INTENT

At Maple Tree Primary we want to inspire all pupils to love art and design.
Our art structure and sequence of lessons will give our pupils the opportunity to be inspired, use their imagination and be creative individuals.
As a school we want to develop and equip our pupils with lifelong expertise and knowledge across the art and design curriculum. Along with this, students will gain the opportunity to explore a vast breadth of diverse artistic movements and gain the inquisitiveness and curiosity surrounding famous artists, designers and craft makers who have shaped and inspired our art and design history locally, nationally and worldwide.
Our pupils will learn a breadth of subject specific art terms and become skilful and adept in a variety of artistic techniques including: drawing, painting, sculpting, collage printing and textiles.

Click the table below to see our whole school overview for Art and Design.

IMPLEMENTATION

At Maple Tree our Art and Design teaching and learning incorporates the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum which best meet the learning and developmental needs of the children in our school.  Art is taught by the discretion of the class teacher which can be sessions over a period of time or blocked depending on the theme of the unit. 

All children have a sketchbook. We give the children ownership of their sketchbook in order to foster their sense of creativity and give them the freedom to explore this. Children use their sketchbooks to make initial sketches, develop skills, record ideas and develop opinions. New skills and techniques are modelled to the children and examples of work are also shown. The children also evaluate their work and successes are identified along with areas for improvement.

Every child is given the opportunity to learn the skills of drawing, painting, printing, sculpture or textiles through the exploration of an initial key artist or through techniques that originate from the topic that they are currently learning.  Key artist’s life and works are researched throughout the Key Stages so that pupils can link key art movements together and induce significant inspiration from their learning. 

All art activities are differentiated to ensure every child can access the tasks and have appropriate levels of challenge. Children have opportunities to extend their art skills through their art lessons and in other subjects.

EYFS have continuous provision of art and design activities. These activities make important contributions to children’s development in the areas of Expressive Arts and Design and Communication and Language. They are also important in children’s Personal, Social and Emotional development. Art is covered in art lessons, continuous provision and as a means of communication and learning in other curriculum areas.  

IMPACT

At Maple Tree, we strive to create a supportive and collaborative ethos for learning by providing investigative and enquiry based learning opportunities. Emphasis is placed on investigative learning opportunities to help children gain a coherent knowledge of understanding of each unit of work covered throughout the school.

Our art and design curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills and discreet vocabulary progression also form part of the units of work. We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.
• Summative assessment of pupil discussions about their learning.
• Images and videos of the children’s practical learning.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
• Marking of written work in books.