Art & Design

INTENT:

 At St Stephen’s Catholic Primary School, we strive to deliver a high quality Art and Design curriculum which allows our pupils to recognise the significance of art and design in their everyday lives and to think of themselves as artists. The development of Art and Design skills enables each child to achieve personal fulfilment and satisfaction. Pupils will develop their understanding of the visual language of art with effective teaching and carefully thought-out sequences of lessons and experiences.

Pupils will learn to be brave, innovative and respectful. They will be taught in a way that ensures progression of skills and techniques, and follows a sequence to build on previous learning. They will gain experience and skills of a wide range of formal elements of art in a way that will enhance their learning opportunities, enabling them to use art and design across a range of subjects to be creative and solve problems. Art and Design provides pupils with the opportunities to explore their world. It is a chance for pupils to record their ideas in ways that are an alternative to the written word. The art they produce will connect with their audience and challenge them to think.

IMPLEMENTATION:

Organisation and Curriculum Coverage

 Teachers create a positive attitude to Art and Design learning within their classrooms and reinforce an expectation that all pupils are capable of achieving high standards in Art and Design. Our whole school approach to the teaching and learning of Art and Design involves the following;

• Art and Design is delivered through lessons developed by Kapow. Kapow provides a broad but comprehensive experience of primary Art and Design scheme that systematically covers the objectives of the National Curriculum for England.
• Kapow is catergorised into five areas: Making Skills, Generating Ideas, Formal Elements, Knowledge of Artists and Evaluating based on the National Curriculum strands: Materials, Techniques, Artists and Expression and Imagination.
• Our Art and Design curriculum has been designed as a spiral curriculum with the following key principles in mind: cyclical (pupils return to the same skills again and again during their time at St Stephen’s Catholic Primary School), increased depth (each time a skill is revisited it is covered with greater complexity), prior knowledge (upon returning to a skill, prior knowledge is utilised so pupils can build on previous foundations.)
• Formal elements of art units are taught (with the exception of Year 6) and these lessons focus on the discrete skills of the formal elements of art: line, shape, tone, texture pattern and colour. Each year group from Year 1 to Year 6 has a unit called Art and Design Skills which focusses specifically on developing pupils’ art, craft and design skills in a discrete way. The application of skills from these two recurring units are then applied throughout the rest of the scheme.
• Within Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, all pupils have their own sketchbooks. They collate ideas and practice their vital art and design skills. Sketchbooks are a continuous working document that moves with the child as thy travel up the school. This means that they act in a great was to show their artistic progress.
• Planning involves teachers creating engaging lessons, often involving high-quality resources to aid understanding of conceptual knowledge.
• Children are encouraged to be reflective and evaluate their work as well as with their peers, thinking about how they can make changes and improvements.
• Teachers use precise questioning in class to test conceptual knowledge and skills, and assess pupils regularly to identify those children with gaps in learning, so that all pupils keep up.

• Teachers ensure that the quality and variety of subject specific vocabulary that children hear and speak are key factors in developing their own vocabulary and articulating concepts clearly and precisely.
• Activities should be planned to meet the needs of all pupils. Differentiation is achieved through careful planning and organisation. Learners should be supported and challenged to progress within Art and Design. Differentiation enables all students to engage in the curriculum by providing learning tasks and activities that are tailored to their needs and abilities. Pupils are encouraged to work in groups or individually, where appropriate.
• Events, such as Art Week or cross curricular themed days and trips, allow all pupils to come off-timetable, to provide broader provision and the acquisition and application of knowledge and skills.

We want our pupils to enjoy and value art and design, to know why they are doing things and not just how. They should also understand and appreciate the value of the subject in the context of history, of personal wellbeing, the creative and cultural industries, and its many career possibilities.

IMPACT:

The successful approach to Art and Design results in a fun, engaging, high-quality curriculum, that provides children with the foundations and knowledge for understanding the world.  Our curriculum is designed in such a way that children are involved in the evaluation, dialogue and decision making about their outcomes and 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 have higher metacognitive skills and have a growing understanding of how to improve.

Pupils will leave St Stephen’s Catholic Primary School equipped with a range of techniques and confidence and creativity to form a strong foundation for their Art and Design learning in their future learning.

The expected impact of Art and Design is that children will:

• Produce creative work, exploring and recording their ideas and experiences.
• Be proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques.
• Evaluate and analyse creative works using subject specific language.
• Know about great artists and the historical and cultural development of their art.
• Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the National Curriculum for Art and Design.