Art

We believe that Art and Design is an essential part of the primary curriculum. Art allows children to develop their imagination and creativity, to make connections through their inventive minds and gives children the skills to record their imagination and ideas. Art also encourages expression and visual thinking, which in turn helps children learn other subjects! Art is more than just painting and drawing!

What do we teach and how do we teach it?

The National Curriculum is the starting point for us and it is taught through a project/topic-based approach. To ensure that there is a meaningful context for the learning, we use opportunities for cross-curricular links to other subjects and these links all fit under the ‘umbrella’ of the topic title which encapsulates all of the learning for the half term/term. Teachers make it explicit to children that they are developing artistic skills and that they are being ‘Artists’!

We aim to build upon the children’s confidence in their own abilities and independence in their thinking; helping them to become successful developing artists eager to learn more. We aim to engage, inspire and challenge children by equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invest and create their own works of art, craft and design.  Through our teaching, we encourage children to develop their abilities in all areas of the Art and Design curriculum to empower them in their future lives.  We support children to share and express their individual creativity whilst learning about and making links to the wide spectrum of art in our society.  Through our teaching, we foster enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts and develop a knowledge of great artists, craft makers and designers. Exploration and research allows children to gain a greater understanding and knowledge of how art and design reflect our history.

From the beginning of EYFS to the end of KS2, our curriculum is based on the acquisition of knowledge, skills and vocabulary with a focus on children knowing more and remembering more. Clear progression within and across year groups, as demonstrated in the progression grid, allows children to revisit, recap and build on prior learning helping them to embed skills and knowledge. This allows our children to develop the knowledge, understanding and interest, now referred to as “cultural capital”.  It will help them to be successful artists at high school and beyond as well as developing their creative potential as citizens of the wider world.

Implementation

Our art curriculum is designed with four strands which run throughout. These are:

·         Making skills

·         Formal elements (line, shape, tone, texture, pattern, colour)

·         Knowledge of artists

·         Evaluating

Through our school’s scheme of work, these strands are revisited in every unit. In our Art and design skills and our Formal elements of art units, pupils have the opportunity to learn and practise skills discretely. The knowledge and skills from these units are then applied to other units in the scheme, Key skills are revisited again and again with increasing complexity in a spiral curriculum model. This allows pupils to revise and build on their previous learning.

Our curriculum overview shows which of our units cover each of the national curriculum attainment targets as well as each of the strands.

Our progression of skills shows the skills that are taught within each year group and how these skills develop to ensure that attainment targets are securely met by the end of each key stage.

Our Art and design curriculum develop pupil’s knowledge and understanding of key artists and art movements through Every picture tells a story units and links to artists through practical work. Our units are fully scaffold and support essential and age-appropriate sequences learning and are flexible enough to be adapted to the form cross-curricular links with our school’s curriculum. Creativity and independent outcomes are robustly embedded into our units, supporting students in learning how to make their own creative choices and decisions, so that their art outcomes, whilst still being knowledge-rich, are unique to the pupil and personal.

Lessons are always practical in nature and encourage experimental and exploratory learning with Key Stage 2 pupils using sketchbooks to document their ideas. Lessons are differentiated to ensure that lessons can be accessed and enjoyed by all pupils and opportunities to stretch pupils’ learning. Children are expected to have knowledge organisers for each unit in their sketch book before the unit is started. This is to support pupils on building a foundation of factual knowledge by encouraging recall of key facts and vocabulary.