Intent

At St William of York Catholic Primary School, we value the role of Art and Design in creating a broad and balanced curriculum for all pupils. We intend to deliver an Art and Design curriculum which results in the acquisition of the knowledge, skills and understanding set out in the National Curriculum.  We aim to engage, inspire, and challenge all pupils in Art and Design.  We believe that Art and Design should provide pupils with opportunities to express their creativity, imagination, and individuality through exploring and evaluating different creative ideas. Art and Design should provide opportunities for pupils to become independent, reflective learners through evaluating their own and other’s work and finding ways to improve.  By exploring lots of challenging media, art can help develop our children's resilience and determination to achieve well.

As the pupils progress, we build up thinking skills with which we can think critically about art and how art can reflect our country, culture, diversity and history.  We believe that children should be provided with opportunities to discover great artists that enable them to explore their own and other’s cultural heritages.  All pupils will produce creative work and become increasingly proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture, and other artistic techniques. We can evaluate and analyse creative works and build up a language of art.  We explore the work of great artists, crafts people and designers and form opinions and discuss their work critically.  By developing their own thoughts, ideas, and eyes, we aim to help our children engage in the visual beauty of the world around them and recognise their own abilities to contribute to their environment too.

Implementation

The Art and Design curriculum at St William of York Catholic Primary School has been designed to cover all the skills set out in the National Curriculum. Art and Design is taught termly using the scheme of work ‘Kapow’.  Alongside the coordinator class teachers have carefully picked topics that cover the National Curriculum, suit the needs of their class and link to class topics, where possible, to ensure a well-structured approach to this creative subject.  Art and Design at St William of York is currently taught as a stand- alone topic across KS1 & KS2 and an allocated art week during each half term is taught. Within the EYFS art is imbedded into continuous provision and children have access daily.  A stand-alone art lesson is also taught once a week in Reception.  Units of lessons are sequential; allowing children to build their skills and knowledge, applying them to a range of outcomes.  The formal elements, a key part to the national curriculum, are also woven throughout the units.  Key skills are repeated with increasing complexity, in a spiral curriculum model.  This allows pupils to revise and build on their previous learning.  At St William of York Primary School, pupils have their own sketchbook to practise new techniques and refine their artistic skills and document their learning and achievement. Their artwork will be evidenced in sketch books and through displays around the school.   We will also celebrate our artwork on our website via photographs and videos.  At St William of York Primary School, it is our aim to provide equal opportunities.  Our aim is for all pupils to participate in Art and Design lessons. Work is differentiated or adapted, and teachers make informed decisions based on the learning requirements of each individual and extra support is put in place for children with SEN where necessary.  Teaching staff will gauge the needs of each pupil through observation and assessment of their learning styles and requirements to identify how our curriculum can enhance each pupils’ learning and help them to excel.

Impact

Assessment of Art and Design at St William of York Catholic Primary considers all aspects of pupils’ learning and achievement.  This includes, not only what pupils make, but also how they make it, what skills they acquire, what they know about the tools and materials they use and their knowledge of art and design.  The 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. Teachers assess progress in Art and Design through a variety of means and use different kinds of evidence. To further assess knowledge, teachers also listen to pupils talking about art and design during class and group discussions. The evidence for assessment occurs in different forms and at different times through the course of a unit of work and so assessment too is spread out over time. These assessments are used over time to build a profile of achievement across all of the objectives. Individual teachers are responsible for monitoring and assessing children’s progress. Individual teachers are expected to provide evidence of progress through sketch books. Teachers review progress each term and identify and plan for next steps in learning. Children will be assessed against the learning objectives related to the subject aims of the National Curriculum for their Key Stage. Teacher assessments will be recorded using the Kapow’s assessment spreadsheet system each term

Knowledge Organisers

Please click on the links below to download