The upper school focus for the term was Australian Government in their Inquiry unit. I wanted to use this focus
within their pieces of art.

We began by looking at famous Australian cartoonists and then particularly political cartoonists. I wanted the children
to know that Australia has a strong and vibrant history of political cartooning. It began in the 1830s, when political
cartoons were first featured in Australian newspapers, they have provided witty humorous comment on political and
public affairs, social customs, fashions, sports events and personalities.

The students were very interested in viewing and analysing the key features, visual movement, the line and design
of different cartoons presented to them. We wrote concluding statements of what makes a good cartoon.

I then went on to workshop the children in simple cartoon drawing. Looking at the eyes, the noses and the mouths as the feature
to show emotions. The engagement of this activity was amazing. The children were very interested in creating visual
cartoons that showed an emotion. These were displayed around their rooms to stimulate discussion and use of technique/style.

After that the children were then given a visual of each of our 25 Prime Ministers since Federation in 1901. They
were encouraged to visually look at them and line draw some. They were reminded that they must be able to be identified.
As they drew them they asked a friend or myself who it was. If they could be identified they ticked their work.

When then looked at John Brack’s piece of work titled Collins Street and talked about the tonal colours used
and the layout of the work.

The children where then given a picture of the Old Parliament House and the new. They then painted one of the buildings
using the tonal colours of Browns.

Then final part of this piece of work was that they cut out the line drawings that they had done in the pervious
classes and pasted them down on the bottom as in John Brack’s work and we called it “Prime ministers
in history”
 
LEVEL 4

St Mary’s School Thornbury