Visual Arts
Grades 7 & 8: Visual Art
This course is a half-year elective. Students will work in a variety of drawing and painting media and some 3-D construction. This course introduces students to visual issues including composition, value, color, texture, and perspective. Assignments are designed to have students explore ideas, including artistic movements and artists, critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity, as well as to improve their technical skills.
Grades 7 & 8: Moving Images I
This elective explores the medium of film. Students learn to be "film literate," as they have previously been taught to be literature-literate by reading and analyzing literature. This course has both a historical and technical focus. Students learn how to observe and critique movies. There is an emphasis on both the technical aspects of filmmaking and also on the content of the works. Thus, this course asks students to debate such related topics as styles of directing, ethics, and issues of representation as well as to examine race, class, gender, and sexual orientation in film history and the film business. Each student must complete a semester digital video production, working in a group. The groups write a screenplay and draw a storyboard before videotaping.
Grades 7 & 8: Photography I
The course will introduce students to the technical and aesthetic aspects of photography. Students will learn how to compose a photograph in camera, process their own film and make photographic prints. The principles of light and how light travels will be taught first through the construction and use of a Pinhole Camera, the first type of photographic camera.