Art & Design
Vision
We use art lessons to develop children’s creativity and their love of art, and we want the children to have the skills to experiment, design and create their own artwork. We provide them with the opportunity to develop a range of skills and to work with different mediums.
Intent
Art lessons will often have cross-curricular links, allowing the children to use art to help them learn about their current topics in other subjects. The children will be exposed to a range of different styles of art and artists from a variety of cultures. Through discussions around artists’ work, children will develop an appreciation for art and the ability to form opinions on pieces of artwork.
In Art, children are encouraged to take risks and experiment with their ideas. They are encouraged to be reflective and evaluate their creative process, thinking about how they can make changes and keep improving throughout. This will be done through a range of meaningful verbal and written reflection.
Implementation
The teaching and implementation of our Art curriculum is based on the National Curriculum and linked to themes to ensure a well-structured approach to this creative subject. The children are taught art as part of their termly themes work with a focus on the skills of drawing, colour, texture, form, printing, pattern and digital skills. These skills are built upon in each year group to ensure progression (more detail on this can be found in our Long Term plan).
All children have their own sketchbooks which is their own creative space to record their development of these skills. These follow them as they go up the school allowing the children to revisit and reflect on their previous work.
We look at a diverse range of artists from historical and modern day periods and artists from the UK and overseas to enhance learning. To complement the children’s learning in art, art themed days and art weeks are organised to give the children the opportunity to work collaboratively and explore different styles and techniques art has to offer. By giving children this additional time to explore art, it allows them to explore areas of the art curriculum at a greater depth.
Impact
The children were asked to create a piece of artwork based on an environmental theme to celebrate World Environment Day and World Oceans Day. This could be produced individually, small groups or as a collaborative whole class piece of art.
- Art clubs are run after school allowing the children to practise a range of skills, and to use their creativity to create their own artwork
- Sewing clubs are also run for different abilities, after school. The children use their creativity and textile skills to create sewing pieces
- Bridge day artwork: we organised a whole school day based on the bridges our school houses are named after. The children all created a piece of artwork with a bridge theme.
- Art competitions: we encourage the children to partake in art competitions when they arise.
- Often there will be an Art themed homework available from the children to choose. This allows them to express their creativity in a range of different ways using a range of different mediums.
- We had an art week where each class was tasked with creating a collaborative piece of artwork linked to the person their class is named after. This allowed the children to work together on a piece of artwork and gave them the experience of working on a piece of artwork on a larger scale.
- Every year, a class gets involved in working collaboratively to make a decoration to go on the Wokingham Christmas Tree.
Environmental themed art
