Intent

In order to achieve a high standard of art education, at Baston CE Primary School, we have designed a spiral curriculum along the National Curriculum themes of: generating ideas; using sketchbooks; making skills; knowledge of artists; and evaluating and analysing. We use the schemes of work provided by Kapow to support the teaching of this subject alongside our Teaching and Learning Policy. 

 Our Art curriculum aims to inspire our pupils and develop their confidence to experiment and invent their own works of art. The scheme of work 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 Art and Design curriculum supports pupils to meet the national curriculum attainment targets and the EYFS framework.

We aim for the children in our school to develop a love of art and gain a sense of ownership over the works in which they create.

This will be achieved by the teaching of skills in four core areas: drawing; painting and mixed-media; sculpture and 3D; and craft and design.

Implementation

The Kapow Art and 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
• Evaluating and analysing

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

The units in our Art and design curriculum fully scaffold and support age-appropriate sequenced learning. Creativity and independent outcomes are robustly embedded into each unit, supporting the 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 pupils. Lessons are always practical in nature and encourage experimental and exploratory learning with pupils using sketchbooks to document their ideas. 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. Knowledge organisers for each unit support pupils by providing a highly visual record of the key knowledge and techniques learned, encouraging recall of skills processes, key facts and vocabulary.

Impact

The 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 design making process is, 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. The impact of this 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. At the end of each term, we assess the children against a number of statements. These statements are taken from the Kapow Art and Design scheme which in turn bases its assessment statements on the National Curriculum and EYFS Framework. The children are compared against the criteria to meet the expected standard, if they meet these criteria then they are compared against those for greater depth (unless the child is in EYFS). If they do not meet the required standard for expected, then they will be placed at working towards. Each unit of work in Art and Design teaches and assesses different skills, therefore a child may be expected in one term’s unit and working towards in the following unit. Therefore, an average is taken for end of year assessments. Impact is monitored by the Art and Design Lead, SLT and the governing body through termly, whole-school progress checks and subject scrutiny. Throughout the year, book scrutinies and pupil voice will also take part.