4th and 5th Grade Art Specials- 4th and 5th Grade students will have one 45 minute session of Art every week, with Ms. Sullivan, our Elementary Art Teacher and College and Career Readiness Teacher for 7th Grade.  Students will have the opportunity to establish a strong foundation of art skills, terminology, and craftsmanship that prepares them for the more intensive middle school art courses.

MS Art 1 Foundations, MS Art 2 Studio, and MS Art 3 Studio- In the first year of middle school, 6th Grade Students will have the opportunity to experience a variety of fine arts electives including a semester of Art and Theater or a full-year course of Band.  After the first year of Fine Arts Electives, students will choose for their 7th and 8th grade years, a yearlong course of study in Art, Theater, or Band.  The MS Art 2 and MS Art 3 readily prepares students for acceptance into the highly competitive Booker T. Washington HSVPA Visual Arts Program, if this is their choosing.  Although a primarily academically talented and gifted school, 100% of student auditions and portfolio reviews into Booker T. Washington have been accepted.  Middle school Art courses are taught by Ms. Dear, Visual Arts Lead, Social-Emotional Learning Lead, and Electives Co-Chair.

Band at Travis is an awesome way for students to develop higher level thinking skills as well as explore many different avenues of self-expression. Students who participate in band have opportunities to compete with other students across the district/region for membership in All-City and All-Region Bands. Additionally, the Travis Band has an outstanding reputation for success at UIL Concert & Sight-Reading Contest.

Beginning students who select Band as their elective will have the opportunity to learn a particular instrument from the following list:

Flute, Oboe, Bassoon, Clarinet, Saxophone, Trumpet, French Horn, Trombone, Baritone/Euphonium, Tuba and Percussion. Students who already play an instrument have the opportunity to be a part of the Travis Non-Varsity Band or the Travis Varsity Band. Please contact Mr. Kitchens at dkitchens@dallasisd.org with any questions you may have.

Students will explore a variety of software and computer systems in Tech Apps to begin their journey, gaining the skills they need to create quality projects for all their classes. Later, students can choose from Robotics where they will learn engineering skills and be introduced to programming. Or they can choose our Intro to Programming course which uses Javascript to create games and animations. Eighth graders have the opportunity to delve deeper into computer science in CS Fundamentals which explores a great span of programming languages and digs deep into the important Computer Science concepts of decomposition, abstraction, algorithms, and data structures.

Through exploration of numerous plays, students explore all aspects of the theatre including etiquette, staging, and script reading. Our students gain self confidence and experience through writing and delivering original monologues. Over the years, our students have staged and performed numerous winning one act plays for the UIL competitions.

Why take French or Spanish at Travis?

French and Spanish classes prepare students to actively engage in communicating in target language. They embrace culture and customs as well as building vocabulary and expressing ideas in correct grammatical form. They stretch beyond the classroom, encouraging students to use communication skills in their community and participate in cultural activities offered through museums, clubs and field trips programs. French and Spanish classes are practical through real life skits allowing students to use their classroom as a café, department store, emergency room, airport as well as act out real life scenes with cultural context. Students are challenged to compete in regional and national contests that require language mastery.

String orchestra students, research has shown, receive higher SAT/ACT scores and compared to other students average overall higher grades. The Travis Varsity String Orchestra has earned Sweepstakes for the past five years at the UIL Concert/Sight-Reading Contest.  Also the director, Mr. Large, has 30 years of experience teaching at academies and magnet schools in Dallas ISD including 14 years at W.E. Greiner Exploratory Arts Academy and 10 years Booker T. Washington HSPVA.

Modern Band is a class that engages students who might otherwise not take part in one of the other existing school music programs because it incorporates different instrumentation including electric guitars, drum kits, keyboards, singers, technology, and computers. Students will learn to perform, improvise and compose using the popular genres including rock, pop, R&B, and other modern styles of music. 

4th Grade General Music students learn to play the Ukulele.

The enrichment after-school string program for 4th and 5th grade students is for those who would like to begin or continue playing a string instrument. These students will meet once a week afterschool with Mr. Large who also teaches the String Orchestra class for 6th - 8th grade students during the regular school time.

The Travis physical education program is a student centered based on the developmental, characteristics, and interest of our students. The program teaches management skills, self-discipline, focuses on the student’s development learning the right technique of the skills rather than outcome of performing the skill. Physical education teaches lifetime activities students can use to improve their health and personal wellness.