Art
Intent:
A high quality Art and Design provision should provide all children with purposeful opportunities to express their own ideas and enhance their creativity through inspiring and engaging learning experiences. At Cupernham Infant School, we aim to inspire a future generation of budding artists by providing all children with an exciting, inspiring and creative curriculum which promotes an infectious love for art, craft and design! We value and ensure that all children are provided with time to learn key progressive skills which will allow them to ‘experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design.’
At Cupernham Infant School Art is taught directly through structured topic based lessons and through opportunities within daily school life. We believe that the heart of creativity lies within the children’s interests and we should ensure that our curriculum reflects time for experimentation, as this will promote an appreciation and enjoyment for Art. We aspire for all children to have countless opportunities to learn and practice key skills, both within the classroom and outdoor areas, which can be applied to all areas of our creative curriculum.
Our amazing outdoor classroom enables our children time to explore and apply their artistic skills, for example, collaging, drawing/sketching and painting, chalk, clay and many more. At Cupernham Infants, we are passionate about inspiring children to be innovative outdoors; through ‘Muddy Monday’ sessions our Year R children in particular, enjoy finding and arranging natural objects to create beautiful woodland pictures!
To be successful artists, our children need to be able to think critically and make links between their artwork and the work of local/National Artists. At Cupernham Infant School, we explore a range of Artists, sculptors and designers from Monet, Matisse to Vincent Van-Gogh and many more… Each year group work closely to ensure that children are taught to discuss and reflect on how each Artist is similar/different and the children can adapt, invent and design their own masterpieces using these newly taught skills! By the time our children leave us, we want them to feel confident and inspired to be creative anywhere and everywhere!
Aims:
The National Curriculum for Art and Design aims to ensure that all pupils produce creative work, exploring their ideas and the work of artists, craft makers and designers and become proficient in drawing, painting and sculpting and many more!
At Cupernham Infant School our aims for every child are:
- To develop an enthusiasm and love for Art based on their own interests.
- To ensure learning is purposeful, relatable and engaging.
- To inspire children to be creative anywhere and everywhere!
- To provide children with a toolkit of key skills, for example, collage, clay, painting, drawing, sketching, junk modelling!
- To celebrate and share their artwork inspired by the work of local artists!
Implementation:
Our Art and Design curriculum focusses on developing and enhancing key art progression skills taught through a mix of Topic-based learning opportunities and opportunities within daily school life! Across all years, we celebrate all children’s natural curiosity and creativity by making their interests the pinnacle of our curriculum! We strive to ensure that our lessons build on the children’s prior knowledge and provide them with the skills and confidence to be successful artists!
Within the Foundation Stage our children are introduced to Art through Expressive Arts and Design, in particular through the Natural World and continuous/enhanced provision. Throughout the year, we enhance our learning provision by providing children with inspiring opportunities focused on specific key skills, for example, scissor skills, drawing, painting and colour mixing, collage and sculpting with junk modelling and clay and many more… By the end of the Early Years Stage, all children will have a creative toolkit of key art skills, which should allow for them to become independent and confident in creating and designing their own unique masterpieces!
In Key Stage One, all children continue their artistic journeys through our creative curriculum which follows specific topics, as well as allowing children to follow their independent learning journeys when opportunities arise. We achieve this by modelling the processes to all children and teaching age-appropriate techniques in drawing, painting, print-making and collaging. We explore a range of artists; Andy Warhol, Turner, Van Gogh, Di Vinchi and many more… The children thoroughly enjoy replicating and reinventing their own clay sculptures, paintings and drawings inspired by great Artists. We really encourage and celebrate the children’s abilities to problem solve and take risks within their artwork and remind them that ‘accidental art’ can lead to the most inspirational and exciting pieces of artwork!
As a whole school, we celebrate our budding artists by holding an annual ‘Creative Week’. Across the week, our children work together to create individual, whole class and whole year art pieces which we celebrate and showcase to one another! We aim to provide our children with first-hand memorable learning experiences which will create long-lasting memories!
Impact:
At Cupernham Infant School, we care about the whole child. Through our creative curriculum we encourage all children to become independent and resilient learners, who appreciate and understand that there are many different forms of Art. Throughout our children’s time with us, we want them to feel successful within their own creative abilities and feel inspired to be creative everywhere and anywhere! Our progressive curriculum allows our children to be taught key skills throughout EYFS/KS1 with plenty of time provided for refining and practising before moving on to the next.
We assess our children’s skills and progression in a variety of ways:
- Sketchbook looks in KS1
- Exploring the continuous and enhanced provision within Early Years
- Pupil conferencing which allows us to tailor our curriculum to our children’s current interests and allow for meaningful learning opportunities.
- Photographing during monitoring lessons
- Moderation within staff meetings where we consider children’s sketchbooks and professional talk discussions to understand their children’s work and identify next steps/key skills.
By the end of their time with us, we want our children to have learned, improved and embedded a whole range of artistic skills. Most importantly, we want our children to enjoy a new found way of communication through self-expression which they will hopefully keep with them throughout life!
ART Subject Overview:
ART Subject Progression: