Implementation:

Across KS1 and KS2 learning progresses across the five strands identified (Generating Ideas, Sketchbooks, Making Skills, knowledge of Artists and Evaluating and Analysing) , within the Formal Elements of Art (colour, form, shape, line, pattern, texture and tone)  and within the four core areas of Drawing, Sculpture, Painting and Mixed Media and Craft and Design.

There are five strands that run throughout the curriculum that we believe are key to covering the National Curriculum. These are:  Generating Ideas; Using Sketchbooks; Making skills (Which includes the formal elements (line, shape, texture, pattern, colour); Knowledge of Artists; Evaluating and Analysing

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 of the National Curriculum, are also woven throughout all units. Key skills are revisited again and again with increasing complexity in a spiral curriculum model. This allows pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Units in each year group are organised into four core areas:

Drawing: This explores mark-making in all its forms and involves experimenting with line, tone and texture to express ideas using a wide range of materials. Within drawing sketchbooks are used to record observations and plan as drawings. Pupils also understand how artists develop their ideas using drawings

Painting and Mixed Media: This involves developing  painting skills such as colour mixing, painting on a range of surfaces and with differing tools.

Sculpture and 3D: Focuses on investigating ways to express ideas across three dimensions; on constructing, modelling shapes and joining of a variety of materials; and on developing drawn ideas into sculpture.

Craft and Design: This is about designing and making art for different purpose, considering how this works in creative industries; making decisions about techniques to use and learning new techniques; developing imaginative response to design briefs

These units cover the key types of knowledge we believe needs to be in our Art curriculum and this is supported by the Ofsted research review series: Art and design, which states that ‘pupils make progress in the art curriculum when they build practical, theoretical and disciplinary knowledge and learn the connections between them.’

Order and Sequencing: Within the curriculum, choices are deliberately made to achieve the best outcomes and most effective learning. Within phases (1/2; 3/4; 5/6) the units can be taught in any order as they contain the knowledge and skills needed in a manner that can be repeated for a mixed age curriculum, This allows revisiting for the older pupils in a cycle as well as knowledge to build on for those earlier in the cycle.

Choices have been made in the placement of the units within phases:

Pupils rarely engage with Sculpture and 3D outside of school and so these units take place every year in each cycle, because learning is newer and opportunity less so the need for  deliberate spaced repetition is increased. This is a similar process within Craft and Design. However,  the placement of other units within the phase is such that they correspond and can link to key learning elsewhere in the curriculum that can help learning in art. For example, pupils will understand much more of the context of prehistoric painting if they have already studied ‘Rocks’ in Science and the ‘Stone Age’ in History. There are similar intentional links across the art curriculum with History, Science and Geography so that while the subject remains a discrete subject in terms of it’s own knowledge and skills, intentional cross-curricular learning links are still made that give useful contextual information that would aid understanding in Art.

We recognise that not all staff are artists and the that progression of art skills and knowledge needs to be accurate for children to learn effectively. The school subscribes to a scheme of work that has exemplar lessons that can be adapted to the needs of the class and comes with videos for teachers to help them learn and to support modelling for pupils