The Art Curriculum at West Jesmond
Curiosity, Confidence, Creativity and Community
“Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse
Art Curriculum Aims
At West Jesmond Primary School, we believe that our Art curriculum should engage and inspire all of our children – thus becoming the start of a life-long relationship with Art! Through building a positive relationship with Art and we believe that all children will succeed in the subject regardless of potential barriers to learning and previous experiences of the subject. Throughout their time at WJPS, our children will develop their cultural capital, as they learn about a range of contemporary and classical artists that reflect the culturally diverse demographic of our children and families. We take inspiration from our community and the places, people and times we are studying to find out about the art they produced and to study some of the skills and techniques they used.
Our programme of study focuses on the carefully sequenced acquisition of explicit and tacit knowledge. By being able to think and speak critically about their artwork of that of others children at WJPS will become creative, confident, risk-taking and authentic artists.
Implementation
We use the unit design of Research and Appreciate, Experiment and Create & Evaluate. Every year, our children will progressively learn explicit skills in the National Curriculum’s statutory art forms of drawing, colour and sculpture. Children at WJPS will also specialise in collage and printing (of the other non-statutory art forms suggested in the National Curriculum). We revisit each of the art forms in alternate year groups to allow for adequate time to be spent developing specialist skills. Alongside the explicit skills from our skill progression document, further levels of challenge are rooted in our curriculum through providing opportunities for children to develop their tacit knowledge.
There are also artistic opportunities throughout the school year through extra-curricular Art clubs, whole school gallery visits, Art Afternoons, class art exhibitions and school displays to develop skills and encourage a love of art and creativity. In Art we build up our children’s sense of community through seizing every opportunity to find out about and to see examples of art and the work of artists in our region and beyond.
What you will see in a West Jesmond Art Lesson
- Engaging and inspiring lessons that promote creativity and curiosity.
- Children are given the opportunity to practise skills in a variety of ways with each lesson building upon prior learning.
- High quality instruction and questioning: Supported by our Arts Leader, teachers provide carefully planned sequenced and modelled lessons and modelling of art skills and techniques that build on children’s knowledge and skills.
- Achievement and Inclusion for all: All activities are planned, scaffolded and adapted where needed to ensure every child at West Jesmond can achieve highly in Art. This may include adapted resources, adult support and awareness of physical/sensory needs.
- Frequent opportunities for children to discuss and review their learning.
- Retrieval of previous learning and explicit links that connect new learning with what the children know.
- An emphasis on correct and ambitious vocabulary
- High quality verbal feedback during lessons in line with the Art Skill Progression document
- At WJPS, we are passionate that children should take ownership of their sketchbooks – using them as an artist would. Only children write in these books and teachers support through verbal feedback
Impact: Progress in our curriculum is measured by children knowing more and remembering more.
The impact of our teaching in Art is measured using formative assessments throughout the year based on progress towards the objectives of the National curriculum and the Year Group skills and knowledge set out in the West Jesmond Art Skills Progression. Our Art Leader monitors progress for all children through our West Jesmond Deep Dives. If we are meeting our aims all of our children our children will be able to talk passionately and knowledgeably about art and demonstrate their progression through their sketchbooks and will see themselves as artists.