Shirehampton Art and Design
At Shirehampton Primary School, we believe that Art and Design provides children with opportunities to explore their creativity, express their ideas and develop their own individual responses to the world around them.
Our Art and Design curriculum enables children to experience a wide range of materials, techniques and artistic processes. Through carefully sequenced learning, children build their knowledge and skills over time while developing confidence, curiosity and creativity.
Children learn about a diverse range of artists, designers and craftspeople and explore how art has been created across different cultures, communities and periods of history.
Our Art and Design Curriculum
Our Art and Design curriculum is designed to develop children's knowledge, skills and creativity progressively from the Early Years through to Year 6.
Children have opportunities to explore and develop skills in areas including:
- Drawing
- Painting
- Sculpture
- Collage and mixed media
- Colour
- Pattern
- Texture
- Line
- Shape
- Form
- Space
Children revisit and build upon skills throughout their time at Shirehampton, allowing them to practise techniques, develop greater control and make increasingly independent creative choices.
Alongside developing practical skills, children learn to observe carefully, explore ideas, experiment with materials and reflect upon and evaluate their own work.
Artists, Designers and Creative Inspiration
Children encounter the work of a diverse range of artists, designers and craftspeople throughout our Art and Design curriculum.
They explore artwork from different periods, cultures and traditions and consider how artists communicate ideas, experiences and perspectives through their work.
Children are encouraged to respond to the work they encounter, ask questions, make connections and use what they have learned to inspire their own creative choices.
We want children to understand that there is no single way to be an artist and that creativity can take many different forms.
Sketchbooks provide children with a space to explore, experiment and develop their ideas.
Children use their sketchbooks to practise techniques, investigate materials, record observations and develop ideas before creating finished pieces.
Sketchbooks are a working record of children's creative thinking and allow them to revisit previous learning, reflect on their work and see how their skills and ideas develop over time.
How We Assess Art and Design
Assessment in Art and Design takes place throughout teaching and learning.
Teachers use children's practical work, sketchbooks, discussions and responses to activities to understand what children know, can do and remember.
Assessment focuses on children's developing knowledge and skills rather than judging artistic ability or comparing one child's finished artwork with another's.
Teachers use assessment to identify what children have understood and inform future teaching and opportunities to revisit or develop important skills.
Art and Design Curriculum Handbook
Our Art and Design Curriculum Handbook sets out how learning develops progressively across the school, including the knowledge and skills children develop as they move through each year group.
→ Art and Design Curriculum Handbook