Colourful Characters: Stories Through Art and Drama Stage 1 Creative Arts Unit 3

Bring Creative Arts lessons to life with this complete Stage 1 teaching package! Colourful Characters: Stories Through Art and Drama includes 16 engaging lessons exploring Drama and Visual Arts through circus characters, imaginative storytelling, colour, line, tone and portraiture.

Students will embody circus roles, improvise situations, create soundscapes, sequence narratives and perform for an audience. In Visual Arts, they will explore influential artists, experiment with colour mixing, tints, shades and expressive brushstrokes, and create their own artworks and portraits.

Designed to support the NSW Creative Arts K–6 Syllabus (2024), this ready-to-use unit addresses:

• CA1-DRA-01: Makes and performs drama to embody and enact characters, ideas and stories, and describes ways that drama communicates ideas.
• CA1-VIS-01: Makes artworks using materials and techniques to represent subject matter and ideas, and describes ways artists convey ideas in artworks.

What’s included:

• 16 complete lessons presented as an editable PowerPoint
• PDF version of all lesson slides
• Downloadable fonts used throughout
• Hands-on activity guide with practical, no-worksheet learning experiences
• Eight-week scope and sequence
• Detailed lesson overview for all 16 lessons
• Learning intentions and success criteria
• Key vocabulary
• Suggested lesson sequences
• Assessment opportunities and evidence of learning
• Differentiation and adjustment suggestions
• Safety and classroom organisation guidance
• Suggested resources, artworks and video links
• Culminating circus performance and portrait exhibition ideas

Drama learning experiences

Students will:

• Embody circus roles and characters through movement, voice and facial expression
• Explore role, character, situation, language, space and time
• Improvise and communicate imagined experiences
• Create circus soundscapes
• Sequence stories with a beginning, middle and end
• Collaborate to rehearse and refine performances
• Perform a circus narrative using theatre-in-the-round
• Reflect on how dramatic elements communicate meaning

Visual Arts learning experiences

Students will:

• Investigate line, shape, colour, tone, space and brushstrokes
• Respond to artworks by Jackson Pollock, Yves Klein, Piet Mondrian, Del Kathryn Barton and Ken Done
• Mix primary and secondary colours
• Create tints and shades
• Explore how colour communicates mood
• Create Mondrian-inspired compositions
• Produce expressive artworks using purposeful brushstrokes
• Draw and paint a portrait that communicates a subject’s character or story
• Discuss artistic influence and exhibit completed artworks

Perfect for

• Stage 1 and Years 1–2 classrooms
• NSW Creative Arts syllabus planning
• Whole-class Creative Arts lessons
• Classroom teachers and casual teachers
• Term or eight-week teaching programs
• Schools seeking practical Drama and Visual Arts activities
• Teachers wanting engaging lessons without additional worksheets

Each lesson is designed for approximately 60 minutes, with one Drama and one Visual Arts lesson taught each week across an eight-week sequence.

Please note that some lessons require basic classroom art materials, circus-inspired props and access to linked online resources. Fonts may need to be downloaded to maintain the original PowerPoint formatting.