The aims of teaching art and design in our school are:

• To engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design.
• As pupils progress through school, they should begin to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of art and design. They should also know how art and design both reflect and shape our history, and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our nation.
• To produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences.
• To become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques
• To evaluate and analyse creative works using the language of art, craft and design.
• To know about great artists, craft makers and designers, and understand the historical and cultural development of their art forms.

Implementation:

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in art and design, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Art and design is taught, where possible, as part of a history, geography or science topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. At St John’s, we ensure that art and design is given the same importance as the core subjects, as we feel this is important in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences.

Educational visits are another opportunity for the teachers to plan for additional art learning outside the classroom. At St John’s Highbury Vale, the children have had many opportunities to experience art and design on educational visits. The children have explored local museums/art galleries and had visitors into school to share art and design learning and have hands on experiences.

Impact:

Within art and design, 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).
• Moderation staff meetings where pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
• Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.
• Marking of written work in books.

Art Curriculum Map with Skills 2022