Art and Design Curriculum Statement

Intent

Our curriculum goes beyond a plan of what will be taught and when it will be taught. It covers all the experiences a child receives under our guidance. As educationalists we take our responsibility for the future of our young learners very seriously. Our curriculum will ensure that our children become confident, independent, resilient, curious learners with self -belief and our school ethos fully supports this. Our aim is for every child “To Be The Best They Can Be”.

We recognise the importance of art and design in every aspect of daily life. Art should be fully inclusive to every child. Our aims are to: fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for art and design, provide a broad and balanced curriculum, ensure the progressive development of knowledge and skills, enable children to observe and record from first-hand experience and from imagination, develop the children’s competence in controlling materials and tools, acquire knowledge and become proficient in various art and design techniques and processes, begin to develop an awareness of the visual and tactile elements including: colour, pattern and texture, line and tone, shape, form and space, foster enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts and develop a knowledge of significant artists, craftspeople and designers, increase critical awareness of the roles and purposes of art and design in different times and cultures, and analyse works using the language of art and design and develop a cross-curricular approach to the use of art and design in all subjects.

Implementation

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in art and design, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Art and design is taught as part of a half-termly or termly topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. At Brookfield, we ensure that art and design is given the same importance as the core subjects, as we feel this is important in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences. The art and design curriculum at Brookfield is based upon the 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England, which provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills and taught in each Key Stage. Teachers plan lessons for their class using our progression of knowledge and skills documents. Teachers can use this documents to plan their art and design lessons suitable to their class’s interests and what they want to learn. The progression document ensures the curriculum is covered and the skills/knowledge taught is progressive from year group to year group.

Impact

Within art and design, we strive to create a supportive and collaborative ethos for learning by providing investigative and enquiry based learning opportunities. Emphasis is placed on investigative learning opportunities to help children gain a coherent knowledge of understanding of each unit of work covered throughout the school.

Our art and design curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills and discreet vocabulary progression also form part of the units of work. We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.
• Summative assessment of pupil discussions about their learning.
• Images and videos of the children’s practical learning.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Moderation staff meetings where pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
• Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.
• Marking of written work in books.