Art

What is it to be like to be in an Art Lesson at Calder Vale St John School?

Our art curriculum is based around the National Curriculum and will take the children on a journey of creative self expression from nursery to year 6. They will explore and experience working with a wide range of mediums and draw inspiration from a range of artists working at different times and places. Through accessing the curriculum we aim that by the time every child leaves primary school they can feel as if they have found an area of the visual arts that is relevant and engaging to them – that might be through drawing, or making, or designing, or talking about art. Children will draw on their growth mindset skills to evaluate and improve their techniques during the creative process. It is designed to be an engaging and stimulating curriculum, which will allow the children to develop their drawing, painting, collage, printing, textile and sculpture skills which can then be transferred to other areas to help them thrive in Key Stage 3 and beyond.

We teach art using the broad, rich, contemporary & diverse Access Art Curriculum to allow children the opportunity to investigate not only varied artists and their work but also the techniques needed to create an original piece of art. Lessons create as many different kinds of learning opportunities as possible so that each child can find the thing which strikes a chord with them. That means covering lots of different disciplines, techniques, materials and approaches. In practice, that might mean one day a child is practising observational drawing skills, another day they are working from their imagination making larger scale images, and another day they are discussing as a class how the context in which art is presented can change it’s meaning. The richness and relevance of experience makes learning memorable and impactful. When a child leaves Year 6 and you ask them “What does being creative mean to you?” we want them to be able to answer with confidence and self-knowledge.