Art and Design at Birchfield School
“Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Mattise.
Intent:
At Birchfield Primary School we have a progressive Art and Design Curriculum which develops children’s knowledge and skills within the subject and promotes the Birchfield values of curiosity and ambition. The curriculum teaches both disciplinary skills and substantive knowledge in line with the requirements of the National Curriculum.
Throughout their time at Birchfield, we aim for our children to develop an understanding of artists and their artwork and to use this as a motivation for their own creativity. We value representation, ensuring that children are provided with opportunities to learn more about a range of artists and the contributions they have made and continue to make to Art and society. A consistent approach to pedagogy aims to ensure children learn more, remember more and can apply their knowledge and skills with increasing confidence.
Implementation:
Our curriculum is based upon the National Curriculum and has been broken down into a structured sequence of lessons. The children are introduced to an artist and an artistic style. After unpicking the features of the artists’ work, the children then practise, apply and refine these skills in their own work, making adaptations where necessary toward the end of the unit. The children learn to critique, compare and discuss their work using appropriate vocabulary. We aim to ensure diversity and representation for our children and use retrieval practise at the beginning of each lesson to ensure learning is maximised and skills are continually refreshed and built upon.
Throughout our curriculum, children will have the opportunity to:
- Learn about different artists from a diverse range of cultural backgrounds
- Acquire knowledge and understanding of different disciplines and their features.
- Question, analyse, critique, compare and contrast art work
- Use a range of artistic skills and techniques related to each discipline (drawing, painting, sculpture and mixed media)- How to apply the taught artistic skills using a range of materials (paint, clay, printing, charcoal etc)
- Learn and use key technical vocabulary
Impact:
The skills and knowledge are taught progressively so that children’s own work showcases their learning over time. The taught skills become more refined as they are revisited, and the application becomes more accomplished. Children’s understanding of what it means to be an artist develops, as does their knowledge of Artists and the significance of Art in the world.
We measure the impact of the curriculum by:
- Assessing the specific taught knowledge and skills at the end of each lesson
- Completing summative assessments at the end of each unit
- Assessing the children’s use of language and skills throughout each topic
- Learning walks, book monitoring and pupil voice