St Thomas a Becket Catholic Primary School

Art and Design Policy ->here

·Intent

At St Thomas a Becket Catholic Primary our curriculum has been designed to promote art as a driver for creativity and individual expression.  We aim to promote cross curricular links, using Art as a lens through which to view history, scientific progress and cultures around the world.  In turn we encourage all our teachers to think creatively about how they teach other topics and allow the children opportunities to learn through creating wherever possible. We strive to make sure that children are exposed to a wide variety of artists that promote the diversity that is so important to our school and in the summer our art focusses heavily on our local coastal area. As always, our Catholic ethos permeates everything we do, from the kindness and respect with which we expect children to evaluate and comment on each other’s work to our topics relating to climate change, fair trade and sustainability which emphasis our responsibility to take care of the wonderful world god has made us. Our children are justly proud of their work and we give them opportunities to share their progress with parents every year through our Festival of Arts.  It is important to us that children take ownership of their learning and as such we regularly conduct pupil voice on Art, Design and Technology. Our hope is to inspire children to think creatively, have confidence in their skills and develop both a love of art and an individual style as they progress through the school.

Implementation

At St Thomas a Becket Catholic Primary we aim for all children to love art, be able to discuss it and give their opinions respectfully, be able to evaluate their own work and grow in skill year on year.  We support our young artists by:

• Employing a specialist PPA teacher who works with each class every other term
• Relating Art to their wider learning journey every term.
• Encouraging all staff to teach other subjects in a creative manner whenever possible, particularly through our termly rich texts. In Terms 5 and 6 our focus as a school is on thinking like an artist and teachers are expected to create lessons that support this.
• Creating a strong curriculum and progression of skills so that staff know what their children have learned in previous years and how they can improve.
• Choosing artists to introduce the children to that reflect both history and diversity.
• Engaging with the community for wider opportunities such as participating in Eastbourne’s Inspiring Angels project.
• Allowing our children to use a large variety of equipment stored in our KS1 and KS2 hubs.
• Engaging with the Artsmark Programme to improve our school still further and continue promoting Art across the school and the local community.
• Supporting SEN and EAL student to access art lessons through use of Widgit, task planners and other measures.
• Using ongoing formative assessment and verbal feedback to support all learners in line with our school approach to Assessment For Learning.