Art and Design at St Mary's
Curriculum Intent
At St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, we value Art and Design as an important part of the children’s entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum. Art and Design provides the children with the opportunities to develop and extend skills, and to express their individual interests, thoughts and ideas.
Art, craft and design embody some of the highest forms of human creativity. A high-quality art and design education should engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design. As pupils progress, they should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of art and design. They should also know how art and design both reflect and shape our history, and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our nation.
Following the National Curriculum for art and design, we aim to ensure that all pupils:
- Produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences.
- Become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques.
- Evaluate and analyse creative works using the language of art, craft and design.
- Know about great artists, craft makers and designers, and understand the historical and cultural development of their art forms.
Implementation
During the summer term, Art and Design is our focus and the key curriculum driver for our ‘create’ term. We ensure that Art and Design is given the same importance as other core curriculum subjects. We follow a whole school theme of ‘Magical Worlds’, and use this as an engaging stimulus, alongside the texts studied in English lessons, for the Art and Design focus.
At the start of the topic, teachers present their class with an enquiry question such as, 'What is the true meaning of happiness?' that is linked and explored through the English text. The class set about exploring their project through well thought out concepts and planning of balanced projects focused on both knowledge and skills. Each class explores the work of famous local, national or international artists to enhance the children’s learning as well experiencing a wide range of different media.
The children develop their art and design skills progressively in the following areas:
- Exploring and developing ideas
- Evaluating and developing work
- Digital media
- Drawing
- Painting
- Printing
- Textiles
- 3D
- Collage
Impact
We want our children at St. Mary's to leave with a love of art. To appreciate different artists and their styles, to feel differently towards different pieces of art and to acknowledge why. We want children to be equipped with the skills of different media and feel empowered to produce pieces of art they are proud of.
Within art and design, we strive to create a supportive and collaborative ethos for learning by providing investigative and enquiry 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, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills, and subject specific vocabulary when forming the units of work. We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.
- Summative assessment of pupil discussions about their learning.
- Images and videos of the children’s practical learning.
- Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
- Moderation staff meetings where pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
- Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.
- Marking of written work in books.
Useful Documents
