Art Leader: Mrs A Whincup

Our Art & Design curriculum is taught discretely through specific concepts and themes, which is underpinned by the accelerated learning approach to teaching and learning.

The key concepts, principles and themes have been developed from the National Curriculum into a range of progressive knowledge and skills through which the children are helped to grow and develop to succeed in 21st century Britain and ensure children know more and remember more. Our progressive document is split into 3 essential sections and shows the progression from transition (EYFS) to KS2, these are: drawing, painting and 3D sculptures.

This progressive curriculum allows a purposeful way of teaching and learning, enabling us to provide a more meaningful and sequential approach to the schema for Art & Design.

The Art and Design curriculum we offer is designed to meet the needs of all our pupils. It is rich, varied, imaginative and ambitious and meets the needs of individual learners by can easily be adapted for pupils with additional needs.

It is intentionally designed to cultivate a profound understanding and appreciation of art by exploring its diverse paradigms. We aim to broaden our pupils' perspectives beyond conventional notions of art, introducing them to the rich collection of Traditional, Modern and Contemporary art forms. This approach is woven throughout our curriculum, with pupils engaging in both practical and theoretical explorations of these paradigms. In doing so, they develop the critical disciplinary knowledge that enables them to decipher quality, value and the nature of artistic practice.

Our curriculum challenges pupils to consider:

• What is Art?
• What defines an Artist?

Through carefully curated experiences, students learn about the traditions of enquiry, modes of investigation and values inherent in each paradigm. This comprehensive approach allows pupils to appreciate how seemingly contradictory artistic expressions - from realistic paintings to abstract installations - can co-exist as valid forms of art. By fostering this understanding, we aim to develop our pupils' capacity to engage in meaningful discussions about art, cultivate their ability to experience and be affected by various art forms and build a robust framework of cultural capital. Ultimately, our intent is to nurture informed, appreciative and creatively empowered individuals who can navigate and contribute to the diverse landscape of art in their future lives.

At Summer Lane, lessons of art and design are taught discretely to ensure depth and rigour in artistic concepts and context. We want children to progress by building on their knowledge and skills each year. We believe that children should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of art and design. They should also know how art and design both reflect and shape our history, and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our nation. Our progressive documents reflect this and support our teachers to deliver appropriate lessons for the children they teach.

The Accelerated Learning Cycle, based on the work of Alastair Smith, is applied in all lessons. It stems from the idea of a supportive and challenging learning environment. The cycle has active engagement through multi- sensory learning, encourages the demonstrating understanding of learning in a variety of ways and the consolidation of knowing.

A gather, skills, apply approach to planning and delivery of lessons is taken across school to ensure children develop a deep understanding of specific skills and are able to apply these in a range of situations. This ensures that children learn how to work like an artist as well as acquiring the relevant knowledge and skills to be able to achieve this successfully.

Our curriculum is designed with a core focus on retrieval practice, recognising its pivotal role in helping students know more and remember more. This intent is actualised through a dual approach: integrated retrieval within individual lessons and a structured, subject retrieval practice rota. In-session retrieval activities are carefully crafted to reinforce key concepts and knowledge, promoting immediate recall and application. Complementing this, our weekly retrieval practice rota systematically revisits content across various subjects, ensuring spaced repetition and interleaving of crucial information. This comprehensive strategy aims to strengthen neural connections, facilitate the transfer of knowledge to long-term memory and build increasingly complex mental models. By embedding retrieval practice as a fundamental aspect of our curriculum, we strive to enhance our pupils' ability to retain, recall and apply their learning effectively, thereby fostering deeper understanding and more robust academic progress.

Our curriculum is ambitious for all pupils, including those children with SEND. Curriculum designers and teachers have high expectations of what SEND pupils can achieve and the curriculum is not diluted or unnecessarily reduced for SEND pupils. Every pupil is different and so what works for each pupil varies. Pupil’s individual needs are considered and adaptations are planned to ensure the success of pupils in all subjects.

The way that our curriculum is designed ensures that chunks of learning are sequenced in a coherent way to enable all pupils, including those with SEND, to build on prior knowledge. Too much information at once can be a barrier to learning which is one of the reason why we have chosen half termly curriculum drivers.

Where pupils are identified with having complex needs, it may be appropriate to provide a personalised curriculum which will be based on individual needs and will retain ambition for the pupil.

Where working memory is an issue for pupils, including those with SEND, we look to reduce extraneous load as much as possible as well as identifying key information when teaching. This helps pupils to pay attention to the content which they are expected to learn. Adaptations to support individual pupils will be recorded on personal school support plans.

We appreciate that it is not appropriate to adopt a one size fits all approach to SEND provision and in art, adaptations should be based on individual needs. Targeted teaching can be effective to ensure that individual pupils achieve specific goals, starting with identifying subject matter to support those pupils who struggle with abstract ideas. Time is also planned to ensure pupils with SEND are pre taught vocabulary to support their understanding. Teachers may need to make adaptations to ensure that SEND learners can access the curriculum, such as adjusting equipment or allowing additional time.

Formative assessment is ongoing throughout each lesson. It judges progress and enables teachers to make flexible adaptions to their planned teaching.

Through this regular ongoing assessment, tasks are matched to the ability of each child through adapted activities and including adult support, providing a level of challenge that is stimulating for pupils and questioning skills.

Alongside formative assessment, The curriculum document for art is regularly reviewed to identify any gaps or misconceptions to be addressed. This allows children to acquire complex skills that depends on the fundamentals of their prior knowledge in a well designed curriculum sequence.

Sketchbooks

At Summer Lane Primary School, each of our pupils have their own sketch books to document their personal journey for each unit of work, where they can record their feelings, thoughts and ideas; practice new techniques and to further refine their skills. These sketchbooks give our pupils the opportunity to study an existing piece of art or artist; create a constructive and reflective critique of this work and to use these ideas to develop their own piece of related art work. Artists from different eras and nationalities are studied throughout school to give our pupils a balanced understanding of art concepts and skills.