St John's Primary School

ART AND DESIGN at St John’s

Intent

1. Self – We want our pupils to have the confidence to work creatively and imaginatively to communicate using a range of art materials and processes.
2. Others – We want our pupils to learn about and appreciate artists within our culture and local community.
3. Wider world – We want our children to have skills and knowledge to adapt to the ever-changing world considering historical and modern art.

Art and design stimulates creativity and imagination. It provides visual, tactile and sensory experiences and a special way of understanding and responding to the world. It enables pupils to communicate what they see, feel and think through the use of colour, texture, form and pattern through different materials and processes. Pupils become involved in shaping their environments through art and design activities. It contributes to their emotional and intellectual development and extends their skills of planning, designing and manipulation. They learn to make informed judgements and aesthetic and practical decisions. They explore ideas and meanings through the work of artists and designers. Through learning about the roles and functions of art, they can explore the impact it has had on contemporary life and that of different times and cultures. The appreciation and enjoyment of the visual arts enriches all our lives.

The aims of art and design are:

• to enable pupils to record from first-hand experience using their own visual environment, and from imagination, and to select their own ideas to use in their work;
• to develop creativity, individual expression, imagination, visual vocabulary and understanding through a range of complex activities;
• to improve the pupils’ ability to control materials, tools and techniques;
• to increase their critical awareness of the roles and purposes of art and design in different times and cultures and to respond thoughtfully to these;
• to develop increasing confidence in the use of visual and tactile elements and materials;
• to foster an enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts and a knowledge of artists, craftspeople and designers;
• to make informed evaluations of their own and others’ work.

Implementation

The school uses a variety of teaching and learning styles in art and design lessons. Our principal aim is to develop the pupils’ knowledge, skills, creative expression, and understanding in art and design. We ensure that the act of investigating and making something includes exploring and developing ideas, and evaluating and developing work. We do this best through a mixture of whole-class teaching and individual/group activities. Teachers draw attention to good examples of individual performance as models for the other pupils. They encourage pupils to evaluate their own ideas and methods, and the work of others, and say what they think and feel about them. We give pupils the opportunity within lessons to work on their own and collaborate with others, on projects in two and three dimensions and on different scales. Pupils also have the opportunity to use a wide range of materials and resources, including ipads and chrome books.

We recognise the fact that we have pupils of differing ability in all our classes, and so we provide suitable learning opportunities for all pupils by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this through a range of strategies:

• setting common tasks that are open-ended and can have a variety of responses;
• setting tasks of increasing difficulty where not all pupils complete all tasks;
• grouping pupils by ability and setting different tasks for each group;
• providing a range of challenges with different resources;
• using additional adults to support the work of individual pupils or small groups.

ART AND DESIGN CURRICULUM PLANNING

At St. John’s School we have devised our own scheme of work relating to the National Curriculum programmes of study as the basis for our curriculum planning. We have developed the scheme to maintain and extend the high standards of Art and Design already evident in our school.  It takes into account the aspect of mixed aged classes, progression and our own local environment. Our local environment is often used as the starting point for aspects of our work.

We carry out the curriculum planning in art and design in three phases: long-term, medium-term and short-term. Our long-term plan maps out the areas covered in each term during the key stage; our art and design subject leader works this out in conjunction with teaching colleagues in each class.

  The topics are:

• Investigating and exploring (this is integrated throughout the year)
• Drawing
• Painting (including Printing)
• 3D/Sculpture

 Our medium-term plans are taken from the Art and Design scheme of work and give details of the units of work for each of the topics. The plans define what we will teach, what resources will be needed and ensure an appropriate balance and distribution of work across each term.

 We plan the activities in art and design so that they build upon the prior learning of the pupils. While we give pupils of all abilities opportunity to develop their skills, knowledge and understanding, we also build planned progression into the scheme of work, so that there is an increasing challenge for the pupils as they move up through the school.