. Try to feel vibration on your head, throat, chest, back, crown and face.

2. Lip Trills or horse lips: blow on a p or b sound through soft lips. You can go through your range like this also.

3. Hum and yawn.

4. Singing scales can also be great for increasing your range.

Tip: with any singing make sure that you don't push your voice too hard, this is a warm up after all.

Articulation

1. Get your hands inside your mouth and massage the inside of your cheeks, your tongue and underneath your tongue. This hands on massage really helps to relieve tensions and frees the articulators.

2. Protrude tongue for 30 seconds, then release.

3. Try to speak d, g, p, t, k in the rhythm: bbbb, bb-bb-bb-bb, bbb-bbb-bbb-bbb.

4. Check out other tongue twisters and exercises on our Articulation Exercises page.

Remember that doing something small on a regular basis is more beneficial than doing a big, comprehensive warm up every now and again. If you are suffering from a sore throat or any vocal issues, always warm up very carefully. For some tips on how to help a deal with a sore throat check out our natural sore throat remedy page.

An actor's voice is so important. I hear all the time how crucial a good voice is for an actor to be successful. The voice is one of the most trainable elements of an actors skill set, therefore warmup as much as possible. Take singing lessons or voice lessons, work on your voice regularly, and really try to improve this invaluable asset you have as an actor.

A quick vocal exercise to help unlock your voice [Voice Coach Gabrielle Rogers]

Where to find more vocal warm ups

We are so incredibly fortunate to have one of the top vocal coaches working with us in our StageMilk Drama Club. All members get full access to all our vocal and movement warm ups as well as 5+ hours of tutorial videos, access to the super passionate community and feedback on the work you submit each month. Come and join our monthly coaching classes, talk with industry expert, learn from live online masterclasses and group coaching sessions.

About the Author

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Vocal Warm Ups | Essential Voice Exercises for Actors

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Having a strong and healthy voice is essential as an actor. Your voice is one of your strongest assets and it is absolutely trainable. You can improve your range, dynamic, volume, lung capacity, articulation and resonance. I have listed below a great vocal warm up to do either as part of your morning routine or before performing.

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– Improvisation

Introducing the term and exercises to explore improv.

Price, L. (2015). Improv games for collaboration. Theatre Folk. https://www.theatrefolk.com/blog/improv-games-for-collaboration

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Here are some great improv games to work on collaboration skills.
Word at a Time Story
Students sit in a circle. Give them a title for a story.…

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-Drama body warm-up sheet.

Why do we warm-up? How can we warm-up?

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References:

I acknowledge the use of Grammarly (Free version, 9.0) in editing and formatting the grammar of this paper.

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-Dance education resources (games and curriculum advice)

Stevens, M. (2019, April 16). Poetry in motion. Dance Ed Tips. https://www.danceedtips.com/blogs/news/poetry-in-motion

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The #1 Dance Teacher Website: Your Ultimate Hub for All Things Dance Education

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https://wadumbah.com.au/

WA DANCE COMPANY

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Kaya Kaya Wunju!! It is our pleasure to share with you our traditional First Nation culture in Australia. We help people understand and enjoy our ancient heritage through music, dance and storytelling. Wadumbah means 'Big Flood Waters', and they truly live up to their name.

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Drama:

Drama is a diverse art form in where participants build upon their own creativity, imagination, and beliefs through written, visual, or auditory prompts.

Throughout our drama unit, we have explored subjects such as warm-ups, improvisation, readers' theatre, and process drama, as well as looked at the numerous ways of presenting and using these activities in a classroom setting. It should also be noted that I personally have become more informed about the impact drama can have within other core subjects in primary learning.

I have always highly enjoyed the Arts, most especially drama. Drama allows children to become the creators and inventors of their world (Wolland, B. G., 1993/2014). It supports their own creative process while also allowing them to contextualise, reflect, and understand the world, cultures, and stories around them.

Drama is therefore extremely useful in primary classrooms, as it supports collaboration, creativity, confidence, and construction of self-identity (The Kids Research Institute Australia, SEWB, 2025).

Some handy tools we have explored in this unit include body and vocal warm-ups, Tableau, Teacher in Role, Improvisation, and Readers Theatre.

Body and vocal warm-ups are crucial for all students participating in the drama process. Warmups can focus on a student's gross motor skills through a series of larger full-body movements guided by the teacher. These can include following instructions to make shapes with their body (e.g., make your body as small as possible, as big as possible, etc.) or copying movements of certain objects or animals (e.g., hop like a frog, sway in the wind like a tall tree). These activities not only support children physically warming themselves up but also enable them to think more creatively about the instructions they are given and how they will visually represent these with their own bodies (London, 2020). Vocal warm-ups are also an important tool and can be a fabulous way of engaging the students at the start of a lesson. Using fricatives, tongue twisters, and solfege are effective ways to teach children about breathing techniques, the diaphragm, enunciation, and modulatory devices for expression.

Tableau and Readers Theatre are other activities we have explored throughout these three weeks. Tableau, creating a still image using only your body, is an excellent tool to foster collaboration, imagination, and introduce improvisation. I can provide students with a verbal or visual prompt and allow them, in groups, to express this prompt through a still image. This is particularly useful when examining stories or texts to facilitate comprehension and understanding of the elements within them. It is also an amazing way of allowing students to interact, collaborate, and learn team-building skills, as every student must be a part of this still image for the tableau to work (Kalidas, 2014).

Readers' theatre is another engaging way to introduce students to key elements of drama, such as voice and movement, and apply this knowledge to a new text. Students are assigned specific roles within a provided stimulus text or story. They can explore the text fully by immersing themselves in the world as a character, mostly by using just their voice. This is a fun way to explore a script in drama or a narrative in English, as it can be employed in a smaller classroom setting (Reading Rockets, 2024).

Both activities can be used with several age groups, with various texts ordered in appropriateness and difficulty. These activities can also be used with many subjects, such as English, which examines narrative devices and explores reading comprehension, and history, which explores stories from different times and cultures and contextualises them in a way that children can enjoy and further understand.

Finally, after researching the above activities, I further investigated Teacher in Role (TiR). I have actively used this in my own teaching practice; however, I am now far more aware of the positive learning implications it can have for various age groups. The teacher in role allows the educator to become part of the world the children are exploring by adopting a role that guides and asks questions while maintaining control of the classroom. This can be employed to aid younger primary students in understanding roles within our community. ‘Play-acting’ roles or situations with the help of a TiR allows children to learn about different topics within their lives safely and interestingly. (Donegan, 2020).

Drama is a creative way to engage in a broad range of learning, and it is an endlessly helpful tool for primary teachers to employ. Through this subject, children develop their individual artistic and creative practices, as well as social, physical, and cognitive skills (Woolland, 2014).

In the future, I aim to provide a rich and authentic drama arts experience for my students.