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Dogsthorpe Academy

Art curriculum alive

Aims 

The national curriculum for art and design aims to ensure that all pupils:

  1.  Produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences
  2.  Become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques
  3.  Evaluate and analyse creative works using the language of art, craft and design
  4.  Know about great artists, craft makers and designers, and understand the historical and cultural development of their art forms.

 

Implementation

The teaching and implementation of the Art and Design Curriculum at Dogsthorpe Academy is based on the National Curriculum and has links to the topics to ensure a well-structured approach to this creative subject.  This will be taught using the Kapow Primary Art and Design scheme. 

The children are taught an Art unit of work once during every long term (3 times a year). All classes will have a scheduled Art and Design lesson each week during the term in which art is taught. 

Areas covered are based on the topics, such as prehistoric art in Year 3 to link with Through the Ages, Sculpture in Year 4 to link with the topic Blue Abyss, Architecture in Year 5 to link with Ground-breaking Greeks and exploring art with a message in Year 6 to link with Maafa. 

More detail can be found in our Long-Term Plan.

This scheme will ensure progression of skills and covers all aspects of the Art and Design curriculum.

Kapow Art Scheme of work is designed with five stands that run throughout.

These are:

  • Making skills
  • Formal elements (line, shape, tone, texture, pattern, colour)
  • Knowledge of artists
  • Evaluating

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:

  1.  To create sketch books to record their observations and use them to review and revisit ideas
  2.  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]
  3.  About great artists, architects and designers in history.

Our curriculum overview shows which of the units cover the National curriculum attainment targets as well as each of the strands. See the curriculum overview for more detail. 

Our progression of Skills shows the skills that are taught within each year group and how these skills develop to ensure that attainment targets are securely met by the end of each year.  See the progression of skills document for more detail.   

This scheme allows us to develop pupil’s knowledge and understanding of key Artists and art movements through the ‘Every picture tells a story’ units and links to artists through practical work.  The units fully scaffold and support essential and age-appropriate sequenced learning with our curriculum. Creativity and independent outcomes are robustly embedded into our units, supporting students in learning how to make their own creative choices and decisions, so that their art outcomes, whilst still being knowledge-rich, are unique to the pupil and personal.

The lessons are always practical in nature and encourage experimental and exploratory learning with Key Stage 2 pupils using sketchbooks to document their ideas. There is differentiated guidance available for every lesson to ensure that pupils are supported in their learning.

Teachers will constantly monitor though both formative and summative assessment opportunities.  At the end of each lesson teachers will be able to assess whether a child is working below, at or exceeding the expected standard.

 

Curriculum impact

Our children enjoy and value Art and Design and know why they are doing things, not just how. Children will understand and appreciate the value of Art and Design in the context of their personal wellbeing and the creative and cultural industries and their many career opportunities.

 Our Curriculum is designed in such a way that children are involved in the evaluation, dialogue and decision-making about the quality of their outcomes and the improvements they need to make. By taking part in regular discussions and decision-making processes, children will not only know facts and key information about art, but they will be able to talk confidently about their own learning journey, have higher meta-cognitive skills and have a growing understanding of how to improve.

Progress in Art and Design is demonstrated through regularly reviewing and scrutinising children’s work, in accordance with our Art and Design assessment policy to ensure that progression of skills is taking place. Namely, through:

  • Looking at pupils’ work, especially over time as they gain skills and knowledge
  • Observing how they perform in lessons
  • Talking to them about what they know

The Art and Design curriculum will contribute to children’s personal development in creativity, independence, judgement and self-reflection. This would be seen in them being able to talk confidently about their work, and sharing their work with others. Progress will be shown through outcomes and through the important record of the process leading to them.

After leaving primary school children should be equipped with a range of techniques and the confidence and creativity to form a strong foundation of their Art and design learning at Key Stage 3 and beyond. 

The expected impact is that children will

  1. Produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences
  2.  Be proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques
  3.  Evaluate and analyse creative works using subject-specific language.
  4.  Know about great artists and the historical and cultural development of their art.
  5. Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the National curriculum for Art and design.