Intent
At Great Corby School and Nursery, we encourage each individual child to become a successful life-long learner by igniting their curiosity, developing their love for learning and instilling a desire to achieve.
Our Art and Design curriculum aims to inspire pupils and develop their confidence to experiment and invent their own works of art. At Great Corby we use a scheme which 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.
Great Corby School and Nursery is set in an artist’s paradise, and we encourage children to develop their artistic desire not only within the classroom but in the outdoors and the community.
As with all subjects at Great Corby, we ignite this curiosity of Art and Design in the Early Years through play-based learning and exploration and ensure the skills and knowledge is developed and built upon throughout Key Stage 1 and 2.
Implementation
At Great Corby School and Nursery, we follow the Kapow Art and Design scheme of work where learning takes place in immersive units during the afternoon sessions allowing children to develop their artistic style over a number of afternoons. The work of famous local, national, and international multi-cultural artists is explored to enhance the children's learning through visits to art galleries both local and further afield. Weekly Forest School allows children to develop creatively in our woodland area where the children’s creations can be seen.
The teaching on Art and Design focuses on strands that run throughout.
These are:
- Generating ideas
- Using sketchbooks
- Makings 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
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 pupils.
Impact
The curriculum is designed in such a way that children are involved in the evaluation, dialogue and decision making about the quality of their outcomes and the improvements they need to make. By taking part in 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 our Art and Design curriculum is constantly monitored through both formative and summative assessment opportunities.
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.
By implementation of our 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 continuing their Art and Design learning at Key Stage 3 and beyond.
