What Is Our Vision?
Our Art curriculum aims to inspire children, help them to see the beauty in the world around them and to help them see that they all have the capacity to create wonderful works of art.
Our children will be encouraged to think innovatively and experiment with different forms of media and materials. They learn the skills of drawing, painting, printing, collage, textiles, 3D work and digital art and are supported in exploring and evaluating different creative ideas.
Over their time at Sacred Heart we aim to introduce our children to a range of works by famous artists, helping them to develop knowledge of different styles and the technical vocabulary required to talk about their work.
We encourage our children to use this knowledge and the skills they develop to explore their own individual creativity, either expressing themselves using the styles explored or developing their own styles based on their learning. In Art, children are encouraged to take risks and experiment and then reflect and evaluate their work, thinking about how they can make changes and keep improving.
Progression of appropriate subject knowledge, skills and understanding in exploring and investigating, creating and evaluating artwork, as set out in the National Curriculum, will be clear through the school so that children can reach and exceed their potential and make use of art effectively in their everyday lives.
Our Approach
We use units from the Kapow programme to facilitate our teaching of Art. This programme is designed for both specialist and non-specialist and enables the delivery of high quality, sequenced lessons which build on the children's knowledge as they progress through school. We alternate our Art curriculum each half term with Design Technology, ensuring sufficent time can be dedicated to the development of skills and techniques the childrne will use in their projects. Art may also feature in other subjects through cross curricula links, however this is where specific teaching will take place.
At the start of each unit children will be introduced to a different artist, their works, inspirations and specific styles. As with other areas children will have a knowledge organiser which sets out key information about the artists, their style and any subject-specific vocabulary which has been identified.
Over the year each class will study three different strands of Art & Design: Art & Design skills, Formal Elements of Art & Mixed Media. This is designed to give children an experience of a broad range of artists, styles & techniques in addition to children building on their previous learning.
Children will use sketchbooks within this unit where they will have freedom to explore and experiment with the different skills taught in our focused sessions and practise applying them in a range of ways. This gives the children the opportunity to evaluate their use of skills and decide what they like, what they don't and what they want to incorporate into their final piece.
Curriculum Impact
The desired impact of our Art and Design curriculum is to encourage pupils to develop their creativity and imagination, to explore their ideas and communicate them using a variety of media and to be confident enough to express their creativity in their own unique way.
Our curriculum will engage, inspire and challenge pupils. They will gain the knowledge, skills and confidence to feel free to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design. Children will be able to speak about a range of artists and artistic movements using technical vocabulary. They will also be able to make links between artists and artistic movements.
We will measure the impact of art through:
- Teacher assessment judgements
- Pupil voice
- Learning walks
- Lesson observations
- Book Scrutinies
In our art lessons some of the things you will see are:
- Children creating and discussing ideas and expressing their own thoughts, feelings and ideas.
- Children developing specific artistic skills and making, creating and exploring with different mediums.
- Children learning to use artistic skills of texture, colour, tone, line and shape.
- Children discussing artists and artistic movements using technical language to make reference to specific skills being used.
- Children evaluating their own and other artists work using technical language.