Art and Design
Curriculum
At Abbots Farm Infant School, we strive to nurture a love of art and creativity by giving children meaningful opportunities to explore, experiment and develop their artistic skills. We believe art should be an inspiring and enjoyable experience for every child, enabling them to express themselves through individual or collaborative pieces of work.
Across their three years with us, children engage with a wide range of art forms, including drawing, painting, collage, textiles, sculpture and printing. We also aim to encourage children to take inspiration from significant artists as a way of sparking their own ideas and creative thinking.
Our curriculum follows a carefully planned structure and sequence of lessons that ensure children develop the skills needed to meet national curriculum aims. They are encouraged to explore ideas and record their experiences in sketchbooks, as well as study the work of others and evaluate different creative approaches. Through this, children grow in confidence and become proficient in a variety of techniques such as drawing, painting and sculpture, alongside other craft skills including collage, printing, weaving and pattern work.
Teaching
Our Art curriculum is based on the National Curriculum’s aims and objectives, and uses an artist and their work or an art style as a stimulus. The learning opportunities, technical vocabulary and skills progression for each year group will ensure progression and repetition in terms of embedding key learning, knowledge and skills.
We aim to achieve this by:
- Learning about a range of artists and their media/techniques
- Providing opportunities for all children to practise skills and techniques in their sketch books during continuous provision.
- Linking Art to other curriculum area.
- Encouraging children to talk about both their own works and that of artists and say what the like and why – thus developing an appreciation of the work of great artists
- Learning about different techniques for example shading, hatching, stippling and blending and using these to add detail to their artwork.
- Explore different materials, including malleable materials like clay and a range of tools to add texture.
- Develop art vocabulary through use of common words and phrases relating to pieces of art.
Achievement
We strive to ensure that our children’s attainment is in line with or exceeds their potential when we consider the varied starting points of all our children.
We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- Discussions with children about their learning (pupil voice) – are children happy, engaged, motivated to do well and challenged within the subject. Are children able to clearly express their opinions about Art? Do the children know the names of professional artists and their work?
- Coaching with teacher focusing on children’s work in sketchbooks and photo evidence and images of the children’s art elsewhere (particularly in EYFS).
- Coaching with teachers focusing on planning to ensure that all classes have a consistent coverage of the curriculum.
- Coaching with teachers in lessons to continuously improve our teaching of the art curriculum.
- All coaching provides opportunities for professional dialogue between teachers and art lead which is reflective.
- Sketchbooks – do they show a clear learning journey, progression of skills and opportunities to revisit and evaluate work?