Art
Before a child talks, they sing. Before they write, they draw. As soon as they stand, they dance. Art is fundamental to human expression.
PHYLICIA RASHAD
Art and Design - The Capel Way
As Pablo Picasso said, “Every child is an artist” and our intent at Capel Manor Primary School
is for every child to believe this.
Our Curriculum has currently been designed in collaboration with artists from Bow Arts - A community arts organisation. The intention of our curriculum is to move away from the disproportionate focus on predefined output and to provide children with the opportunity to practise their skills, trial and test their own ideas, as well as explore the style and methods of historical, contemporary and multicultural artists. Our Art curriculum provides children with the opportunity to express themselves emotionally, spiritually and culturally and in this way it can support their understanding of themselves as individuals.
An Exploratory Approach
At Capel, children are taught art as an exploratory process. Children are given the time to be exposed to and ‘explore’ materials before producing art work - time to ‘play’ with pencils, charcoal, acrylic paint pens etc.
During their learning, children are provided with a caring, positive and supportive environment thus creating an atmosphere of safety in the sessions in order to foster the children’s willingness to take creative risks.
In order to ensure a diverse curriculum offer as well as space and time for in-depth learning, the Capel Curriculum is focuses on the following Art disciplines:
- Collage
- Design
- Digital
- Drawing
- Painting
- Sculpting
In each of the above disciplines, key knowledge and skills have been mapped out throughout the curriculum to ensure progression of learning between year groups across the school.
To support the creative process, the key knowledge and skills are structured through the following 5 areas:
- Attention,
- Observation
- Imagination
- Contextualisation
- Reflection
When exploring Art, children gain experience using a range of non-traditional as well as traditional tools such as twigs, plants, seeds as well as pencils and chalk.
The use of sketchbooks
The sketchbook is very important as a place where children can record their ideas, their thinking, their evaluations, their experimentation, as well as their individuality. As the work is predominantly visual and subjective, there is no right or wrong answer with the work produced.
The main purpose of sketchbooks:
- Develop children as artists and designers.
- Explore ideas.
- Experiment without feeling it is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.
- Soundboard designs and consider choices.
- Gain confidence in their abilities and not judge harshly what they produce.
- Reflect to improve learning and to celebrate what they are doing successfully.
At Capel, we encourage “Mythbusting” as a part of the teaching process. See example below:
Vocabulary and Oracy
Throughout their learning in Art and Design, there is also a focus on enhancing outcomes
through the development of children’s vocabulary and oracy. Through an age related progression of “Expectations for Talk” children learn to:
- Listen and respond appropriately to adults and their peers
- Ask Relevant Questions to extend understanding and knowledge
- Use Relevant Strategies to build vocabulary related to class topics
- Articulate and justify answers, arguments and opinions
- Consider and evaluate different viewpoints, and build on others’ contributions
- Actively Participate in discussions and interact with listeners
- Select and use appropriate registers for effective communication
- Become confident and clear communicators
Have a look and see what fantastic projects we have been completing!
Building a Nest - Focus: Sculpture
Art and Geometry Fusion
