Art and Design
At Hugh Gaitskell Primary School, our intention is that our curriculum extends opportunities, raises aspirations, and opens children’s eyes to the world beyond their immediate environment; doors are opened to infinite possibilities. We believe that high-quality Art lessons will inspire children to think innovatively and develop creative procedural understanding and in turn, they will be empowered to think positively believing themselves strong and powerful when using their imagination.
Intent
Stimulating the imagination and encouraging exploration, our Art curriculum is set to provide children with opportunities to develop their skills using a range of media and materials. Children learn the skills of drawing, painting, printing, collage, textiles, 3D work and digital art and are given the opportunity to explore and evaluate different creative ideas. In Art, children are expected to be reflective and evaluate their work, thinking about how they can make changes and keep improving. This should be meaningful and continuous throughout the process, with evidence of age-related verbal and written reflection. Both peer and self-evaluation will develop a child’s inner creativity. Children are encouraged to take risks and experiment and then reflect on why some ideas and techniques are successful or not for a particular project. Risk-taking and experimentation enables a strong sense of the child’s personality and identity to develop. Children will be introduced to a range of cultural works and develop knowledge of the styles and vocabulary used by famous international artists. The skills they acquire are applied to their cross-curricular topics, allowing children to use their art skills to reflect on and explore topics in greater depth; for example, by sketching historical artefacts in detail, researching geographical locations to support their work on landscape painting or using art as a medium to express emotion and thought to enhance their personal, social and emotional development. Many areas of art link with mathematical ideas of shape and space; for example when printing repeating patterns and designs and thinking about 3D shapes to support structures. It is paramount that artwork be purposeful; be this as a means of expression or to explore the styles of other artists that inspire our own work. Pupils should be made clear what the intended outcomes are and have the means to measure their own work against this. Through a progressive building up of skills their memory of ‘how to’ is impacted.
Implementation
At Hugh Gaitskell Primary School as part of the planning process, teachers attend to the objectives outlined for each year group in line with the National Curriculum, which offers a cycle of lessons, attending to progression and depth. The objectives to be covered are listed at the front of the children’s sketchbook and will be monitored by the teacher. Their skill progression will be evidenced in their books, dated and assigned a WALT so that the objectives can also be ticked off. A means to display and celebrate the pupils’ artwork in their class is a requirement, with outstanding work collected by the art leader to display showing progression through year groups. Children have access within a lesson to key knowledge, language and meanings in order to understand and readily apply to their work. Good examples of lots of different types of art are offered for discussion within the lesson, with children examining how the skill is developed. The teacher demonstrates a skill and asks pupils to try out initially on scrap paper until a margin of dexterity is achieved. When confidence is shown, a child works on quality paper for their sketchbook. Work is always considered ongoing, rather than a finished product, with skill increasing over time as one medium may be overlayed by another (ie sketching, shading, adding colour and finishing). Finished products are evaluated with feedback considered on how they may progress and comments added to their book noting the next steps. The children are exposed to art that they may not be able to access otherwise, for example, whilst learning about the Victorians children should be offered a sight of the most influential artists of the age. This will be enhanced by educational visits and visitors into school. Our author Jason Beresford outlined how he worked closely with his illustrator to help visualise his character, this, in turn, offered portraits which enhanced the writer’s conception. Through this subject, children will develop an understanding of the enterprise. As with visits from DePuy where visitors worked in unison with children to offer a greater understanding of their enterprise, artwork helped assist and became integral to the final presentations. The implementation allows children to become more aware of the enterprise and have a real purpose for the artwork they create. In addition, British Values and PSHE are installed through visual representations and their subsequent use in inspiring artwork.
Impact
Our Art Curriculum is planned to demonstrate progression. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods: A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes; A celebration of learning for each term which demonstrates progression across the school; Pupil discussions about their learning; which includes a discussion of their thoughts, ideas, processing and evaluations of work. This is further supported by a gallery of children’s work for children to observe, be inspired by and recognise their next step.