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Intent
Intent
At Edith Cavell, we want our children to love and value art, craft and design. We believe that the visual arts helps children understand themselves, builds confidence and self-esteem, and contributes to children's own wellbeing. We want them to have no limits to their ambitions and to grow up understanding the creative careers available to them such as illustrators, graphic designers, fashion designers, curators, architects or printmakers.
Our Art curriculum is designed to engage, inspire and challenge pupils, whilst equipping them with the knowledge and skills to be able to experiment, invent and create their own works of art. Pupils will gain a rich visual art education that connects children to their world, and their cultural history. We have carefully selected a wide range of unique and diverse artists, craft makers and designers for children to study.
Implementing our Art Curriculum
Our classes have regular art lessons based on our bespoke unit plans and following our rolling a/b curriculum. The children are encouraged to use sketchbooks to provide a space for the development of their work, ‘storing’ knowledge, and these offer teachers useful insights into pupils’ learning progress and opportunity for ongoing assessment. Importantly, owning a sketchbook and taking responsibility for this can increase pupil autonomy and self motivation.
Knowledge: The knowledge included within this curriculum demonstrates that art, craft and design is a rich discipline with both practical (i.e. the productive dimension) and academic content (i.e. the critical and cultural dimensions).
The national curriculum specifies three areas of making that pupils should be taught at Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 as a basic entitlement: drawing, painting and sculpture – to be complemented by other disciplines. Our curriculum includes drawing, painting, printing, sculpture, textiles, collage, with links to digital media, across the primary phase. It is carefully sequenced to build knowledge and scaffold skill-acquisition through guided participation.
Progression: Due to the broad scope of the discipline, learning in art, craft and design does not progress in a linear fashion. Pupils’ knowledge, understanding and skills are developed through experience in making, viewing and talking about art, craft and design. Importantly, lesson objectives encompass the productive, critical and cultural dimensions of learning in the discipline. Key milestones within each phase are mapped in such a way that teachers can easily see what has already been taught and where children’s learning will go next.
Emphasis on Drawing: Central to this curriculum is an emphasis on drawing, digital processes and sketchbook practice, all of which are interwoven throughout the units to create a spiral curriculum. Drawing is a tool for thinking and as such offers pupils a valuable way of recording their observations, ideas and memories, which inform knowledge acquisition. Digital processes might take the form of internet or app-based research activities, as well as the documentation of practical activities or conversations about art,craft and design through pupil photography, and recordings.
Sketchbooks: Sketchbooks provide a space for the development of work, ‘storing’ knowledge, and offer teachers useful insights into pupils’ learning progress in terms of strengths and areas for development. Importantly, owning a sketchbook and taking responsibility for this can increase pupil autonomy and self motivation.
Knowledge: The knowledge included within this curriculum demonstrates that art, craft and design is a rich discipline with both practical (i.e. the productive dimension) and academic content (i.e. the critical and cultural dimensions). The national curriculum specifies 3 areas of making that pupils should be taught at Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 as a basic entitlement: drawing, painting and sculpture – to be complemented by other techniques. This curriculum includes drawing, painting, printing, sculpture, textiles, collage and digital media across the primary phase, making it one that builds knowledge and scaffolds skill-acquisition through guided participation.
Pupil engagement: Children are required to engage emotionally and socially as well as intellectually within this subject. Units are designed to be inclusive and delivered in such a way that children are enthused to learning in this area of the curriculum. Children will be introduced to a wide range of creative practitioners in art, craft and design from different times, cultures, and societies. They will engage in multisensory activities that will enable them to build long term memory, and through the teacher’s use of open-ended questioning they will develop confidence in their own abilities and understanding of this subject area. Children will be expected to articulate their own learning both through dialogic practice as well as personal reflection.
These ‘Big Ideas’ provide the structure of our Art curriculum. Knowledge is sequenced and mapped in a coherent format so that pupils make meaningful connections as they progress through the curriculum. The disciplinary knowledge that children acquire to ‘work as an artist’ is revisited and developed as children move through school to ensure the knowledge and skills are firmly embedded within the long-term memory.
Skills, techniques and processes are revisited often to support children to accomplish and master the disciplinary Knowledge. Similarly, a selection of artists and artworks feature across units of work to strengthen children’s schemas and support children to build knowledge. The expectation is that, by the end of primary school, children will know and understand these key elements of ‘Working as an artist’ to give them a solid foundation to enter the Art curriculum at KS3.
At Cavell, we encourage a love of art- whether this be drawing, sculpting, crafting or talking about art.
Sign up for our after school Art Club, if you want to join like-minded people and develop your art skills, or try some of the links below.
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