Our Learning / Art
At St. Margaret Clitherow School we aim to provide our pupils with opportunities to express their individual thoughts, ideas and interests whilst developing their artistic skills, taking inspiration from a range of artists and a variety of cultures.
The children enjoy an art lesson once a week during three half-terms a year, on rotation with their design and technology learning. This ensures our children have the time and space to study each topic in depth over a half-term.
The art scheme is designed with five strands that run throughout:
Generating Ideas
Using sketchbooks
Making skills (including formal elements)
Knowledge of artists
Evaluating and analysing
Units of lessons are sequential, allowing children to build their skills and knowledge, applying them to a range of outcomes. The formal elements, a key part of the national curriculum, are also woven throughout the units. Key skills are visited again and again with increasing complexity in a spiral curriculum model. This allows pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Units in each year group are organised into four core areas:
Drawing
Exploring mark-making in all its forms, experimenting with line, tone and texture and using a wide range of materials to express ideas as drawings. Using sketchbooks to record observations about the world as drawings. Learning how drawing is used by artists to develop and communicate their ideas creatively.
Painting and Mixed-Media
Developing proficiency in painting techniques (including exploring colour mixing), painting on a range of surfaces and applying drawing skills to painting projects. Using sketchbooks to practise painting methods and exploring the interplay between different media within a piece of artwork.
Sculptures and 3D
Constructing and creating models with a wide variety of materials, investigating ways to express ideas in three dimensions. Developing the ability to adapt ideas and designs in sketchbooks, moving from two dimensions into sculpture.
Craft and Design
Producing a wide range of creative work, becoming proficient in a range of making processes. Building on skills in photography, printmaking, textile art and digital media, and exploring design disciplines such as architecture and product design.
Creativity and independent outcomes are robustly embedded into our units, supporting pupils in learning how to make their own creative choices and decisions, so that their art outcomes, whilst still being knowledge rich, are unique to the students. Lessons are always practical in nature and encourage experimental and exploratory learning. Teachers differentiate their lessons to ensure that lessons can be accessed and enjoyed by all pupils and opportunities to stretch pupils’ learning are available when required.
As well as our timetabled lessons, KS2children also have the opportunity to join a lunchtime art club run by members of the Youth Leadership Team and an after-school art club run by an outside provider, 'My After School Art Club.'
Please follow the link to see some of the projects the children have been working on:
www.myafterschoolartclub.com/saturday-hitchin-gallery
We aim to ensure our children leave us with a range of techniques and the confidence and creativity to form a strong foundation for their art and design learning in KS3 and beyond.
We aim to ensure our children will:
Produce creative work, exploring and recording their ideas and experiences
Be proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques
Evaluate and analyse creative works using subject-specific language
Know about great artists and the historical and cultural development on their art
Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the national curriculum for art and design
Please scroll through the gallery below for a flavour of Art learning at our school
Talk About Art
One of the best ways to get your child excited about art is to be enthusiastic yourself.
Provide Materials
Encourage your child's interest in art by providing materials and a place to create art. Crayons, modelling clay, scraps of wool and fabric, different kinds of paper and found objects such as shells, twigs, buttons can be used to help your children make their own art. Provide a special place to work, such as an old table, and a drawer or shelf to store the materials.
Encourage Creativity
Help your child come up with original ideas and build upon them. You might do this by reading only the beginning of a story, then asking your child to draw a picture showing how the story might end. Or make a squiggle on a piece of paper and ask your child to use it as the beginning of a drawing.
