Our school helps their students to improve both academically and socially and gives them enough support to achieve this aim.
Within this perspective “The Activity Programs” carried on to discover the potential differences of our students and to support their social, emotional, individual, physical and cultural development are of great importance in our school. We can talk about our November activities under the following headings: Drama; Ballet; Choir; Percussion; Mini Cinema and many others. We especially aim the success and development on the part of our students within the framework of the activities.
Ballet, one of our activities, is a performance art which combines the mimics, props, costumes, emotions and music together at a high standard.
Ballet can be learnt professionally in between 8 to 10 years and the male dancers are called ballets while the females are called ballerinas. In our school, while teaching ballet, the teachers offer a selection of classical artwork every year. These are mainly: Swan Lake, Giselle and the Nutcracker. We get support from the teachings of schools such as Royal Academy and Vaganova and our students wear a special skirt during the lessons and on stage called tutu. At this time, we are teaching our students basic ballet moves and technical information together with rhythm, coordination, discipline, placements and group work. Also, our students learn how to be self-disciplined and self-confident through ballet, and they get an awareness on dance and music. After this year’s basic ballet education and theoretical knowledge we intend to move to choreography after February 2017 and we are planning to have a show at the end of the year. We, as teachers, aim to increase the benefits of our teachings on our students, while presenting our knowledge to them.
The first examples of guitars go back to 17 th century Spain. These first instruments looked like lutes in general. While at those times, guitars used to have four strings only, two more were added later.
Our main aims in teaching how to play the guitar to our students is to improve their skills and abilities in terms of art and to help them develop socially. The guitar activity does not only increase the aesthetical awareness of the students but also is an open activity for those who want to learn the guitar and for those who want to improve their performance. Within the lessons, the students are taught the guitar theoretically and they put their theoretical knowledge into practice. They take part in school performances on special days and they perform the songs that they have learnt. This increases their self-discipline, self-confidence, and work discipline.
Together with the classical guitar songs, our students can easily play the songs such as Arkadaşım Eşek, Caddelerde Rüzgâr and they will be much more competent in the coming term.
Communication means basically to share your thoughts, emotions and wishes with others. People who can communicate in a healthy way can express their thoughts, emotions, wishes and needs easily, and can find solutions to their problems.
Using creative drama in teaching communication helps the students acquire the diverse communication skills and to imply them simultaneously. Creative drama work will lead them to understand the spoken and unspoken codes of the communication, to get insight in terms of understanding both their own and other people’s feelings, to express themselves much better and to establish empathy with others. In drama activities, the students will start to know themselves, to understand the effects of understanding the body language while trying to know the values and the emotions of others, to respect others feelings and to empathize with them, to see the communication barriers and to acquire active listening skills. The activities will be carried on using creative drama methods and techniques.
Within this framework, drama techniques such as improvisation, role playing, animation, pantomime, and writing within the role will be taught, and so the students will have the chance of learning while living.
Charcoal drawing is a form of art carried on using pencil, charcoal pencil and graphite. It is one of the oldest art styles since most of its materials are natural. The Visual Arts start with charcoal drawing. Besides, today it is a separate form of art.
Our charcoal activity is of great excitement for our students. This term, they have already learnt drawing lines and the dark and fair tones; they also started to do still life drawings. The aim of these practices is to increase the hand-eye coordination of our students. At the end of the teachings the art work done by our students are very close to the professional standards.
The projects carried on by our students have been displayed in our school periodically and they open a dream path to the future work.
The aim of establishing a choir as part of our activities is to help our students to form healthy relations with their musical environment by singing with clear notes and high musical awareness within a community or when alone, to participate in the music consciously both as a singer and as a listener, and to acquire a cultural identity in the field of music.
Our work as choir start with midriff work; it means learning the right breathing style. Then, our students start working on listening and rhythm. All these techniques help our students to develop their rhythm sense, musical ear, voice training and chorus singing skills. While working univocally they start walking towards being polyvocal and they turn their work into fun combining it with dancing skills. Our choir who participated in the 29 th October Ceremony drew great attention from the audience. They will also take part in the Atatürk’s commemoration ceremony which will take place in our school on 10 th of November, and sing for Atatürk.
Our Choir, who take part in any ceremony and performance organized in our school, will also take part in school end of year’s celebrations.
Drawing activity, which is an integral part of our activities, help our students to develop a visual awareness and a static point of view by teaching them the themes, the tendencies, and the artists important in Art history. It provides a foundation for creating new designs by teaching the dots, lines, shapes, composition, colours, designs and it increases their creativity.
During our activity, we emphasize the important days and weeks, and so establish a sensibility in our students, opening the gates for them to express their feelings artistically. Also we help them develop their psychomotor skills by providing them different materials. Furthermore, we try to create a professional awareness by talking about different art subjects such as drama, props, graphic, design, sculpture, lithograph, and inlay.
At the beginning of October, we focused on the 4 th October Animal Day and we created a Modafen Cat Shelter. Furthermore, for Green Day, we talked about nature, we explained to our students that the most important thing is to protect nature and to leave it to the further generations without any problems. Based on the work of Gustave Klimt, we had our students make their own tree designs. For the 29 th of October Republic Day, our students worked as stage designers and they made bird figures, having freedom and independence in their minds as a theme. One of the themes we are going to work on for the end of year performance is “Woman” and within the framework of this theme we made a presentation to the students on the paintings of popular Turkish and foreign artists, asking them to comment on one of these artworks by painting it using gouache.
