Year 8 students advocate for their important issues through a Public Service Announcement (PSA) video. 

Despite being online for almost all of their interdisciplinary unit (IDU), Year 8 students have shown creativity, perseverance and resilience to have their PSA video in the final stages of production in time for their return to campus. Using Teams and padlet, students have been guided through their IDU by all Year 8 teachers of Design and the Arts: Visual Arts, Music and Theatre. 

This past week, the final stage of their IDU played out as PSA videos are screened, with peers from other classes attending as audience. 

The Year 8 interdisciplinary unit (IDU) ‘Speak Out’ combined Design and Arts, with Music as the main focus and Theatre and Visual Arts in support. Disciplinary knowledge from Design (video production), Music (film music, elements of sound design and composing), Theatre (costume and stage craft), Visual Arts (storyboarding skill) were synthesized by students to create a Public Service Announcement (PSA) video of up to 3 minutes in duration, promoting and advocating an issue they felt was important. 

As part of IB requirements, every year level at UISG completes an IDU, where at least two disciplines (subjects) work together for one unit. 

To quote the IB ‘Fostering interdisciplinary teaching and learning in the MYP’ handbook: 

“Students demonstrate interdisciplinary understanding when they can bring together concepts, methods, or forms of communication from two or more disciplines or established areas of expertise to explain a phenomenon, solve a problem, create a product, or raise a new question in ways that would have been unlikely through a single discipline.” 

Interdisciplinary learning goes hand in hand with interdisciplinary teaching and we have seen smooth, open-minded and creative collaboration between the Secondary Visual Arts & Design and Secondary Performing Arts (Music & Theatre) teams: Mr Sterling Toppings (Design), Mr Peter Ip (Music), with the support of Mr Benny Kharismana (HOD Visual Arts & Design), Mr Bano Das (Visual Arts), Mr Malcolm Mawhinney (HOD Performing Arts: Music & Theatre). 

Well done, Year 8! 

Mr Malcolm Mawhinney, Head of Performing Arts (K-12)