Rationale
At Airy Hill, we believe that the study of art and design enables pupils to have the opportunity to express themselves and begin to understand their strengths in a creative way. Pupils at Airy Hill are encouraged and supported to research and practice key art skills in order to use these to produce a well thought out final piece of art at the end of each unit. Using their art and design skills, means children can develop an understanding of their creative and expressive ways of working – something they may not even know they have until they start experimenting and using the key skills they are being taught.
Aims
At Airy Hill Primary School, we have a bespoke art curriculum. In lessons, teachers use high quality planning objectives and use their skills to teach the necessary skills needed to make pupils competent with art. The skills taught in art are progressive from nursery to Year 6.
Key Concepts
We focus on the following big ideas during our art units:
- Knowledge of artists
- Generating ideas
- Making skills
- Formal elements
- Evaluation
Skills Progression
Our art curriculum takes children on their journey from Nursery to Year 6 with skills and knowledge that is progressive throughout the year groups.
Intent
At Airy Hill Primary School, we aim to provide children with art and design experiences which are creative, enjoyable, challenging and confidence-building, based on the big ideas of generating and developing ideas through knowledge of artists, making skills, looking at the formal elements of art work and evaluating their final pieces they produce.
The aims of the Art curriculum at Airy Hill Primary School are to enable pupils to:
- Be taught within the requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage and National Curriculum and beyond.
- Realise their full potential in an individual, creative and imaginative way and to value their own capacity for producing a range of art work.
- Be able to understand and communicate ideas and feelings through the language of art and design by researching and discussing the work of other artists.
- Develop aesthetic awareness and the ability to make informed critical judgements;
- Understand cultural diversity and appreciate different values and traditions.
- Gain enjoyment from participation in and appreciation of art and design within school, the local environment and the wider community.
Implementation
In EYFS, Expressive arts and design is one of the seven areas of the early years foundation stage and is used to develop a child’s imagination, creativity and their ability to use media and materials. Children do this in range of ways in the continuous provision including playing with colours, textures and design including having the opportunity to work with a range of media and materials such as crayons, paints, felt tips and more in the indoor and outdoor environments. All these approaches to expressive arts help children to represent and understand their own feelings and ideas. Their curiosities and interests are also developed through focussed intervention.
In KS1 and KS2 our art and design curriculum cover the National Curriculum and beyond, focussing on the progressively developing skills of generating and developing ideas, making, gaining knowledge and evaluating.
Our art and design curriculum is arranged so that the skills of drawing, painting, printing, textiles, sculpture, collage and digital art are taught progressively to every year group. Pupils learn about a range of artists and art forms – modern, traditional and from a range of cultures. One unit of art is delivered per term.
Each child produces a sketch book. Lessons focus on exploration and experimentation, skill and knowledge development, evaluation of the work of others as well as themselves, cultural contexts and imagination and creativity. Each teaching unit leads to a completed final piece of work; this may be individual or collaborative in a range of scales.
Children are able to creative risks, mistakes and mess in the safe environment of the classroom.
Moving forward, we have an artist booked to come in and work with the pupils across all year groups to produce some high-quality pieces of art to display in our corridors in school to showcase the work our amazingly talented and creative children can produce!
Impact
At Airy Hill, our pupils will be provided with a creative, rich and enjoyable experience of researching, skill building, creating and evaluating pieces of art that they have created. They will apply the skills they learn through each unit to produce a final piece of art work. The art lessons they have will provide them with the confidence to be creative and express themselves through their work.
Art gallery
