Art

'Creativity takes courage' - Henri Matisse

Art Curriculum Intent 

At Giles Junior School, all children will be given the opportunity to explore a wide variety of media, artists and artwork. They will then apply this learning to a range of art tasks. Children will develop their skills and knowledge each year, gradually building on prior learning, resulting in them feeling confident and proud of the artwork they produce.

At Giles Junior School, the art curriculum has been designed so that each year group gets to experience a range of media, whilst developing their skills within each media throughout their time at Giles as they are gradually built upon each year. As well as this, each year group has an allocated artist which focuses on a key media and allows for an in depth artistic study resulting in the children designing and creating their own unique artwork in the artist’s style.

Three key areas of art have been identified as being drawing, painting and sculpting. This is because each of these areas contain the opportunities for using multi-media, designing and creating varied artwork for alternate purposes, as well as studying famous artists and diving into the art history. Within these three areas, the skills and knowledge across each year group have been separated into the following strands: colour, shape and pattern, tone, texture, form, drawing, designing and responding to artefacts. This allows for each year group to cover all areas of the primary art curriculum independently or through cross-curricular links, delivering each section in small, manageable chunks which can be built upon gradually each year.

Due to the cultural capital of the children at Giles Junior School, it has been identified that only few children have been to an art gallery. Therefore, an art day will be held in the summer term each year for each year group, where an art gallery is created and parents are invited into school to visit and potentially purchase or take home their child’s artwork. This will provide the children a rich insight into art display and presentation, providing them with the fundamentals of the art society and the purpose and appreciation of great artwork.

At the end of each year, the children should have experienced a drawing, painting and sculpting unit which incorporate the skills and knowledge from each of the key strands mentioned above as well as exploring many artists and focusing on one in detail. The skills and knowledge are then built on throughout the year groups through the drawing, painting and sculpting units as the strand expectation advances. By the end Year 6, the children should have used a variety of different media each year, learning ways to manipulate it to create varied techniques and effects. They should have a sound knowledge of a range of artists and different artistic styles, understanding how to replicate these, as well as being able to gradually layer their knowledge and skills each year. This will result in each child feeling confident with art and their own artistic style as they have been exposed to a rich art curriculum throughout their time at Giles Junior School.