Visual Arts, Physical Education, Music

At UCCKE, we acknowledge the importance of physical and aesthetic education in fostering all-round and healthy development of our students. Every effort is made to strike a balance between the study of both academic and cultural subjects. Faculty of Cultural Subjects is comprised of 3 subjects, namely, Physical Education, Music and Visual Arts, and is aimed to promote both the physical and aesthetic development of our students. Sufficient time and resources are allocated to help students develop their physical health and artistic potentials.

Cultural Subjects

Cultural subjects are concerned with both the physical and aesthetic development among students. It is a means to help students understand and appreciate the beauty of God’s marvelous creation. Knowledge, skills, values are all emphasized during the teaching process.

In Junior Secondary levels, students are provided with adequate exposure to various team sports/ individual sports, art forms and string instruments. Some concepts or theories are covered in the curriculum but most of the time, students are given time to try and practise the target skill. Positive values and attitudes are also infused into the curriculum.

Another feature of the Culture Subjects curriculum is that some new forms of sports or art, instead of the conventional ones, are covered. For music, music appreciation, vocal training and string instrumental training are stressed and every student is expected to learn one string instrument during their junior years. In PE lessons, in addition to the traditional athletic and

rope skipping are taught. For Visual Arts, both the knowledge of Art history and the

experience of producing art works are emphasized.

It is our belief that learning is not confined to classroom; and therefore, for cultural subjects, students can also extend their learning and have their interests and potentials further cultivated through different CCA, Easter Camps (e.g. Art Camp, Hiking Camp, Canoeing Camp) or school functions (e.g. Annual Concert).

Opportunities for high-calibre students to develop their potentials are abundant. Through participating in various sports teams, school orchestra, choir, inter-school competitions or school decoration, they can have both their experience enriched and skills sharpened.

Aims and Objectives

  1. To develop skills, knowledge, positive values and attitudes in sports and arts.
  2. To gain delight, enjoyment and satisfaction through participating in sports, art-making activities or music performance.
  3. To develop the basic knowledge and interest in appreciating art and culture.
  4. To develop creativity, imagination and aesthetic awareness.
  5. To enable students to optimize one’s leisure and enrich one’s cultural life.
  6. To help students pursue a life-long interest in sports and arts. 

Visual Arts

The curriculum of Visual Arts in UCCKE adheres to the direction and core content suggested by CDI in “Visual Arts Curriculum Guide (P.1-S.3) 2003”. However, every school, including UCCKE, should have their own features in curriculum design. Students are all different in personality, motivation, learning styles and interests. In order to create a comfortable, joyful learning atmosphere in UCCKE, the curriculum design of Visual Arts in UCCKE is customized to meet the needs and ability of students. First and foremost, enhance students’ intrinsic motivation through using content and context that appeal to the relevant age group. Besides, give recognition to students’ performance, so as to raise the self-esteem of students. Last but not least, giving particular encouragement to students’ creative work, fine-tune the level of challenge and problem-solving.

Aims and Objectives

There are fourfold aims in this subject:

  1. To expose students to different types of art; and hence, they can gain

    different art knowledge to face the present multi-cultural society;

  2. To help students acquire different skills to create and make their own works;

  3. To help students develop and acquire skill of appreciation from a daily life object to famous artwork in order to develop aesthetics aptitude;

  4. To nurture students’ sense of belonging to school and responsibility to our country; and thus, further develop their national identity.

There are threefold objectives for each lesson or project:

  1. Analysis art history and design knowledge;

  2. Simple demonstrations for scaffolding student art project;

  3. Help students develop a more positive attitudes and values. 

Teaching and Learning

The UCCKE professional and experienced VA teachers adhere to the present trend of the education needs and change in Hong Kong in order to design the most suitable curriculum for students. The followings are some considerations for the curriculum:

Learning principles

  1. Inspire students to learn by themselves, that means students need to develop their self-learning skill in order to fulfill the requirement of doing a project.

  2. Motivate students to learn actively, that means students are encouraged to learn and interact with others in classroom in order to develop good learning atmosphere.

  3. Integrate art knowledge and their daily life experience into art making or project, that means students are encouraged to learn by applying their experience to their art work.

Roles of teacher

  1. Teacher has to change their role of teaching from knowledge transmission to knowledge provoking and facilitating. That means teacher is going to guide students to learn instead of spoon-feeding them with knowledge during lesson.

  2. Teacher has to integrate their teaching experience and expertise into school environment to customise the most feasible curriculum for students, that means teacher also needs to consider thoroughly the present curriculum guide and collaborate with other teachers to design a school-based curriculum. 

Learning and teaching strategies

  1. Teacher is going to adopt different teaching strategies in classroom in order to motivate students to learn, for example, group discussion, oral presentation, different art activities and so on. The aim is to let students
    learn actively and happily.

  2. Life-wide learning, e.g classroom learning, outdoor activities, extra-curricular activities, is encouraged to help students learn art at different times and places. The aim is to let students learn art from different
    perspectives.

  3. Teacher is going to develop cross-curricular activities for students, for example, subject-based, cross-curricular, moral and civic education, current issue, and so on. The aim is to help students cultivate and explore their different aptitudes in creating art.

  4. Teacher is going to train students to solve problem through inquiry-based learning. Students no longer depend on teacher’s teaching but themselves.

