Art and Design
Intent
The aim of Art and Design teaching here at Christ Church CE Primary School is to provide children with opportunities to develop and extend skills to express their individual interests and ideas, whilst also contributing to the development of them emotionally, aesthetically, spiritually, intellectually and socially.
High quality art education equips children with the skills to explore, experiment, create and invent their own work of art whilst engaging, inspiring and challenging them.
As artists, children should be able to critically evaluate their work and the work of others, taking influence from well-known artists and adapt their work accordingly. As their skill set progresses, they should understand how art has changed their landscape, culture and history.
The objectives of teaching Art and Design in our school are:
- To enable all children to have access to a varied range of high-quality art experiences.
- To provide an imaginative, innovative, and co-ordinated art programme which will foster enthusiasm for art and design amongst all the children.
- To foster an enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts and a knowledge of artists, craftspeople, and designers, through links with the local and wider multicultural community.
- To stimulate children’s creativity and imagination by providing visual, tactile, and sensory experience.
- To help children explore the world at first hand, using all their senses and experimentation, and so gain knowledge and understanding of the world in which they live.
- To develop children’s understanding of colour, form, texture, pattern, and their ability to use materials and processes to communicate ideas, feelings, and meanings.
- To inspire confidence, value, and pleasure in art.
- To cultivate children’s aesthetic awareness and enable them to make informed judgements about art and become actively involved in shaping environments.
- To teach children to express their own ideas, feelings, thoughts, and experiences.
- To develop children’s design capability.
- To enhance children’s ability to value the contribution made by artists, craft workers and designers and respond critically and imaginatively to ideas, images, and objects.
Implementation
EYFS
The most relevant statements for Art and DT are taken from the following areas of learning:
- Physical Development
- Expressive Arts and Design
- Communication and Language
Key Stages 1 and 2
The teaching of Art and Design at Key Stage 1 and 2 follows the National Curriculum and is taught in discrete half termly topics. At each stage of a pupil’s Art and Design education, they will build upon their prior learning, recalling the knowledge and skills taught previously. Links to other curriculum areas are made where it will enhance the learning.
Our curriculum design ensures that four strands run throughout. These are:
- Making Skills;
- Formal Elements (line, shape, tone, texture, pattern, colour);
- Knowledge of artists;
- Evaluating.
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 throughout the other units. Key skills are revisited continuously with increasing complexity in a spiral curriculum model. This allows pupils to revise and build on their previous learning.
Lessons are always practical in nature and encourage experimental and exploratory learning, with pupils using sketch books to document their ideas.
Enrichment
We aim to enrich our pupils’ lives by offering a variety of experiences (artists, educational visits, visiting speakers, workshops). In addition, we seek to enhance our pupils’ learning through developing positive, two-way relationships with our local community.
Inclusion
At our school we teach Art and Design to all children, whatever their ability and individual need. This is in accordance with the school’s curriculum policy of providing a broad, balanced and inclusive education to all children. Through our Art and Design teaching we provide learning opportunities that enable all pupils to make good progress. We strive hard to meet the needs of those pupils with special educational needs, those with disabilities, those with special gifts and talents, new arrivals and those learning English as an additional language, and we take all reasonable steps to achieve this. Differentiated guidance is available for every lesson to ensure that lessons can be accessed and enjoyed by all pupils and opportunities to stretch pupils’ learning are available when required.
Impact
Assessment
Our Art and Design curriculum is designed in such a way that children are involved in the evaluation, dialogue and decision making about the quality of their outcomes and the improvements they need to make. By taking part in regular discussions and decision-making processes, children will not only know facts and key information about art, but they will be able to talk confidently about their own learning journey, have higher metacognitive skills, and have a growing understanding of how to improve.