Art & Design

Intent

At Walton-on-Trent Primary School, Art and Design is fully inclusive to every child. Art and Design teaching at Walton-on-Trent Primary School instils an appreciation and enjoyment of the visual arts. This stimulates imagination and creativity; involving children in a range of visual, tactile, and sensory experiences, which enable them to communicate what they see, think and feel through the use of the elements of colour, texture, form and pattern. Art and Design promotes careful observation and an appreciation of the world around us. 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 aims are to:

• Fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for Art and Design, provide a broad and balanced curriculum.
• Ensure the progressive development of knowledge and skills.
• Enable children to observe and record from first-hand experience and imagination.
• Develop the children’s competence in controlling materials and tools,
• Acquire knowledge and become proficient in various art and design techniques and processes.
• Begin to develop an awareness of the visual and tactile elements including; colour, pattern and texture, line and tone, shape, form and space, foster enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts and develop a knowledge of significant artists, craftspeople and designers.
• Increase critical awareness of the roles and purposes of art and design in different times and cultures.
• Analyse works using the language of art and design and develop a cross-curricular approach to the use of art and design in all subjects.
• Sketchbooks are used in Key Stage 1 and 2 to develop ideas, and experiment. They should be individual and creative. Children should be encouraged to look back through their sketchbooks and develop their ideas as well as technical skills.
• Children using art to express themselves and gain an interest outside of school.
• All children no matter their needs will have access to the Art and Design curriculum, including SEND, and EYFS.

Implementation

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in Art and Design, we implement a curriculum that is progressive, engaging, broad and balanced throughout the whole school, including a variety of teaching approaches. At Walton-on-Trent, we ensure that art and design is given the same importance as the core subjects, as we feel this is important in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences.

The Art and Design curriculum at Walton-on-Trent Primary School is based upon the 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England, which provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills and taught in each Key Stage. Teachers plan lessons for their class using our progression of knowledge and skills document alongside the topic guidance on Curriculum Maestro, however this is not limited teachers are free to plan alongside this document. Teachers can use this document to plan their art and design lessons suitable to their class’s interests, topic and outcomes. The progression document ensures the curriculum is covered and the skills and knowledge taught is progressive from year group to year group. The teachers use creative and cross-curricular approaches as well as teaching the subjects independently. As we have mixed classes, we provide suitable learning.

We give children the opportunity to work by themselves and in collaboration with others, on projects in two and three dimensions, and at different scales. We ensure that children are given the opportunities to investigate, explore and develop ideas as well as evaluate, revisit and improve their work. Children also have the opportunity to use a wide range of materials and resources, including computer technology.

Planning and evaluation of work take place in weekly plans, medium and long-term plans. The Art subject leader will complete a book scrutiny to ensure curriculum coverage is consistent.  People with an interest in or expertise in a particular topic or area of Art and Design and/or may be invited into school to work with the children. Such visitors may include parents, grandparents, other family members, neighbours, and the local community. School trips are also a part of the curriculum delivery to enable children to have a wider experience of a topic.

Impact

Within Art and Design, we strive to create a supportive and collaborative ethos for learning by providing investigative and skills-based learning opportunities. Emphasis is placed on investigative learning opportunities to help children gain a coherent knowledge of understanding of each unit of work covered throughout the school. Our Art and Design curriculum is high quality and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills and discreet vocabulary progression.