Art AND DESIGN
At St Michael's, we believe that art is a vital part of children’s education, with a significant and valuable role in the taught curriculum and the enrichment opportunities we offer our pupils. The art curriculum will develop children’s critical abilities, as well as an understanding of their own and others’ cultural heritages through the study of a diverse range of artists.
Children will develop their understanding of the visual language of art with effective teaching and considered sequences of lessons and experiences. Understanding of the visual elements of art and design (line, tone, texture, colour, pattern, shape, 3D form) will be developed by providing a curriculum which will enable children to reach their full potential.
The skills and knowledge that children will develop throughout each art topic are mapped across each year group and are progressive throughout the school. The emphasis on knowledge ensures that children understand the context of the artwork, as well as the artists that they are learning about and being inspired by. This enables links to other curriculum areas, including humanities, with children developing a considerable knowledge of individual artists, as well as individual works and art movements. A similar systematic approach to the development of artistic skills means that children are given opportunities to express their creative imagination, as well as practise and develop mastery in the key processes of art: drawing, painting, printing, textiles and sculpture.
Coordinated whole-school focuses on a particular media, each half term, means that art is given high status in the curriculum. All the children in school learn to use one media and at the end of each half term, we gather as a whole staff to view the progression that is so obviously visible. It gives us a good indication of next steps and also helps us to identify particularly talented artists within our school. Furthermore, we have a dedicated Art Room that is very well resourced and gives staff and pupils the ability to make the most of their art time allocation within an environment where resources are easy to access and making a mess is not such a big problem. The school’s high-quality art curriculum is supported through the availability of a wide range of quality resources, which are used to support children’s confidence in the use of different media.
Art Curriculum Mats
