Why is Art important?
Art education has been proven to have remarkable impacts on academic, social, and emotional outcomes, helping us develop empathy as we learn more about societies, cultures and history. Engagement with Art helps us stretch our minds beyond the boundaries of the printed text or the rules of what is provable to encompass visual-spatial learning and develop motor skills. Through our Art, we learn to express ourselves confidently and creatively.
Intent:
At the Cathedral School of St Mary, we follow Kapow Primary’s revised Art and design scheme of work which aims to inspire pupils and develop their confidence to experiment and invent their own works of art. Their scheme is written by experts in their field and designed to give pupils every opportunity to develop their ability, nurture their talent and interests, express their ideas and thoughts about the world, as well as learning about art and artists across cultures and through history.
Their scheme supports pupils to meet the National curriculum end of key stage attainment targets and has been written to fully cover the National Society for Education in Art and Design’s progression competencies.
Kapow Primary is an Artsmark partner and is able to support schools on their Artsmark journey, inspiring children and young people to create, experience, and participate in great arts and culture.
Implementation:
The Kapow Art revised scheme of work is designed with five strands that run throughout. These are:
● Generating ideas
● Using sketchbooks
● Making skills, including formal elements (line, shape, tone, texture, pattern, colour)
● Knowledge of artists
● Evaluating and analysing
Units of lessons are sequential, allowing children to build their skills and knowledge, applying them to a range of outcomes. The formal elements, a key part of the National Curriculum, are also woven throughout units. Key skills are revisited again and again with increasing complexity in a spiral curriculum model. This allows pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Units in each year group are organised into four core areas;
● Drawing
● Painting and mixed-media
● Sculpture and 3D
● Craft and design
Our units fully scaffold and support essential and age appropriate, sequenced learning, and are flexible enough to be adapted to form cross-curricular links with your own school’s curriculum. Creativity and independent outcomes are robustly embedded into our units, supporting students in learning how to make their own creative choices and decisions, so that their art outcomes, whilst still being knowledge-rich, are unique to the pupil and personal.
Lessons are always practical in nature and encourage experimental and exploratory learning with pupils using sketchbooks to document their ideas. Differentiated guidance is available for every lesson to ensure that lessons can be accessed and enjoyed by all pupils and opportunities to stretch pupils’ learning are available when required. Knowledge organisers for each unit support pupils by providing a highly visual record of the key knowledge and techniques learned, encouraging recall of skills processes, key facts and vocabulary.
Impact
Kapow Primary’s curriculum is designed in such a way that children are involved in evaluation, dialogue and decision making about the quality of their outcomes and the improvements they need to make. By taking part in our regular discussions and decision making processes, children will not only know facts and key information about art, but they will be able to talk confidently about their own learning journey, have higher metacognitive skills and have a growing understanding of how to improve.
The impact of Kapow Primary’s scheme can be constantly monitored through both formative and summative assessment opportunities. Each lesson includes guidance to support teachers in assessing pupils against the learning objectives. An assessment spreadsheet including the learning outcomes for children with secure understanding and those working at greater depth enables teachers to keep records of summative assessments for each child.
After the implementation of Kapow Primary’s Art and design scheme, pupils should leave primary school equipped with a range of techniques and the confidence and creativity to form a strong foundation for their Art and design learning at Key Stage 3 and beyond.
The expected impact of following the Kapow Primary Art and design scheme of work is that children will:
★ Produce creative work, exploring and recording their ideas and experiences.
★ Be proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques.
★ Evaluate and analyse creative works using subject-specific language.
★ Know about great artists and the historical and cultural development of their art.
★ Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the National curriculum for Art and design.