Our teachings and projects help our students to entertain themselves and to improve their visual awareness.
Percussion is used to have rhythm. Rhythm means flow in Old Greek. The combination of sounds arising from the beats and their series form the rhythm. In modern music the rhythm is generally obtained by percussion instruments.
Our first aim in our Percussion activity is to improve the musical ear and rhythm sense of our students. The other aims are to teach them that rhythm is not only acquired by using an instrument, but also by our body, and to help our students to develop their musical coordination. We also aim to find out if our students can be very successful musicians in the future. Within the first term, we have already taught our students the rhythmic structures such as “An-kara; Kara-man; Geli-bolu – Van” We have changed the places of these structures and formed new rhythms. The above mentioned work has helped them both develop their rhythmic sense and their musical ear. Furthermore, we also played the South American and African percussion instrument called “Bongo”. We did several exercises for body percussion and learnt the percussion game “Bim Bam”.
Our activity aims to create a more educative, entertaining, and creative learning environment with the help of our student interest and work discipline enhanced by our teachings.
Movie making means putting a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, create the illusion of moving images. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in success.
The aim of our Mini Movie Club is to help our students to enhance their thinking skills, to get aware of different emotions and to create a difference, to write creatively while and after watching a film. Children learn the basic concepts of the movie making cognitively and to perceive people from different perspectives using their emotions. The films help them to transfer their behaviours and thoughts to life after analysing them deeply.
For the first and second graders, the main aim is to understand the consequences of the events very basically and to educate the kids behaviourally and conceptually. For the third and fourth graders, the aim is to show them how the film making industry has developed over the decades and to introduce them to the basics of the film making. In connection with these outcomes, our teachers use the creative drama and cooperation techniques while carrying out the activities.
Drama activity which is part of our school activities, draws the attention of our students and during the activity the teachers do not only provide theoretical background for the students but also work on many important plays. The plays our students work on are displayed at the end of the term or within the term and new plays are taken into the agenda.
Primary School Theatre Club 1 st and 2 nd Graders
We can discuss the activities carried on in October in our Drama Club under the headings of stage knowledge, acting workshops, creative reading, drama, and play.
During the ice-breaking meeting games, our students experienced the basic acting skills, the use of mimics and gestures, and where and how they could use their mimics. While learning about the stage, they also learnt what backstage, props, and costumes were and they learnt how they could stand in front of an audience. They read the story that worldwide famous thinker and author Umberto Eco wrote for children, The Gnomes of Gnu Bompiani; and turned it into a play. They analysed the story and they defined the characters as roles. When it was time to distribute the roles, the traditional drama casting method was used and the students who were willing to take a role were given the first chance. Then students worked on the roles and the remaining roles were distributed. The first part of the “The Gnomes of Gnu Bompiani” were played impromptu and turned into a play. Then, we started to get ready for the stage performance.
“The Gnomes of Gnu Bompiani” will meet its audience on the 27 th March, celebrated as the World Drama Day every year.
3 rd and 4 th Graders
We can discuss the activities carried on in October in our 3 rd and 4 th graders Drama Club under the headings of stage knowledge, acting workshops, approaches to the role and improvisation.
This year the students will perform the musical called “Annie” of Thomas Mann. We, first of all, watched extracts from the film adaptation of the musical “Annie”. Students got to know the people in the play and analysed the story. Then, for casting, our students were given roles suitable to their abilities. For example, our students who are good at singing and dancing took part in the musical parts of the play. After they had chosen the roles they wanted to play, the roles suitable for each student were written. Then, they started to work for the stage performance.
One lesson of the drama club has been allocated for props and costume practices. As the students chose their props and costumes suitable for their roles they could establish a closer relationship with the role they would play.
When we evaluate drama, which is a very important part of visual arts, as a whole, it reaches its ultimate aim. Values such as team work, creativity, and empathy were enhanced through drama
Secondary School Drama Club
We can discuss the activities carried on in October in our Middle School Drama Club under the headings of stage knowledge, acting, improvisation and character, conflict, creativity and evaluation.
We have chosen two plays for the club: “Hairspray Musical” and “The Cat in the Hat” which will be performed in English.
For the Hairspray Musical, which is basically the story of a girl in 1960’s USA, we worked on rhythm and movement. Rhythm which is part of the basic acting education is of great importance starting from reading texts to creating characters. This contributes a lot to the development and control of the body. During this period, we evaluated our students who will take part in the play. We helped them to express themselves impromptu within the framework of the roles to be given to them. Therefore, they had the chance of understanding the roles that they wanted to play and of making suggestions about them. After the casting, they were given the texts.
Our students will learn how to analyse a text and how to express their emotions during the period when they will rehearse for until the final performance day. For the “The Cat in the Hat” musical we first made a selection among our students whose mother tongue is English. The Musical, adapted from the book of Dr. Seuss, will be performed by our students, and meet the Modafen Family on stage.
