“Our curriculum promotes social mobility;

we give our children the roots to grow and the wings to fly.”

Art and Design at St George’s

Intent 

Through teaching of Art and Design at St. George’s Primary School we aim to stimulate creativity and imagination. We strive to develop artistic flare in our children, encouraging them to reach their full potential; knowing the power of the Arts, not only creatively, but the impact it has on us socially, emotionally and physically; and using the amazing spaces in our school grounds to explore and express ourselves in the natural world around us. We hope to provide visual, tactile and sensory experiences and a special way of understanding and responding to the world thus enabling children to communicate what they see, feel and think through the use of colour, texture, form, pattern and different materials and processes.   At St George’s, art lessons are delivered with the intention to inspire creativity and imagination through a range of visual, tactile and sensory activities.  We aim to enable children to record from first-hand experience and from imagination, and to select their own ideas to use in their work.  

Art at our school is designed to improve children’s ability to control materials and tools and to develop a range of artistic techniques as the children progress through school. Our intention is to develop children’s ability to communicate ideas, opinions and feelings about their own work and the work of others. Our art curriculum has been designed to increase critical awareness of the roles and purposes of art and design in different times and cultures. We strive to fulfil the children’s cultural awareness in a local, national and international context through studying a variety of artists, especially through our Cultural days, as well as in our Art lessons. We hope this will foster an enjoyment and appreciation of art and a knowledge of a range of artists, crafts people and designers and an understanding of the historical development of their art forms.

Implementation 

At our school art forms part of the school curriculum which provides a broad and balanced education to all children. Through our art teaching we provide learning opportunities that enable all pupils to make progress. We do this by setting suitable learning challenges and responding to each child’s different needs. Assessment against the National Curriculum allows us to consider each child’s attainment and progress against expected levels. 

At St George’s, each class teacher plans three art units over the course of the year, each focussing on one-two of the different Art and Design strands (painting, drawing, 3D form, print, textiles) so that we ensure breadth of art across the curriculum which, where sensible, links to current learning. We plan backwards from the end-product, ensuring the taught skills are developed upon each week so that the children produce a high quality final piece. Each class teacher also includes the opportunities to study a set artist per strand, per term.

We develop ideas in the children’s own sketchbooks in KS2 whilst KS1 use their Learning Journey books and class shared books to record and share their creations. Children practise, annotate, add notes to and evaluate their existing work, the work of artists they are studying and the work of their peers. This is so that the children are able to review their learning journey and develop their critical analysis skills as they progress through a unit. At St George’s we focus on key artists (from a range of genres) within each unit so that we are evaluating quality pieces of work that help the children strive for a similar quality. The children critically evaluate artists’ work and develop their skills through discursive analysis (KS1) as well as written notes in KS2. 

At the end of each learning unit we publish the children’s work beautifully on class and school displays or in our class shared books, displaying exceptional effort in artwork, alongside connected high-quality written work so that we allow children to develop an immense sense of pride in their work and constantly strive to be the best that they can be. 

At St George’s, we pride ourselves on being a community family, providing our Dragonflies parent and toddler group weekly. These sessions are based on a nursery rhyme theme with art activities to gain early access to our families’ younger children, giving them opportunities to explore and express with different media, as well as begin to use their gross motor skills and pencil grip as well as learning our colours. We also offer a weekly Parents Art and Craft Club run by a local artist. Whilst this offer is mainly to promote health and wellbeing in our parents, they are, nevertheless, picking up art skills along the way which helps them support their children’s art journey, too.

The art subject leader is responsible for monitoring the standard of the children’s work through the collection of work for the portfolio, sketchbook moderation, the reading of medium term plans, discussions with teachers and visits to classes. The effectiveness of the teaching of art within the school will be evaluated in the light of the aims and intent outlined at the beginning of this document. The children’s attitudes to their work will be taken into account, as an indicator of progress and fulfilment of our curriculum intent. 

Impact  

All children at St. George’s receive a broad and balanced curriculum regardless of year group or ability. Every child accesses all subjects on offer at our school. There is a clear progression of art skills and knowledge, to ensure that all children access at an age-appropriate level. Children learn to work both independently and as part of a group, ensuring skills of resilience and teamwork are promoted in art. Our children are enthused and engaged by the wide variety of art activities. Our children leave St George’s and each Key-Stage with the ability to use a range of materials to create exceptional pieces of art. Children are able to use drawing, painting and sculpture to share their ideas, experiences and imagination. Our children use sketch books to record their observations and use them to review and revisit ideas, and collect visual material to help them to develop their ideas. As a result of this children are able to show progression of skills in their sketchbooks and are proud to share their learning. A positive impact of our art implementation approach is that children are able to use artistic vocabulary, taught in Daily Dashboard lessons as well as in our Art and Design lessons, to describe their work and the processes they have gone through to achieve their outcomes. 

Throughout their artistic learning journey and experiences at St George’s children develop techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space using clay and printing to a large scale and in 3D. 

Children improve their mastery of techniques, such as drawing, painting and sculpture with materials (e.g. pencil, charcoal, paint, clay). They have an awareness of the work of a range of artists, craftspeople and designers in history, and are able to describe the differences and similarities between different art forms, making links to their own work.  Opportunities to engage in different art forms within school, sharing their work with the local community and learning about local, national and international artists empowers our children to understand the significance and place of art within the wider world. These opportunities excite and inspire our children’s thirst for knowledge and participation in art.