Art and Design
St Edward's - A caring Christian Community where children achieve their potential, are confident in themselves and their abilities and are set on a positive path for life.
Art is a place for children to learn to trust their ideas themselves and to explore what is possible.
Marryann P khoel
As a school, we believe that art is a vital and integral part of children’s education. It provides them with opportunities to develop a range of ways in which they can share and express their individual creativity, whilst learning about and making links with a wide spectrum of different types of art in our society. Art contributes to children’s personal development in creativity, independence, judgement and self-reflection. Moreover, it enables pupils to develop a natural sense of wonder and curiosity about the world around them and therefore links strongly to our school values. The focus is on developing proficiency in drawing, painting, understanding colour and shade and sculpture, with the overall aim of developing a rigorous understanding, critical
awareness and inspiration of art and design.
The art curriculum will develop children’s critical abilities and understanding of their own and others’ cultural heritages through studying a diverse range of male and female artists and designers throughout history.
Children will develop their understanding of the visual language of art with effective teaching and carefully thought out sequences of lessons and experiences. Understanding of the visual elements of art and design (line, tone, texture, colour, pattern, shape, 3D form) will be developed by providing an accessible and engaging curriculum which will enable children to reach their full potential.
Art Lessons
We teach a skills-based art curriculum, which allows children to express their creative imagination as well as providing them with opportunities to practise and develop mastery in the key processes of art: drawing, painting, printing, textiles and sculpture. This is supported through the studying of key artists and the development of a knowledge of their work.
Lessons are taught in blocks on a half termly basis using the Scheme Cornerstones. The relation between the topics and art depends on the topic being covered that half term as some Topics are more suited for Art lessons than others.
Skills are deliberately revisited and built upon so that there is clear progression across school.
Key stage 1
Pupils are taught:
- To use a range of materials creatively to design and make products
- To use drawing, painting and sculpture to develop and share their ideas, experiences and imagination
- To develop a wide range of art and design techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space
- About the work of a range of artists, craft makers and designers, describing the differences and similarities between different practices and disciplines, and making links to their own work.
Key stage 2
Pupils are 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.
Pupils are taught:
- To create sketch books to record their observations and use them to review and revisit ideas
- To improve their mastery of art and design techniques, including drawing, painting and sculpture with a range of materials [for example, pencil, charcoal, paint, clay.
- About great artists, architects and designers in history.
A Curriculum for Our Children
We have identified some core barriers that the children of our school face when they are accessing the curriculum, and we intend to deliver the Art curriculum with an approach that addresses these:
Resilience – we design challenging tasks in our Art curriculum, allowing children to experience failure and errors in a safe environment, scaffolded by the implementation of growth mindset training.
Confidence – Art is different to other lessons as it involves creativity and displaying that which some children struggle with or aim to perfection and when it doesn’t look like what is in their head can cause upset for the child in question.
A Curriculum for All Children
EYFS
We have a creative area and a playdough area where children can be creative.
They learn about specific artists and begin to express their own opinions about their likes and dislikes.
Children are given opportunities to experiment with different colours and materials to create their own artwork. Children feel proud of their work, and it is displayed in a prominent place so they can share their art with others.
We know that some children may struggle with confidence in art, so we do plenty of structured, whole class teaching in a non-threatening situation. They understand that there is no right or wrong in art and this builds resilience for later in school.