ART & DESIGN CURRICULUM STATEMENT
Intent
At Hutchinson Memorial CE First School, we want all our children to love Art & Design. Our Art & Design scheme of work aims to inspire pupils and develop their confidence to experiment and invent their own works of art. Our scheme is written by experts in their field and designed to give pupils every opportunity to develop their ability, nurture their talent and interests, express their ideas and thoughts about the world, as well as learning about art and artists across cultures and through history.
Our scheme supports children to meet the National Curriculum end of key stage attainment targets and has been written to fully cover the National Society for Education in Art and Design’s progression competencies. Our chosen scheme of work, Kapow, is an Artsmark partner and aims to inspire children to create, experience and participate in great arts and culture.
Implementation
At Hutchinson Memorial First School, we have a coherently planned and sequenced curriculum which has been carefully designed and developed to enhance our topic based approach to learning. We want to equip our children with not only the minimum statutory requirements of the Art & Design National Curriculum but to prepare them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.
The Art & Design scheme of work is designed with five strands that run throughout. These are:
● Generating ideas
● Using sketchbooks
● Making skills, including formal elements (line, shape, tone, texture, pattern, colour)
● Knowledge of artists (Clarice Cliff, Archibaldo Giuseppe, Henri Matisse, Henri Rousseau, Banksy)
● Evaluating and analysing
Where possible, we find cross-curricular links to enhance our Art & Design units and carefully place these into our long term planning. Units of lessons are sequential, allowing children to build their skills and knowledge, applying them to a range of outcomes. The formal elements, a key part of the National Curriculum, are also woven throughout units. 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. Units in each year group are organised into four core areas:
● Drawing
● Painting and mixed-media
● Sculpture and 3D
● Craft and design
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 mixed year group and how these skills develop to ensure that attainment targets are securely met.
The units fully scaffold and support essential and age appropriate, sequenced learning, and have been adapted to form cross-curricular links with our topic based approach to learning. Creativity and independent outcomes are robustly embedded into each unit, supporting children 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 child and personal.
Lessons are always practical in nature and encourage experimental and exploratory learning with children using sketchbooks to document their ideas. Differentiated guidance is available for every lesson to ensure that lessons can be accessed and enjoyed by all children and opportunities to stretch pupils’ learning are available when required.
Our Art & Design scheme of learning also supports teachers who may lack confidence in their own artistic abilities. Pupil videos created by subject specialists help children to see art techniques modelled by experts, to ensure the delivery of Art is of the highest quality. Each unit of lessons includes multiple teacher videos to develop subject knowledge and support ongoing CPD.
We seek opportunities to enrich our Art & Design curriculum:
- We offer an after-school Arts and Crafts Club.
- Educational Visits, for example: Gladstone Pottery Museum; Lichfield Cathedral ‘Inspire’ Project; Art in RE – ‘Open Door Project’.
Impact
The Art & Design curriculum is designed in such a way that children are involved in evaluation, dialogue and decision making about the quality of their outcomes and the improvements they need to make. By taking part in our 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 and have a growing understanding of how to improve.
The impact of our scheme can be constantly monitored through both formative and summative assessment opportunities. Each lesson includes guidance to support teachers in assessing pupils against the learning objectives.
The expected impact of following the Art and Design scheme of work is that children will:
- Produce creative work, exploring and recording their ideas and experiences.
- Are 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.
- Leave our school equipped with a range of techniques and the confidence and creativity to form a strong foundation for their Art and Design learning at Middle School and beyond.