Art
Intent
At St Margaret's Primary School, we recognise and value the importance of Art and Design as a subject that stimulates creativity, imagination and problem solving. We believe it is an important part of a broad and balanced curriculum as it provides children with the opportunities to develop skills and express their individuality.
Our intentions align with the National Curriculum for the Arts and are:
- For children to produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences.
- To support children in becoming proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques.
- To develop skills that allow children to evaluate and analyse work using appropriate language.
- To gain knowledge about great artists, craft-makers and designers and the impact of their art forms.
Implementation
We teach Art and Design with five core strands that run throughout. These are:
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Generating ideas
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Using sketchbooks
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Making skills, including formal elements (line, shape, tone, texture, pattern, colour)
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Knowledge of artists
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Evaluating and analysing
The units of lessons taught 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 these 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:
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Drawing
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Painting and mixed-media
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Sculpture and 3D
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Craft and design
This will be achieved by:
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Regularly teaching art. There will be an art topic at least once a term and ensure children have the opportunities given to master artistic techniques and skills as outlined above. Children will come across these at least once in each phase of the school (e.g. across Year 1 and 2). They will then revisit these skills as they progress through their time at our school to build on their previous learning. Teaching, as a result, is predominantly through a skill-based curriculum.
- Teaching the key skills of drawing and painting in every year group.
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Where possible, we link art closely to our topics to ensure relevance and context.
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We fully scaffold and support essential and age appropriate, sequenced learning, and are flexible with our teaching so that it can support cross-curricular links
- Every child will have the opportunity to have art exhibited in a local art gallery The Grange during their time here.
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Introducing the children to artists and art movements directly linked to the skills and topics they are covering.
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Creativity and independent outcomes are robustly embedded, supporting students 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 pupil and personal.
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Lessons are practical in nature and encourage experimental and exploratory learning with pupils using sketchbooks to document their ideas. Utilising a sketchbook approach, allows the children feel safe to experiment and take risks when being creative.
- Encouraging children to share and evaluate their art and design work with peers and adults.
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Celebrating effort, progress and achievement in art through displays around the school as well as additional enrichment activities (e.g. The Grange Art Gallery, Same Sky Children’s Parade, Snail Trail/Shaun the Sheep sculptures for Macmillan).
Impact
By the time children leave our school, they should have produced creative work, exploring and recording their ideas and experiences that they are proud of. They will be proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques. Children will feel confident with evaluating and analysing creative works using subject-specific language. They will have encountered a broad range of great artists and crafts people and have an understanding of the historical and cultural development of their art. We want our children to place value on the journey and processes that they take, not just the finished outcomes and enjoy art as a means of self-expression.
