Intent

The art and design scheme of work we follow, written by Kapow, aims to inspire pupils and develop their confidence to experiment and invent their own works of art. The scheme is by experts in their field and designed to give pupils every opportunity to develop their ability, nurture their talent and interests, express their ideas and thoughts about the world, as well as learning about art and artists across cultures and through history. Our art and design scheme of work supports pupils to meet the National Curriculum end of key stage attainment targets and has been written to fully cover the National Society for Education in Art and Design's progression competencies.

Implementation

Our art scheme of work is designed with five strands that run throughout.

These are:

1. Generating ideas
2. Using sketchbooks
3. Makings skills, including formal elements (line, shape, tone, texture, pattern, colour)
4. Knowledge of artists
5. 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 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:

1. Drawing
2. Painting and mixed-media
3. Sculpture and 3D
4. Craft and design

The National Curriculum mapping shows which of our units cover each of the National Curriculum attainment targets as well as each of the strands.

Our progression of skills and knowledge shows the skills that are taught within each year group and how these skills develop to ensure that attainment targets are securely met by the end of each key stage. It also shows how knowledge builds in the formal elements of art.

Units of work are fully scaffold and support age appropriate sequenced learning, and are sometimes adapted to form cross-curricular links with individual year groups' curriculum. Creativity and independent outcomes are robustly embedded into our units, supporting children in learning how to make their own creative choices and decisions, so that their art outcomes, whilst still being knowledge-rich, are unique to the pupils.

Lessons are always practical in nature and encourage experimental and exploratory learning with pupils using sketchbooks to document their ideas. Teachers may adapt their input to ensure to ensure that lessons can be accessed and enjoyed by all pupils and opportunities to stretch pupils' learning are available when required.

Knowledge organisers for each unit support pupils by providing a highly visual record of the key knowledge and techniques learned, encouraging recall of skills processes, key facts and vocabulary.

The scheme of work we use at Gilded Hollins supports teachers who may lack confidence in their own artistic abilities. Pupil videos created by subject specialists help pupils to see art techniques modelled by experts, to ensure the delivery of art is of the highest quality. Each unit of lessons includes multiple teacher videos to develop subject knowledge and support ongoing CPD.

To enhance our art and design curriculum, we hold an annual Arts Week. This is a week where all children are off timetable and complete a range of art-related tasks focussing on one theme. Previous examples of themes include All Around the World, Storytelling and The Natural World Around Us. Children work in their class groups for some of the week and in mixed-age groups for some of the week. In 2022, the theme for our week of Arts education was, ‘The Natural World Around Us.’ The children had a brilliant week and experienced sessions on sculpture, drawing, painting, digital art and other areas of ‘the arts’. Unfortunately, as this Arts Week was planned in such uncertain times, we did not have visitors in to deliver sessions to the children like we normally would. However, this did not lessen the experience for the children as they all had the opportunity to develop our school qualities in both the mixed-age groups and their class groups.

Impact

Our scheme of work is designed in such a way that children are involved in the evaluation, dialogue and decision making about the quality of their outcomes and the improvements they need to make. By taking part in regular discussions and decision-making processes, children will not only know facts and key information about art, but they will be able to talk confidently about their own learning journey, have higher metacognitive skills and have a growing understanding of how to improve.

Each lesson includes guidance to support teachers in assessing pupils against the learning objectives.

After the implementation of our art and design scheme, pupils should leave Gilded Hollins equipped with a range of techniques and the confidence and creativity to form a strong foundation for their Art and design learning at Key Stage 3 and beyond.

The impact of following our art and design scheme of work is that our children will:

Pupil Voice:

“I’m proud of this piece of work because I was able to use my sketching skills from last year to make it better.” Y3

“If I was struggling in art, my teacher would work with me to show me the example and the artist’s work again. She would keep telling me it’s part of learning to struggle and would help me be able to do it.” Y1

“In this lesson, we were practising blending oil pastels to decide which colour combinations to use. I tried using contrasting and complementary colours to see which was more effective. I chose contrasting in the end.” Y6