Art

At Girnhill Infant school Art is valued and time is given for all children to develop their skills and techniques like an artist. Our school provides a stimulating and high-quality Art and Design Curriculum by ensuring challenging and playful opportunities for all children to develop holistically.

We want our children to become aware of the elements of art – colour, line, pattern, tone, texture, form, shape and space. In doing so we are giving the children the language that is needed to enable them to talk about their art work and that of others- instilling a sense of pride and achievement.

We want our children to develop their knowledge of significant artists which are relevant to the environment in which they live, deepening their capital culture and providing them with the knowledge, roles and purpose of art in different cultures.

During our Art lessons we are wanting our children to create something new and have a wealth of experience and information in their long term memory to allow them to be creative and have a sense of achievement maintaining a happy and healthy lifestyle.

“The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of” Leonardo da Vinci

“Every child is an Artist” Picasso

Intent
At Girnhill, we provide children with a high-quality, stimulating Art and Design curriculum which is accessible to all pupils and provides them with the skills and knowledge in order to use artistic thinking and creativity to change the world. Art and Design is taught through the ambitious National Curriculum and the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework. We map the National Curriculum and Early Years Foundation Stage Framework for Art and Design into a coherent and sequential progression model that outlines the substantive knowledge, disciplinary knowledge, vocabulary and sentence stems needed at each stage that will build cumulatively towards learners being able to use and apply their knowledge, skills and imagination through first hand experiences. This is to ensure a considered sequence of experiences including the skills of making, ideas and evaluation in order to enable children to know more remember more. We are ambitious in our expectations of all pupils, ensuring cross curricular links are made to develop children holistically.

At Girnhill Infant School we want our children to develop their knowledge of significant artists, crafters and designers. In doing so this will raise their awareness of the roles and purpose of art and different cultures. At Girnhill Infant School, oracy is a powerful tool for learning; by teaching children to become more effective speakers and listeners we empower them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them. Vocabulary is purposeful and progressive to allow children to develop their expressive language and leave school being able to articulate their understanding of Art and Design using the four strands of good talk. Technical tiered vocabulary is modelled through flashcards and teacher talk using ‘my turn, your turn’. Sentence stems are used to provide children with a model of how to speak like an Artistic thinker and scaffold their talk effectively. Questions are carefully planned in advance to target pre-empted misconceptions, address gaps in learning and enable children to develop their explanations

Implementation
We ensure that all teachers, including those who are non-specialists, have excellent subject knowledge and are supported in the implementation of the curriculum by the Art and Design leader. Oracy is woven throughout Art and Design as detailed in the progression grid. The progression grid outlines the oracy expectations of each year group within the four strands of good talk. It also includes the tiered technical vocabulary all learners need to acquire and use in order to talk like an Artist. This will be modelled using flash cards, teacher talk using ‘my turn your turn’ and opportunities are made for children to practice using the vocabulary throughout lessons in both guided and independent practice. Suggested sentence stems are provided and used in order to scaffold responses. Opportunities for children to practise the skill of presentational talk will be further developed in Art and Design through the use of mode B learning through discussions of their own work and evaluating the work of others and carefully selected artists. Through using Rosenshine’s principles, learners have the opportunity to revisit and build on prior knowledge. Daily review is used at the beginning of every session in order to activate prior learning to attach new learning to. High-quality modelling of skills and language is offered to our children and scaffolds are provided for difficult tasks. Our Art and Design curriculum enables children to become a developing artist through high quality teaching of a range of techniques under the principles of the six main art skills – painting, drawing, printing, crafting, sculpting, and using technology. Children are then taught to practice, use and apply these skills independently and collaboratively through their learning environment.
Impact
Our sketch books demonstrate how children apply skills through the main art techniques and complete challenging and stimulating activities. Children can talk about their art work in positive terms and show great resilience in art until they have achieved the result they desire.

Children demonstrate their understanding of key vocabulary through pupil voice evident during lesson observations, sketch books and pupils voice focuses on the knowing more remembering more principle.