Art
As a school we believe that art stimulates creativity, imagination and inventiveness. Art is a subject that provides children with opportunities for expressing their imagination through a range of ways – from paintings to modelling.
Art provides opportunities to build on fine motor skills and enables children to learn about and decide what medium can best portray their imagination and enables children to communicate what they see, feel and think. Children should experiment with their ideas, their use of colour, texture, form, pattern and different materials and processes. Self evaluation of work is encouraged and children are taught how to be resilient to achieve their goals.
As a school, and in accordance with the National Curriculum’s expectations, we aim 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
Class teachers are responsible for teaching art and design technology, although we believe opportunities should be provided for professional artists/helpers to be involved in the teaching of the topic. We take every opportunity to develop links with outside agencies and experts, including secondary provisions, in order to enrich our Art and Design provision.
Our Art curriculum also teaches about how other people have achieved this to inspire and help build a wider appreciation of art around the world and in our society. Children should leave our school feeling confident with expressing their ideas, thoughts and feelings through a range of different ways, in addition to working both independently and in a team to meet specific requirements – two very important life skills.
At Milton Keynes Primary PRU, Art is taught across all year groups. Skills, such as using a medium, may be taught as an independent lesson first but learning eventually progresses into a cross-curricular activity where relevant to make learning meaningful and memorable and to consolidate knowledge and skills in all lessons links. For example, in Year 4 pupils will study Roman Art and its impact during this era but pupils will also use mosaic building as a way of expressing this. Some activities may also be taught independently away from a cross-curricular focus to ensure breadth and depth are covered and quality coverage of NC objectives.
One way of meeting this is through an Art Week, where all year groups focus on a specific objective and its historical impact, producing a piece of work related to this and sharing this with the wider community.