Art and Design

A high-quality Art and Design education embodies some of the highest forms of human creativity. It will engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design. Building on this, they will be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of Art and design. They will also know how art and design both reflect and shape our history and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our nation.

 (National Curriculum 2014) 

Intent 

At Christ Church Primary School, we endeavour to create an environment in which children can express themselves through art and design in a variety of ways. We are committed to teaching children to be creative and reflective learners  When devising our long-term progression plan for Art, we identified 6 key skills that children need to learn to be successful in their Art development. These are: collage, paint, drawing, printing, textiles, 3D sculpture. We also understand the importance of children becoming digitally literate at Christ Church and how this can be incorporated into children’s Art learning. Therefore, a digital aspect is taught to enhance or accompany a project. Through the teaching of these key skills, Art is organised into areas which we feel will provide coherence throughout the curriculum and support children in building knowledge and making learning stick. As a school, we fully recognise the importance of repetition of knowledge and skills for children to make progression and therefore children repeat coverage of the techniques and skills, but this is adapted to meet the needs and ages of the children.

Implementation

At Christ Church, staff plan and structure a sequence of lessons linked to the skill that we want the children to obtain. This ensures they have planned the knowledge and skills details in our progression document; required to meet the aims of the National Curriculum. All teaching of Art at Christ Church follows a sequence of lessons which includes: explore, techniques, create, refine, showcase and evaluate across all year groups. Each of the stages are rooted in technical knowledge and vocabulary. Using the long-term progression document and medium term-overviews teachers prepare:

• A sequence of lessons, which are coherently planned and aid progression and depth of knowledge
• Trips and visiting experts to support and enhance learning
• Displays to celebrate children’s learning
• Knowledge organisers, designed to assist children in their knowledge of their focus artist and the skill or techniques they’re learning

Building from prior learning in the EYFS to ensure coverage with our mixed age classes we use a two-year rolling programme where all children in Key Stage 1 and Lower Key Stage 2 complete cycle A and the following year cycle B.

Impact

The curriculum of Art is planned to support and demonstrate a seamless progression through school. Due to the nature of this curriculum area, Art monitoring takes various forms. A key component of this is pupil voice; school leaders use this as an effective tool to ascertain the pupils’ ability to express themselves through a range of different mediums. Sketch book monitoring throughout all year groups also takes place each half term to compliment this, allowing leaders to ensure our artists have the opportunity to develop their skills fully and showcase their talents, while also ensuring our curriculum standards are being achieved in each year group. Examples of our artists’ work is exhibited throughout school, both on our classroom and communal displays situated on our school corridors and hall.

ARTSMARK GOLD 2020

Awarded in 2020 we are committed to following the 7 Artsmark principles...

Artsmark Quality Principles