Art & Design

Intent:

At Wadworth Primary School, our knowledge based curriculum is designed to build on children’s prior learning and experiences by fostering resilience, encouraging children’s thirst for new experiences and developing skills of enquiry. All children should have challenging, stimulating, creative and inspirational opportunities within Art and Design, sequenced following the school’s curriculum map building on prior skills, knowledge and vocabulary. Children should work independently and have the opportunity to collaborate with others. We intend to teach the children a balance of knowledge of art and the skills required, with individuality and creativeness flowing through everything they do. It enables children of all abilities to communicate what they see, feel and think through the use of colour, texture, form, pattern and different materials and processes. Children explore ideas and meanings through studying the work of artists and designers. Through learning about the roles and functions of art, they can explore the impact it has had on contemporary life and on different periods and cultures.

Our core values provide a platform on which we have built our curriculum offer at Wadworth Primary School. Our Art and Design curriculum is underpinned by our core values in the following ways:

• Persevering
  • To develop the ability to stick with something, to continue working, to try harder and to not give up.
  • To understand that the perseverance and attentiveness needed to complete an Art and Design project, leads to personal pride and gratification.
  • To know that it is fine to make mistakes, when participating in an art project, and to understand that mistakes are part of the process to reaching a high-quality outcome.
• Problem solving
  • To do their best work and then to push themselves beyond what they consider to be their best.
  • To develop a desire to achieve something.
  • To have the courage to express themselves artistically and to express their own opinions about art.
• Independence
  • To develop confident artists who are not afraid to ‘have a go’.
  • To develop artists who have the confidence to think independently.
• Being attentive (listening)
  • Acquire skills through listening to others.
  • Have a knowledge of other artists and the effect art has had on their lives.
• Communicating
  • Being able to talk about their learning and share their opinions about other pieces of art.
  • Being evaluative and being able to articulate what they have done and what they intend to do next.
• Collaborating
  • To respect the art work of others and work together to produce collaborative pieces.
  • To support others with a skill you are confident in already.

Beyond the Subject:

We would like our Art and Design curriculum to help children to:

• Think creatively in all aspects of life
• See the world from different perspectives
• Observe a look closely at the world around them

Implementation:

Art, craft and design embody some of the highest forms of human creativity. Our Art and Design curriculum has been designed to cover all of the skills set out in the EYFS and the National Curriculum. The National Curriculum states that ‘pupils should be taught to develop their techniques, including their control and their use of materials, with creativity, experimentation and an increasing awareness of different kinds of art, craft and design.’ Our Art and Design curriculum has been structured in a cross-curricular way, to effectively facilitate this and to provide maximum inspiration to our artists. Art projects will be linked to a class topic to enhance the pupils’ understanding of the key historical or geographical concepts covered. Where appropriate, Art and Design projects may also be linked to a community or cultural issue to engage our artists in the world around them.

The children develop their Art and Design skills progressively in the following ‘Big Ideas’ areas:

• Humankind – Human form
• Creativity – Creation, generation of ideas, evaluation
• Materials – Malleable materials, paper and fabric, paint, printing, pencil, ink, charcoal and pen
• Nature – Natural art
• Place and Space - Landscapes
• Comparison – Compare and contrast
• Significance – Significant people, artwork and movements

Impact:

We want our children at Wadworth Primary School to leave with a love of art. To appreciate different artists and their styles, to feel differently towards different pieces of art and to acknowledge why. We want children to be equipped with the skills of different media and feel empowered to produce pieces of art they are proud of.

Due to the nature of this curriculum area, Art and Design monitoring takes various forms. A key component of this is pupil voice. School leaders use pupil voice as an effective tool to ascertain the pupils’ ability to express themselves through a range of different mediums. Art work monitoring throughout all year groups also takes place during the year to compliment this, allowing leaders to ensure our artists have the opportunity to develop their skills fully and showcase their talents. Examples of our artists’ work is exhibited throughout the school, both on classroom and communal displays.