Art
Intent
At Sevenoaks Primary, art is a loved and valued subject. In lessons, children have many opportunities to be creative; and through perseverance and with resilience, children learn to develop their skills. Learning is progressive, not just across the year in each unit but from year to year as children build on previous knowledge and skills. The children have the opportunity to work with a range of media, in order to become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques ready to face the exciting opportunities that secondary school will bring.
Click on the units below to view the attached Knowledge Organiser for that subject.
Sevenoaks Primary Skills Progression in Art
Implementation
Art is delivered across the year groups by teaching specific skills and also through opportunities for purposeful cross curricular links. Skills maps and knowledge organisers underpin art planning which enables children to learn specific skills, techniques and to build on their knowledge of artists, designers and craft makers. A focus on colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space help the children to understand the elements of art.
When children start school with us in Reception, they will have lots of opportunities to express themselves and be creative. The children are given ample opportunities to mark make, paint, and print and explore a range of mediums. We begin by letting children explore and use a variety of artistic effects to express their thoughts and feelings, refining this over time and building on their skills as they progress. Children will be encouraged to draw inspiration from the real world, thinking about how we define different colours, shapes, textures and smells. Children will have opportunities to work collaboratively, sharing their ideas and skills and reflecting on what they have accomplished.
In Key Stage 1, we build on the skills learned in Reception and the children are introduced to more new mediums, techniques and the children are inspired by artists and the world around them.
In Key Stage 2, children are given a sketch book which is passed up though the school showing their art learning journey. The children are being taught to use them as visual diaries to plan and develop their learning. This gives the children opportunities to reflect on and build on their learning and to explore creative and imaginative ideas. They will review and revisit ideas. Our school environment has many examples of the children’s art work on display, from observational drawings and print work to clay sculptures.
Impact
Subject leaders monitor the impact of the curriculum by looking for progressive skills as children journey through the school, talking to the children about what they are learning and enjoying and ensuring planning is relevant and engaging.
We gather regular feedback from the children to monitor the impact of art teaching. As an example, Leila (Year 1) said that she “loved being able to do art outdoors in our school forest” about her art work centred around Andy Goldsworthy and in Year 3 Harry said that he “loved making clay scarab beetles” during their topic on the Ancient Egyptians.
The children experience a broad and balanced curriculum, learning skills and developing them as they move up the school. For example, in Year 2 children are introduced to printing, they then build and develop these skills in Year 4 and 5.
Art is enriched with cross curriculum links. In Year 2, the children study the topic of ‘Winter Wonderland.’ In English, their focus text for this topic for the term is ‘The Princess and the White Bear King’ by Tanya Robyn Batt. Their Art lessons linked perfectly to their focus text and in their Art lessons, children learned about mark making techniques to create the Northern Lights, as well as the use of tone (light to dark) to draw mountains and they also created some observational drawings of Polar bears. Engagement was high. Scarlett said “I really enjoyed our topic and the Art was so much fun and I learned lots of new things.”
The Art curriculum gives children a range of opportunities to express themselves creatively and creative skills are valued. Creativity is one of our school values and it underpins all of the Art we create at Sevenoaks Primary. In one of our Big Book Days which focused on Art, we looked at the book ‘The Tree Keepers: Flock’ by Gemma Koomen. The day was spent immersed in a variety of Art activities enabling children to express their creativity and as a whole school we collectively did the same activity where we all made birds. The children had a fantastic day and engagement was high. Sarah in Reception said “I really liked making the bird and being creative” and Eva in Year 5 said “I loved big book day, the best part was making our birds and using watercolours to make the feathers, we could be really creative.”
