Why we teach your child art
Art represents and reflects the best of human activity. It can empower us to challenge the world we live in and inspire us to communicate our individual ideas, thoughts and needs. Art can uplift us, calm us, entertain us, and educate us.
Our aim is to engage, inspire and challenge pupils to express themselves through a range of materials and processes. We want our pupils to not only be equipped with the skills they need to experiment and create their own art, but to also be able to think critically about art, challenge concepts and examine what art means to them. Through developing a broad knowledge of art and artists, our children will learn how to express an opinion about the impact of art and how it can reflect and shape our history. We value the wealth of art that we have access to and encourage our children to foster a love for creativity and artistic expression that will stay with them beyond their years at our school.
What our curriculum looks like
Our art curriculum is ambitious, and this starts right from Nursery. Our art curriculum has been designed by United Learning’s Art specialist, using the content from the National Curriculum and the Early Years Framework to carefully sequenced our art curriculum so children learn a broad range of artistic skills, using a wide variety of materials. As a school, we have contextualised and implemented in a way which works best for our children. They also learn about great artists and the cultural significance of their art forms.
Our art curriculum has six core principles
Entitlement
All pupils have the right to learn about and practise different art skills.
Coherence
Taking the National Curriculum as its starting point, our curriculum is carefully sequenced so that powerful knowledge builds term by term and year by year. We make meaningful connections within subjects and between subjects
Mastery
We ensure that foundational knowledge, skills, and concepts are secure before moving on. Pupils revisit prior learning and apply their understanding in new contexts
Adaptability
The core content of the curriculum is stable and as a school we will bring it to life in our own local context to inspire and meet the needs of our pupils
Representation
All pupils see themselves in our curriculum, and our curriculum takes all pupils beyond their immediate experience
Education with Character
Our curriculum - which includes the taught subject timetable as well as spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, our co-curricular provision and the ethos and ‘hidden curriculum’ of the school – is intended to spark curiosity and to nourish both the head and the heart.
This is underpinned by a medium-term plan which set out the core knowledge and skills children will be learning in their learning.