Year 4 Visual Arts – Term 3 (WA Curriculum): Exploring Art Across Time and Cultures

What this unit covers

In Term 3, Year 4 Visual Arts in the WA Curriculum centres on the unit “Exploring Art Across Time and Cultures”.

Students explore and respond to artwork from different times and cultures, developing skills in analysis and interpretation using visual art terminology.

Lesson sequence (8 lessons)

The unit breaks down into the following lesson-by-lesson sequence — each title below is a teachable lesson, in order:

1. Discovering Ancient Cave Paintings: Our First Artists
2. Egyptian Art Treasures: Symbols and Stories in Ancient Times
3. Aboriginal Dreamtime Stories: Understanding Indigenous Australian Art
4. Medieval Manuscripts: Art in the Middle Ages
5. Japanese Art Traditions: Exploring Ukiyo-e Prints
6. Renaissance Masters: Comparing Art from Different Eras
7. Modern Art Movements: How Art Changed in the 20th Century
8. Art Around the World: Comparing Cultural Artistic Traditions

Curriculum codes in this unit

Content codes:

Reading the codes: WA codes (the ones starting with WA) pack the year level, learning area, strand and content number into one string, while the national Australian Curriculum v9 uses a different anatomy that starts with AC9 — same content family, different labels. Our complete WA Curriculum guide decodes both, character by character.

Planning notes for Term 3

WA terms run roughly 9–11 weeks, and in 2026 Term 3 runs from Monday 20 July to Friday 25 September — 10 weeks for WA public schools. With 8 lessons in this unit, that leaves breathing room for assessment, moderation and the weeks that disappear to carnivals, camps and public holidays — plan the assessable work to land two to three weeks before the end of term rather than in the final week.