Art Education, which we consider as an important foundation in the development of creative thinking, is programmed in our middle school classes in a way that is based on experience, enabling practices, providing skill training to use artistic materials and developing the aesthetic sensitivity of the child. Although art is an area of talent, love and understanding of art is a subject of education.
Our Objectives
The Visual Arts Department, being aware of the cultural importance of art and design in the formation of more conscious communities and the development of future generations, aims to educate brave, productive, sensitive, and participating individuals who can come up with creative and original solutions, think interdisciplinary and have critical thinking skills, and appreciate art and artists through the education is provides in Visual Arts, Technology and Design, Ceramics classes, and Co-Curricular Clubs in different disciplines.
Our Goals
- To help our students embrace creative behavior in the process of transforming their emotions, thoughts, and images into a product;
- To help them acquire artistic skills, enabling them to gain vision, differentiation, and active perception;
- To awaken and develop creative, constructive, and interpretive abilities;
- To enable our students to recognize and embrace the essence of artistic activities and creativity;
- To enable them to grow up as individuals who know themselves and are aware of their talents through artistic activities;
- To contribute to their development as individuals who are researching, examining, tolerant, and free thinkers;
- To help them gain aesthetic awareness that would enable them to distinguish and evaluate the works of art according to their ages.
Teaching Practices
In line with the yearly plans prepared for our students to help them achieve positive developments in general knowledge and skills related to art, it is aimed to provide our students the opportunity to express themselves in a free working environment.
Our activities driven by the idea “The foundation of art consists of the aesthetic composition of visual elements” are based on informing, inquiry, building associations with experience, and developing creativity.
Visual arts
In visual arts classes in Grades 5, 6, 7, and 8 our students are able to recognize what the elements of visual formation are, learn about different techniques and use them in their works of art, reflect their feelings to their works through various individual and group art activities. Theoretical lectures about art history are carried out with power-point presentations on the subject and activities are carried out to gain basic information about artists’ styles and art movements.
Taking into consideration the grade-levels of our students topics such as pattern, graphic design, form, color, texture, composition, harmony, composition with geometric shapes, perspective, landscape, still life, proportion-ratio, proportion in human figure, portrait, light-shadow, abstract and imaginary compositions, print works, works from nature etc. are studied in two and three dimensions.
Through teaching the basic elements of painting it is aimed to teach students to use different materials such as charcoal, pastel, watercolor, gouache paint, acrylic paint, aquarelle, ink, etc. in accordance with the related techniques, to do three-dimensional designs, and to use different waste materials to produce artistic products through applied activities.
During the year individual student exhibitions are organized on the ground floor of the middle school building in order to support the artistic works of our students in Grades 6, 7, and 8.
Technology and Design
The curriculum of the Technology and Design class is prepared by taking into consideration the future life of our children in order to help our students acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that they need to gain, to develop design skills and aesthetic sensibility, to contribute to their development of observation, research, inquiry, inference, and creativity.
Our students in Grades 7 and 8 attend Technology and Design classes in the computer lab for one hour per week and perform computer aided designs. Our students in Grade 8 take Technology and Design classes alternately with Visual Arts classes for 9 weeks.
Rhino-ceros, Pepakura, and Pop-up card design programs are used in the classes; the works of design are produced in three dimensions by using 3D plastic modeling machine and cardboard cutting CNC in our laboratory.
Throughout the year, it is aimed to re-interpret the design of the products by following the path of Technology and Design from thought to product in stages of fiction, organization, and production, and to produce prototypes and models of the products using cardboard and 3D printer in the production section using the Rhinoceros drawing program.
Ceramics
Kneading clay, shaping and forming a product, making three-dimensional works with the power of mud in ceramics classes improve students’ fine motor skills in a positive way and it helps students gain the power to express their emotions and reflect their inner world. It also enables them to experience transformation of abstract concepts into concrete.
In our classes sgraffito, mosaic, tablet, and free designs are handled individually and in groups using different ceramics techniques. After heating works in the kiln, the glazing stage takes place. The fact that colors cannot be fully seen while working with ceramics paint called glaze renders students as bold agents forming other colors and makes the whole process exciting.
Grade 5 students take Visual Arts and Ceramics classes once a week for 9 weeks. The classes are divided equally and the students attend classes in Visual Arts and Ceramics workshops. Products produced by our students using different ceramics techniques are prepared in the ceramics kiln available in our workshop.