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Important

This page is based on the draft Year 6 content for the Arts, which is currently open for feedback. Schools are not required to implement changes until the consultation process is confirmed.

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Consultation for Year 0 to 10 draft curriculum content

In Years 4 to 6, students build confidence as they make thoughtful artistic choices and apply creative techniques across drama, dance, music, and design. They explore how cultural and historical influences shape different art forms.

In this phase, arts teaching is structured around 3 strands that focus on key areas of learning. These include:

  • Performing Arts: making and creating, observing and responding
  • Music: elements of music, listening and responding, performing, including singing, playing instruments, and creating and composing
  • Visual Arts: making and creating, observing and responding.

Performing Arts#

Ideas to help at home

With your child, you could:

  • identify the parts of a narrative in a performance they’ve seen on TV or at the movies, and talk about how well the scene was set at the start, the techniques used to build tension, and whether the ending was satisfying
  • watch dances performed at festivals, competitions, and other events, and talk about:
    • what message or story the dance is trying to share
    • the performers’ use of particular movements, techniques, and choreographic devices, for example, are movements repeated, do they get faster or slower?
    • what this experience may have meant to the people involved
    • how the dancers might have prepared for the performance
    • how the audience responded, and why
    • how the performers might have felt afterwards
  • design the set, for example, the backdrop, furniture and props, for a story and create it in a shoebox.

What the teacher will focus on#

The teacher will focus on helping your child express and interpret meaning through movement and performance, while exploring dance and drama from both local and global contexts.

For example, by the end of the year, your child may be able to:

  • choose elements, techniques, and conventions to structure a performance, give it meaning, or achieve a specific effect, for example:
    • devising scenes and movement sequences with a narrative arc, rising action, conflict, and resolution
    • using choreographic devices like repetition, contrast, canon (dancers perform the same movement one after the other), or unison (dancers perform the same movement at the same time)
    • using drama conventions like narration (a performer speaks directly to the audience) and split stage (2 scenes are shown at the same time)
  • experiment with movement, voice, facial expression, and formation to show different environments, ideas, relationships and feelings
  • take part in performance practices from te ao Māori, showing understanding of cultural frameworks like tukanga, kawa and whakapapa
  • reflect on how they can improve the impact and clarity of their performances
  • describe the structure of a performance and the use of choreographic devices and drama conventions to achieve specific effects.

Music#

Ideas to help at home

With your child, you could:

  • sing songs that are special to your whānau and talk about why
  • on a ukulele, get your child to teach you a song they have learnt at school
  • talk about music at school and instruments used in the classroom and, if you have any of these instruments at home or can borrow them, play music together and practise new skills
  • find out what Māori instruments are made from, and how and why they are made and played then listen to music that features traditional Māori instruments, such as the music of Hirini Melbourne and Horomona Horo, you could visit the website Taonga Pūoro
  • view live performances of singing and instrumental groups, cultural groups, and other musicians in the community
  • play a piece of music together, practising and shaping phrases, using:
    • body percussion, for example, clap, stamp, pat
    • found sounds, for example rain on the roof
    • traditional and unconventional instruments, for example, a cardboard tube or stones in a container.

Taonga Pūoro signing treasures

What the teacher will focus on#

The teacher will focus on helping your child express and interpret meaning through movement and performance, while exploring music from both local and global contexts.

For example, by the end of the year, your child may be able to:

  • listen to a musical phrase and recognise its:
    • tempo: speed
    • metre: number of beats in a bar
    • rhythm: pattern of sounds and silence
  • identify examples of syncopation, when emphasis shifts from the strong beats to the off-beats
  • recognise sections in music that are repeated, create contrast or where a chord change signals a change in direction
  • read the score of a 4-bar phrase
  • discuss the way music connects with communities, places, cultures and groups, including the significant role of waiata and haka in New Zealand
  • talk about changes in dynamics, using words like fortissimo for very loud and pianissimo for very soft
  • use their listening skills to sing in harmony or play in a group, keeping in tune and including a range of dynamics
  • use breath control for staccato and legato singing
  • use their knowledge of musical structure and elements to create short musical responses to a story.

Visual Arts#

Ideas to help at home

With your child, you could:

  • talk about what your child is learning at school, and ask them to teach you their favourite skills and techniques, like shading, colour-mixing, simple weaving or ways of moulding clay
  • talk about and look at examples of the art-making practices that connect to the cultural background of your whānau
  • view and talk about an artwork you like, and use it as inspiration to create your own by borrowing an idea, such as a theme, mood, object or the media or colours used
  • explore and have fun with less conventional art-making tools, for example:
    • use a sponge for a paintbrush
    • roll painted marbles around on paper
    • make prints with recycled objects or found objects from nature
    • make your own paint or dye with natural resources such as coffee, tea, beetroot, raspberries, clay, bark or rust water
  • borrow books from the library by illustrators like Peter Gossage, Xoë Hall or Robyn Kahukiwa, and explore the symbolism and motifs they use.

What the teacher will focus on#

The teacher will focus on helping your child express and interpret meaning through movement and performance, while exploring visual art from both local and global contexts.

For example, by the end of the year, your child may be able to:

  • combine more advanced elements and principles to communicate stories and ideas, for example:
    • tone (shade): how light or dark a colour is
    • form: a 3D shape with height, width and depth
    • colour theory: how colours can be combined, like warm and cool or opposites, to create mood or balance
    • balance: how visual elements are arranged to make an image feel symmetrical or asymmetrical
    • space: the use of filled areas (objects) and empty areas (background) to show shape and depth
  • use a variety of art-making media, for example, dry media like charcoal, wet media like paint, collage materials and printmaking tools
  • use a variety of art-making tools and techniques, for example, sponges to layer and blend colours
  • use visual arts language to talk about their own and others’ art-making processes, explain what their artworks mean and write or present a study of one artist
  • include cultural motifs in a personalised design and discuss what they mean, for example, the use of a dragon to symbolise power, strength and good luck.