Intent
At St John Fisher school we believe that art is an opportunity for children to develop a love and inspiration for all aspects of drawing, painting and sculpture. We deliver an ambitious, progressive curriculum that is well sequenced throughout the school to enable all pupils, especially disadvantaged, SEND, EHCP and EAL children, to deepen their understanding of a variety of knowledge, skills, and techniques throughout EYFS, KS1 and KS2. This ensures that all children feel ready to move to the next year group or key stage with the correct knowledge and understanding needed to continue their progression. As part of this progression, we use a knowledge-based approach that allows children to build a deeper understanding of the underpinning behind different artwork before applying these skills to their own independent work. The key expectations for our children are to take inspiration from great artists throughout the years, develop their own ideas and skills through self-exploration and master the techniques needed to strengthen their understanding. Over time children will acquire knowledge of great artists, architects and designers in history and each class will study the life of an artist and their cultural influences on their artistic style. We aim to develop each individual artist to their full potential, taking their journey through a variety of new skills and knowledge, allowing them to practice and develop the ability to think and act creatively and independently.
Implementation
To ensure high standards of teaching and learning, children will revisit previously taught skills and knowledge at the beginning of each lesson. This is achieved through knowledge retrieval of prior artists, skills and techniques from previous topics and year groups. This ensures that gaps in learning are identified to inform future planning, and misconceptions are addressed before moving children onto the next step in their learning. We then use this to support our ongoing assessments using our assessment framework and to build a deeper understanding of the children’s development and progression. We have developed our ambitious art curriculum through identifying the key knowledge needed for each topic and skill (composites) and created our smaller steps (components) to allow the children to achieve in all areas of art with the confidence that they are next phase ready in their education. Art is a chance for children to express themselves as individuals, including their interests, thoughts, and ideas and so we have designed the topics in our art curriculum around the needs of our children, community, and local area. A high-quality art education should engage, inspire, and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, innovate, invent and create their own works of art. As pupils progress, they should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of art and know how art can reflect and shape our history, contributing to the culture, creativity, and wealth of our nation.
