Intent, Implementation and Impact
Intent
At Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Primary, we want to engage and inspire children, aiming to encourage a lifelong love of art, design and creativity. We believe art is a vital part of the curriculum and we strive to deliver a high-quality, broad and balanced art syllabus allowing pupils to feel confident to experiment, create and refine their skills to think of themselves as real-life artists.
Our children will be taught Art and Design in a way that ensures progression of skills and techniques that follows a sequence to build on previous learning. They will gain experience and skills of a wide range of formal elements of art in a way that will enhance their learning opportunities, enabling them to use art and design across a range of subjects to be creative and solve problems.
Pupils at Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Primary, will have opportunities to work collaboratively to develop their research skills, develop communication and critical thinking skills. They will learn to appreciate various artists, art styles, art movements and cultural heritages alongside formal elements of art and techniques. Children will know why they are doing things, not just how, and will appreciate the value of art in their futures and in the world around them.
Implementation
At our school, the Art and design curriculum uses the Kapow scheme of work as a basis for art planning. The programme ensures full coverage of the National Curriculum following the identified programmes of study. The clear progression within the scheme ensures that children are continually building on their prior learning as they systematically develop their understanding of key concepts and second order concepts, leading children towards carefully identified end points. These skills and end points are clearly outlined in our progressive skills document.
The Kapow scheme of work is categorised into 5 areas: Making Skills, Generating Ideas, Formal Elements, Knowledge of Artists and Evaluating based on the National Curriculum strands: Materials, Techniques, Artists and Expression and Imagination.
The Art curriculum follows a 2-year cycle which builds upon progressive skills. Each unit of work is blocked to allow children to immerse themselves in developing their knowledge and skills, gaining time to learn, evaluate, stimulate creativity, experiment, create, evaluate and reflect. All children from Years 1 – 6 use a sketchbook throughout each unit, annotating work as they move up through the school. A range of local, national and international artists and designers are explored to enhance learning encompassing famous to less-known artists. Formal elements of art are taught first in the autumn term, followed by Art and design skills in the spring term before applying learnt skills in each summer terms unit. Year 6 differs slightly.
The well-structured lessons that follow our teaching sequence embed the progressive skills through the cyclical curriculum, with the aim to have mastery of a range of art and design techniques including drawing, painting and sculpture, with a range of materials by the end of Primary school.
The EYFS art curriculum does not follow the Kapow scheme of work but has been devised to give children the necessary skills and knowledge as the building blocks to grow from when they begin their Primary art career. Child initiated and adult guided activities are planned for and resourced each week. Skills are planned through the objectives within the EYFS Statutory Framework and ensure progression into Key Stage 1.
Progressive skills have been identified in the EYFS curriculum and included in each of the following areas: knowledge of artists and designers, exploring and developing ideas, evaluating their own work, making skills (drawing, painting, craft, design, materials and techniques), knowing and applying formal elements of form, line, pattern, shape, texture and tone. In addition, children in EYFS work progressively towards curriculum goals each term.
There are also artistic opportunities throughout the school year through extra-curricular Art clubs, Art weeks, outside agency Art projects and exhibitions, and school displays to develop skills and encourage a love of art and creativity.
Impact
The impact of the Art curriculum will be seen through regularly reviewing and scrutinizing pupil sketchbooks, final pieces of work and through pupil voice. During art sessions pupils have opportunities to critically evaluate artists and peers, being encouraged to use appropriate and progressive art vocabulary, as they will also begin to evaluate and reflect on their own skills and learning, being able to talk confidently about their work and sharing their work with others. The Art and Design curriculum will contribute to children’s personal development in creativity, independence, judgement and self-reflection.
Alongside the Kapow scheme of work, there are also opportunities throughout the school year to view the impact of not only the progressive skills learnt but a love of creativity and art through extra-curricular Art clubs, Art weeks, outside agency Art projects and exhibitions, and school displays.
Formal assessment by the class teacher and moderation of assessment by staff, working collaboratively will take place each term during a staff meeting, to ensure validity of teacher assessment judgements. Data analysis, monitoring of teaching and tracking pupil’s attainment will inform staff of the impact of the art curriculum across school.
The successful approach to the teaching of Art will result in an engaging, high-quality education that allows pupils to understand and appreciate the value of Art and Design in the context of their personal wellbeing as well as encouraging them to explore Art further as they leave primary school and consider the creative and cultural industries and their many career opportunities.
By the end of the primary school education pupils will: