Intent
At Redhill Primary School, our Art and Design curriculum develops children’s imaginations and creativity and allows children to record their ideas and experiences. Children are given a wide range of opportunities to develop their skills in drawing, using colour, painting, sculpture, texture, form, printing and exploring patterns.
Children gain knowledge of different artists and designers and their styles of work and use this to inspire them when creating their own artwork.
Children are able to experiment with a broad range of tools, materials and techniques and compare them to develop their understanding further. Children are given opportunities to evaluate their own work as well as their peers and adapt their work.
The curriculum will enable the children to reach and exceed their potential at Redhill Primary School.
Implementation
At Redhill Primary School, we implement an Art and Design curriculum that ensures high standards of teaching and learning. Art and Design is taught in the Early Years through chosen focused themes which all areas of learning are linked to. Lessons are planned carefully to ensure key skills are learned and practised through adult-led and child-initiated activities. In Key Stages 1 and 2, the Kapow Art scheme is used.
From September 2024, Redhill began to follow the combined Art and Design and Design and Technology planning with some additional stand-alone lessons to ensure full coverage of the subjects as well as clear progression of all skills. Art and Design and Technology is alternated each half term throughout the year with the stand-alone lessons taught whenever best suited. This ensures high quality pieces of work are produced with a sufficient amount of time being given to each lesson.
Kapow is built around essential knowledge, understanding and key skills stated in the National Curriculum. Children are taught four key areas across the school year: Drawing; Painting and mixed-media; Sculpture and 3D; Craft and design. These are progressive across each year group.
Children are taught a sequence of lessons for each unit where they are given opportunities to: recap and recall; engage; learn and practise new skills; generate ideas; look at artists and their work; apply the skills and evaluate their own and others’ work. Each unit follows the same format and children produce pieces of work each lesson, leading up to producing a final piece of work at the end of the unit, collating all of their skills and knowledge together to showcase what they have been doing. Classical music is often played in the background of Art lessons throughout the school year to create a relaxing atmosphere and support with mindfulness.
Art is a very inclusive subject where all lessons are adapted for the needs of the child. Children working towards will achieve each lesson through scaffolding or additional resources and greater depth children are given the opportunities to be challenged.
Kapow supports the knowledge of both children and staff as CPD videos are provided to support with and develop subject knowledge. Art techniques are modelled by experts to enable the delivery of Art to be to the highest quality. This also provides ongoing CPD for staff as there are teacher videos as well as pupil videos.
Early Years Foundation Stage
Pupils explore and use a variety of media and materials through a combination of child-initiated and adult-directed activities. They have opportunities to learn through play, exploring and manipulating texture, colour, materials, media and patterns. Children are also given ample opportunities to develop their fine manipulative skills in order to grasp tools and drawing materials correctly.
Key Stages 1 and 2
Pupils are taught to use a range of materials and techniques creatively to design and make products showing their imaginations and experiences. Children learn about artists, designers and architects and use this knowledge to help inspire their own work in different forms such as: drawings, paintings, sculptures. For example, when children in Year 6 learn about how Dan Fenelon’s work reflects how he is inspired by Maya art, they use his style to create their own modern day art using symbols that represent themselves. In Key Stages 1 and 2, children use their sketchbooks to record ideas and practise skills such as shading, patterns etc. They can then revisit work and include this in other pieces or use it to improve their skills.
In order to help teach Art and Design to its best, subject leaders within local schools and other professionals from the Arts sector form a network called Arts Connect to have regular meetings and updates. During this time, professionals can share their ideas, experiences and support each other to provide a broad curriculum. Exciting activities are shared to enhance learning and guest speakers, workshops are promoted in order to help with the teaching of Art and Design.
Celebrating Art
As a whole school, in the Summer term of the last academic year, Redhill held our first Art Exhibition. Each class from Robins-Year 6 (making it inclusive across the school), chose a theme they were working on in their curriculum e.g. Year 3 chose Egyptians which was a theme they were learning about in History. The exhibition was set up in the hall into different areas for each year group. Different types of artwork were produced within each class and presented in the hall in a very creative way to showcase all the hard work from staff and children.
The community were also involved by bringing in their own artwork to share in the exhibition. Parents, governors, as well as the local community were all invited to experience the exhibition. The local news came to celebrate this very successful event and an article was published in the newspaper that week. We had a huge amount of positive feedback from all and a great turnout of visitors. Therefore, this is an event we will now be holding annually.
Artwork and the Arts is also celebrated across the school. As a school, we hold other events and extra-curricular activities e.g. knitting club, painting stones for our community garden (parents were also involved), sketching club etc. These are all hugely popular across the school.
Impact
The impact of our Art and Design curriculum can be seen not only in our children’s sketchbooks but also through events, clubs, extra-curricular activities, displays and the school environment. Children will have demonstrated a wide range of Art and Design techniques by the end of each academic year and progression of knowledge, skills and understanding will be seen across the school.
After the implementation of our Art curriculum, pupils will leave primary school with the knowledge of different aspects of art, a range of artists and their styles. Children will be equipped with a range of techniques and the confidence and creativity to form a strong foundation for their Art and Design learning at Key Stage 3 and beyond.
When children leave our school, they will:
- Produce creative work, exploring and recording their ideas and experiences.
- Be proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques.
- Evaluate and analyse creative works using subject-specific language.
- Know about great artists and the historical and cultural development of their art.
- Meet the end of Key Stage 2 expectations outlined in the National curriculum for Art and Design.