MEET OUR SUBJECT LEADER

Miss Duerden is our Art subject leader. She is passionate about art and believes that it can be a powerful tool for self-expression, personal growth and learning. For Miss Duerden, art is not just about creating pictures; it's about encouraging children to think critically, solve problems and develop confidence in their own unique abilities. As the art subject leader, Miss Duerden feels that art is a vital part of the curriculum as it allows children to explore their imagination, express their emotions and develop skills that are transferable across all subjects. Through her leadership, she is striving to create a school culture where art is not only valued but celebrated as a key part of a child's overall development.

“You cannot use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou

Art is an important subject within the National Curriculum as it states that, ‘a high-quality art and design education should 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. Therefore, it is vital that all pupils are given numerous opportunities to use and develop their creativity and imagination including drawing, painting and sculpture. At St Barnabas and St Paul’s we have chosen Kapow Art to ensure all children:

• receive consistently high-quality learning
• experience a range of techniques and materials
• have teachers that, irrespective of their own personal skill or confidence levels can deliver quality lessons.

Through our Art curriculum, we aim to enable the children to let their light shine, this in turn should help them become:

• enthusiastic, curious and independent thinkers through being inspired by specialist artists that challenge and fire their imagination and thinking. Pupils are exposed to different perspectives through observation leading them to ask questions and make personal discoveries.
• motivated, reflective and resilient learners through the celebration of achievement at a variety of levels both in classrooms and across the whole school. We encourage pupils to develop confidence in their own abilities by self and peer assessing and listening to advice from others to achieve their goals using language associated with art and design.
• tolerant and responsible citizens through the understanding that everyone is unique and special. In art, pupils have access to cultural richness and diversity enabling them to appreciate and enjoy the arts that enrich lives in the world around us.

The scheme of work that we follow, Kapow Primary Art, is written by experts in their field and is designed to give pupils every opportunity to develop their ability, nurture their talent and interests, express their ideas and thoughts about the world, as well as learning about art and artists across cultures and through history.

To extend the children’s own creativity we have added in our own specific themed weeks for the children to design or invent their own pieces of work that may be inspired by the artists they have learnt about and incorporate the skills they have been developing.

Kapow Primary’s Art scheme of learning is designed with five strands that run throughout. These are:

• Using sketchbooks
• Generating ideas
• Making skills, including formal elements (line, shape, tone, texture, pattern, colour)
• Knowledge of artists
• Evaluating and analysing

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 our children 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
• Craft and design

Kapow Primary’s curriculum is designed in such a way that children are involved in the evaluation, dialogue and decision making about the quality of their outcomes and the improvements they need to make. By taking part in 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 Kapow Primary’s scheme can be consistently monitored through both formative and summative assessment opportunities. Each lesson includes guidance to support teachers in assessing pupils against the learning objectives.

After the implementation of the Kapow Primary Art scheme, our children should leave primary school equipped with a range of techniques and the confidence and creativity to form a strong foundation in art.

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.

An evidence record will be kept of the children’s experiences and progress in Art and design in the form of sketchbooks and photographs stored digitally. Using our progression of skills and knowledge document teachers are able to accurately assess the level of the children’s work. Attainment and progress are tracked using our whole school data programme.