Art at Northbrook is led by Mrs Wilson
Our Aim
At Northbrook, we believe that art is central to helping children understand about the world around them, as well as helping them to understand themselves.
We are dedicated to giving our children access to art from a diverse range of backgrounds to help inspire them to think critically and appreciate the subject at its fullest. Through a sequence of well-planned art lessons, we want to prepare our children to enter later life with a love of creativity, alongside a carefully structured set of artistic skills. We feel children should have access to a wide range of experiences that help them to believe that everyone is creative and enjoy art in all of its forms.
Our curriculum is designed to blend together the direct teaching of artistic skill, creative thinking and use of materials and medium based practice as well as specific teaching around artistic styles and movements with the wider links to learning around curriculum areas e.g. Remembrance Day, The Stone Age, Egyptians, our local environment and the study of particular artists. We explore the roles of artists, craftspeople and designers through different time periods and aim to achieve our own personal best in every piece of artwork we create.
In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in art, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Art teaching focusses on the knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum.
The National Curriculum for Art and Design aims to ensure that all pupils:
- produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences
- become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques
- evaluate and analyse creative works using the language of art, craft and design
- know about great artists, craft makers and designers, and understand the historical and cultural development of their art forms.
National curriculum - Art
Our Learning
Our curriculum is designed to blend together the direct teaching of artistic skill, creative thinking and use of materials and medium based practice as well as specific teaching around artistic styles and movements with the wider links to learning around curriculum areas e.g. Remembrance Day, the Stone Age, Egyptians, our local environment and the study of particular artists such as Banksy to reinforce global issues.
Our whole school art curriculum is designed to provide children with opportunities to learn and revisit key art knowledge, we carefully map out the types of knowledge below to make sure children’s learning is progressive and provides every child the chance to succeed.
- Substantive - facts about artists, movements and themes.
- Procedural - development of techniques such as drawing and painting.
- Disciplinary - how children want to develop their own ideas and thoughts into a composition.
- Experiential - In contrast with substantive knowledge, experiential knowledge is implicit (rather than explicit) knowledge gained through experiences e.g the feel of clay that is the right consistency
Through our art units, we explore the roles of artists, craftspeople, architects and designers through different time periods, different cultural backgrounds and different artistic movements and aim to achieve our own personal best in every piece of artwork we create. Our curriculum is thoughtfully planned to engage and inspire all our learners. Our long term and medium-term plans map out the Art & Design themes covered each half term for each key stage, as well as the critical knowledge children need to know and remember.
These plans define what we will teach to ensure an appropriate balance and distribution of work across each term. Art objectives have been carefully linked to these themes to make the learning relevant and interesting within a realistic context.
Early Years Foundation Stage
We believe that all learning begins in EYFS. Our curriculum is closely linked with the Early Years Framework to ensure children in EYFS are achieving those early skills within the subject, which will then enable them to continue to progress in art as they move through school. Additionally, planning and teaching in Art is fully inclusive ensuring that all children can access the curriculum at their level. Skills and related vocabulary are progressively built upon as children journey through our school. Cross-curricular links are emphasised, enabling the children to apply their skills and knowledge in other areas of the curriculum.
Impact
Children are assessed against our curriculum endpoints and ongoing assessments are based on the knowledge organisers for each unit. Teachers use a range of ongoing assessments to judge children’s key knowledge and understanding of art and design and ability to apply their their techniques and creativity skills to a range of situations. Through a variety of different methods: small assessment tasks, retrieval practice, low-stake quizzes, classroom responses a teacher judgement is created based around the year group end points for art.
Subject monitoring
Leaders monitor teaching and learning through pupil voice, staff questionnaires as well as book looks and learning walks and using the online app See Saw to record evidence of learning. The development of the children in school is also monitored through daily informal conversations.
As a result of our whole curriculum, we expect to see all children achieve well by developing knowledge and skills across the curriculum.  But we understand that art brings more than this, and aim to ensure that all children will:
- develop lifelong learning behaviours that help them continue to create and explore in art.
- appreciate the possibility of art as a career and give them the opportunity to have success in modern Britain.
- be responsible global citizens and courageous advocates of our community through the HEART Values we have instilled in them during their time in school.
- leave our school, fully equipped for the next stage in their learning.
Art
