Educational Programs at Orchard House
Arts Block
Arts Philosophy
The Arts program at Orchard House School supports the belief that studies in visual art, dance, drama, and music lay the foundation for a mature understanding and lifelong appreciation of the arts. Through study and performance, self-confidence evolves and is nurtured throughout a girl’s four years. This foundation is built on three areas of focus: the necessary influence of the arts on the individual, the individual’s community, and the individual’s connection to other communities. Each Arts course meets for one quarter during the scheduled Arts block slot. This quarterly rotation gives middle school girls the opportunity to study, embrace, and apply the material being taught in a more concentrated and condensed time frame while continuing their grade-appointed studies.
Arts program courses are designed to support current artistic talents and develop new artistic interests through individual projects, small group projects, and class projects. Having adolescent girls create alone then collaboratively, gives them 
opportunities to share their talents while learning from peers’ strengths. This helps raise personal awareness for current artistic abilities and future possibilities. Individual sketchbooks, choreographed sequences, original music, and monologues are some of the early assignments given to help build individual confidence and competence over a four-year program. Over time, sketchbooks turn into portraits, choreographed sequences become dances, original music becomes a class song, and monologues turn into plays. This style of teaching educates adolescent girls through experience, and it encourages young minds to value the process of the arts as well as the finished product.
At the end of each quarter, students present or perform class work for an invited audience in a studio-type setting. This gives everyone a chance to share her work with her own community in a comfortable performance setting without the anxiety that sometimes accompanies audience-related events. The Orchard House School community and neighbors share in the development of this lifelong appreciation of the arts by supporting students’ artistic endeavors. Their opinions and observations allow for the necessary dialogue between artist and audience in a safe learning environment. This feedback helps nurture an ongoing mature response to public criticism and public acceptance.
Arts program teachers are committed to studying many versatile artists, art movements, dancers, choreographers, musicians, musical instruments, performers, and plays. Students are introduced to a variety of people from different cultural backgrounds that have influenced and maintained the arts, past and current artistic styles and themes that have impacted and defined the arts, and the overall importance of supporting and engaging in the arts nationally and internationally. It is through this commitment that our teachers foster an enriched education that helps in the development of independent, open-minded, global thinkers.
These beliefs coupled with a sincere passion for higher-level arts education underlie the objectives of the Arts program at Orchard House School. The primary goal is to inspire middle school girls to take artistic risks that will have lasting, lifelong effects and to do so in a safe, creative learning environment.
Course descriptions for the grades may be seen by selecting one of the following:
Grade 5 |
Grade 6 |
Grade 7 |
Grade 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dance 5 | Dance 6 | Dance 7 | Dance 8 |
| Drama 5 | Drama 6 | Drama 7 | Drama 8 |
| Music 5 | Music 6 | Music 7 | Music 8 |
| Visual Arts 5 | Visual Arts 6 | Visual Arts 7 | Visual Arts 8 |
