Art
Art
‘Every Child an Artist’
Intent
Children are given the opportunity to exercise their creative powers in different media and dimensions. As we provide individual and collaborative experiences, we hope to build the children’s self-confidence in the creative society we live in. Art and Design provides children with the opportunity to look at the world through the eyes of an artist; it gives the children the chance to express their individual interests, thoughts and ideas.
We encourage children to use art as a means of exploring and understanding their world. Children are taught to observe their environment carefully; drawing attention to line, pattern, colour, form and textures in the natural world and within man-made and mechanical objects.
The work of artists and craftsmen is introduced and children are encouraged to appreciate and respond to the works of others. A wide variety of media and equipment is used to allow the children freedom to express themselves creatively.
Children are encouraged to plan and display their work to produce a stimulating and colourful classroom environment. As they progress through school the children develop a knowledge, understanding and appreciation of art, craft and design, including the history of art and art from other cultures.
Implementation
In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in Art and Design, we implement a curriculum that is progressive from EYFS to Year 6. Art and Design is taught through a wide range of topics with a clear progression of skills (stated in the National Curriculum) and many opportunities for the children to explore a variety of media, ensuring development of different techniques. Our aim is to fully engage children; giving them a sense of freedom to be creative and express themselves.
Children learn about a variety of artists both past and present throughout their primary journey. Knowledge about individual techniques and styles is explored along with the impact artists have had on how art has changed within society.
We want to create a true love of Art and Design, in which everyone is an artist and there are no right or wrong answers. The school uses a variety of teaching and learning styles in lessons as well as enrichment opportunities to enhance their experience within class. We regularly hold an Arts week with the purpose of raising the profile of the subject throughout the school. This is an opportunity for the children to meet a living, contemporary artist and to take inspiration from them to produce work of their own. There are opportunities to work on topics outside of the planned curriculum to further foster a love of Art and Design with opportunities to work in further depth and on a larger scale then would normally be possible within weekly lessons.
We now store all Art and Design resources centrally, which enable the Art and Design lead to easily audit and purchase resources to ensure high quality resources are made available to teach the curriculum to a high standard.
Impact
At Redfield Edge Primary, the impact of our curriculum will foster a love and enjoyment of Art and Design.
We will use the following to assess pupil progress in knowledge and skills.
- Children’s sketchbooks, along with displays give evidence of the topic coverage and clearly show each step of learning; working through the processes of: Exploration – Experimentation – Making final product
- Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
- Observations of pupils within lessons – their ability to articulate their understanding of the artists they have studied, the ‘sticky vocabulary’ they use and understand and their application of the skills taught.
- Moderation of work – where pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