  5. Teacher is going to let students develop their knowledge through the agglomeration of experience. The experiential learning approach will help students accumulate such experience. 

Assessment

Assessment of Visual Arts in UCCKE involves two main domains: the learning process and learning outcomes. That is to assess students during the learning process and their final products. Assessment of students’learning
process focuses on their participation, the development of generic skills, learning attitude, oral presentation, written worksheet and so on. Assessment of students’ learning outcomes focuses on the presentation of their final product together with their written report and materials.

Basically, the mode of assessment for Junior form will be formative and for the Senior form will both formative and summative. The formative assessment will consider students’ process of learning being assessed throughout the year. This can be students’ portfolio, art making, worksheet, oral presentation, written report, students’ learning attitude and so on. The Senior form summative assessment will consider students’ performance in written and painting or design during the uniform test or examination. The uniform test takes place after autumn and winter sessions. The examination takes place at the end of the school year. 

Curriculum

Since the curriculum design is school-based, the curriculum content is changing with the abilities, needs and interests of students. Teach- er-in-charge will follow what the curriculum guideline has suggested to design the ultimate curriculum. The core of the curriculum content will be the following: 

體育科

課程目標

1.培養學生積極參與體育活動的生活習慣。 2.培養學生能樂於欣賞及嘗試各類的體育項目。 3.鍛鍊學生有健康的體魄，以達致能應付天父給與他們的責任。 4.培養學生擁有屬神的品德、行為，並教導學生與人相處的態度。

課程特色

課程內容包括籃球、足球、排球、體操、田徑、體適能、跳繩、手球、 長跑等運動項目，讓學生能透過各種運動，學習到基本身體的協調能 力、與人相處之道及鍛鍊強健體魄。 

Music

Rationale

At UCCKE, it is our intention to put more emphasis on instrument playing in junior forms and focus more on vocal training in senior forms. The rationale behind this arrangement is due to the fact that many adolescent boy’s voice change in junior forms. They will not have the interest in attending music classes if they are physically not prepared for such training. Hence, instrument playing is chosen as the core subject to be taught in junior forms so that all students can get involved without such limitations.

The reason behind the selection of strings as the core instrument to be taught in our music programme is explicated in 2 parts:

The design of an “instrument playing” focused music programme

In view of the importance of general music knowledge and the application of it, “one student one instrument in formal class time” has been arranged instead of “traditional classroom teaching”. It is found that music knowledge can be learnt and applied through the playing of an instrument. For instance, the musical style of Schubert can be taught through playing his music. By practisiis. Hence, a thoughtful and comprehensive design of the mis already in place to ensure that music knowledge is incorporated and is usic curriculum ng forte and piano, students can learn what “dynamic” is already in place to ensure that music knowledge is incorporated and is taught practically through instrument playing at different stages.

Selection of “strings” as the core instrument in our music curriculum

We have chosen strings instruments because they are affordable to most parents. Moreover, the set up cost of wind/bass band is much higher than that of strings and strings instruments are comparatively clean and safe to play together as a group. Therefore, strings have been chosen as the core instru- ment in our music curriculum. 

Aims and Objectives

  1. To equip students with basic musical instrument playing skills.

  2. To equip students with basic singing skills.

  3. To develop the ability to co-operate with others through group
    performance.

  4. To elevate the school musical atmosphere.

  5. To cultivate students’ ability to appreciate music.

Course Structure

Music teaching lessons in junior forms consist of the following parts:

Strings lessons

Strings lessons for the junior forms in the 1st term mainly emphasizes the textbook because the contents and exercises can help students familiarize themselves with the basic technique after the summer vacation. In the
2nd and 3rd terms, the focus is on one standard repertoire each term. The repertories are carefully chosen according to students’ progression and skills. In addition, the Music Teacher will design exercises for students,
which include the use of tone bars to demonstrate the moderation of keys and bowing exercises.

Vocal lessons

Voice production, choral technique and music arrangement for a piece of choral music are included in the singing lessons. Students receive intensive training in which S1, S2 and S3 classes have to sing in two, three and four
parts harmony respectively for school-wide competition. In order to nurture students’ creativity in music, they are required to rearrange the piece and sometimes create new melodies above the harmony such as soprano
descant. 

Music History

By studying different music composers, students can learn different genres of style and types of composition.

Electronic Music Composition

Musical elements such as rhythm, melody, tone, texture, and musical form can be woven together through music composition.

Music appreciation lessons

Musicals and operas are chosen for appreciation and analysis. It is also for preparing students for senior form’s musical production. Besides these lessons, music appreciation and appraisal are done through students’ participation in school-wide music competition, the playing of repertoires and by observing classmates’ performance in tests and examinations.

Assessment Components

  1. Weekly Practice Record: 30 minutes of practice every week

  2. Quiz: one piece of music to be played during any lesson of the term

  3. Final test: one exam piece chosen by the teacher and one piece chosen by the student to be played at the end of each term

  4. Other Activities:

    1. Presentation on a musical composer

      Working and presenting as a group on a composer’s biography, musical genres and compositions, geographic locations and cultural affections could help students to understand, reflect and respond to classical music.

    2. IPad musical composition
      Creating and presenting a musical composition using tablet enhanced students’ creative and technical development to express and communicate their ideas and feelings.

    3. Cantonese Opera
      Studying basic philosophy and common practice of Cantonese Opera can enrich students’ knowledge in drama to prepare them for senior form musical production in S4.