Art and Design

Art at Ladybridge Primary School

Intent

At our school, we want to inspire pupils and develop their confidence to experiment and invent their own works of art. We follow the KAPOW scheme as part of the ethos is to give our children the opportunity to develop their ability, nurture their talent and interests, and express their ideas and thoughts about the world, as well as learning about art and artists across cultures and through history. At Ladybridge, we model and educate our pupils on their Artsmark journey, inspiring children and young people to create, experience and participate in great arts and culture.

The KAPOW scheme of work supports pupils to meet the National curriculum and end of key stage attainment targets and has been written to fully cover the National Society for Education in Art and Design’s progression competencies.

Implementation

We are currently following a scheme of work provided by KAPOW primary. It is designed with the five strands running throughout: generating ideas; using sketchbooks; making skills, including formal elements (line, shape, tone, texture, pattern and colour); knowledge of artists and evaluating and analysing. Skills are built up as the children progress through the school to ensure that targets are met by the end of each key stage.  

Units of lessons are sequential, allowing our children to build their skills and knowledge, applying them to a range of outcomes. The formal elements, a key part of the National Curriculum, are also woven throughout units. Key skills are revisited again and again with increasing complexity in a spiral curriculum model. This allows pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Units in each year group are organised into four core areas: drawing; painting and mixed-media, sculpture and 3D and craft and design.

Our units fully scaffold and support essential and age appropriate, sequenced learning. Creativity and independent outcomes are robustly embedded, supporting students in learning how to make their own creative choices and decisions, so that their art outcomes, whilst still being knowledge-rich, are unique to the pupil and personal. Our lessons are always practical in nature and encourage experimental and exploratory learning with pupils using sketchbooks to document their ideas.

Strong subject knowledge is vital for staff to be able to deliver highly effective and robust lessons. Each of the units available on KAPOW include a teacher video in order to develop subject knowledge of support ongoing CPD.

Impact

Our curriculum is designed in such a way that children are involved in evaluation, dialogue and decision making about the quality of their outcomes and the improvements they need to make. By taking part in our regular discussions and decision making processes, children will not only know facts and key information about art, but they will be able to talk confidently about their own learning journey, have higher metacognitive skills and have a growing understanding of how to improve.

The impact of the KAPOW scheme can be constantly monitored by the use of both formative and summative assessment. Each unit includes a quiz and ‘knowledge catcher’ which can be used at the start and end of each unit.

After the implementation of Kapow Primary’s Art and design scheme, pupils should leave primary 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.

The expected impact of following the Kapow Primary Art and design scheme of work is that children will:

• Produce creative work, exploring and recording their ideas and experiences.
• Be proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques.
• Evaluate and analyse creative works using subject-specific language.
• Know about great artists and the historical and cultural development of their art.
• Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the National curriculum for Art and design.