At Parkhead Community Primary School, we want to inspire pupils and develop their confidence to experiment and invent their own works of art. We believe that art is a vital and integral part of children’s education and see it as a vehicle for creativity, fostering curiosity and individual expression, as well as supporting pupils to broaden their skill and knowledge.
Following Kapow’s Art and Design scheme of work allows us to enrich children’s learning and enables them to communicate their thoughts, ideas and observations in a practical and expressive way through the use of colour, texture, form and pattern.
At Parkhead Primary we aim to:
- Engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design.
- Enable children to produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences.
- Support children to become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques, supporting children to be resilient learners.
- Promote the use of language of art, craft and design to talk about and evaluate their own and others’ work.
- Explore great artists, craft makers and designers, and develop children’s understanding of the historical and cultural development of art forms.
- Support children as the progress through school to begin to know how art and design both reflect and shape our history, and how this contributes to the rich heritage and culture of the British Isles and beyond.
Kapow’s Primary Art and Design scheme of work support pupils to meet the National Curriculum end of key stage attainment targets and is designed with five strands that run throughout: making skills, formal elements (line, shape, tone, texture, pattern and colour), knowledge of artists and evaluating. In the ‘Art and Design skills’ and ‘Formal Elements’ unit, pupils have the opportunity to learn and practise skills discreetly before applying the knowledge and skills learned throughout the other units. The units fully scaffold and support essential and age-appropriate sequenced learning, with the use of a spiral curriculum model allowing children to revisit key skills with increased complexity, to review and build on previous learning.
Creativity and independent outcomes are robustly embedded into each unit, supporting children in learning how to make their own creative choices and decisions so that their outcomes show individuality and imagination. Knowledge organisers are used to support pupils in building a foundation of factual knowledge as well as supporting children to develop their use of appropriate art related vocabulary through explicit teaching of unit vocabulary and these displaying these in classrooms to revisit each lesson. Pupil videos created by subject specialists help pupils to see art techniques modelled by experts, supporting their understanding of the art skill being developed.
At Parkhead Primary, Art and design lessons are taught in blocks on a half termly basis, rotating with DT. We believe timetabling in this manner gives children extended time to practise and develop the skill studied, before completing a final piece which brings together their knowledge, vision and skill. We encourage children throughout to evaluate their learning, with the constructive support of their peers. Work is evidenced and collected within the art sketch book, which the children begin in Year 2 and take this with them as they move year groups to show clear progression of skill and knowledge. This allows the children to witness their own progress and celebrate their achievements.
At Parkhead Community Primary our art and design provision is of high quality, focussing on progression of knowledge and skills, along with discreet vocabulary progression also forming part of the units of work. In following Kapow’s Primary curriculum, we want children not only to know key information about art and but also to be able to talk confidently about their own learning journey and have a growing understanding of how they could improve their learning using the language of art.
The impact of following Kapow’s Primary scheme can be monitored through both formative and summative assessment opportunities, with each lesson including clear guidance to support teachers in assessing children against the learning objective. Alongside this, unit quizzes and knowledge catchers can be used at the start and end of each unit to show progress and identify any gaps in vocabulary, knowledge and skills that can be revisited within the spiral curriculum.
The impact of our Art and Design provision can also be monitored by:
- Pupil discussions about their learning, which includes discussion of their ideas and critical evaluations of work and that of others.
- Lesson observations
- Monitoring of sketch books.
Above all, we want the children of Parkhead Community Primary to leave school equipped with a range of techniques and the confidence and creativity to form a strong foundation for their Art and design learning at Key Stage 3 and beyond.