St Mark's Eccles C.E. Primary School

Art

'Every child is an artist.'- Pablo Picasso

Our school vision underpins our art curriculum, enabling children to grow and flourish into creative, collaborative, expressive and reflective artists who respect and support each other through their artistic learning journey.

Intent

At St Mark’s we want our children to appreciate and value the importance of art as a highly subjective and individual experience, but one which is also capable of bringing people together. We would like to develop children’s artistic talents allowing them to grow and flourish so that they have no limits to what their artistic ambitions could be.

We equip our pupils with the skills required to have an understanding of the elements of art, the language of art and design and to understand its value when exploring other cultures and times in our history. Our aim is to ensure that children are confident approaching artwork, feel a strong sense of achievement and value the impact of art within our own lives.

Implementation 

Art is seen as a means of communication through a variety of skills that are taught and developed in their own right. Therefore, lessons at St Marks are carefully planned in line with the National Curriculum, Access Art and our self-developed ‘Pilgrim Progress’ assessment procedures. This important spine allows us to manage our split classes and plan a clear cycle of topics and learning that begins with an individual child's starting point. 

Our Art and Design curriculum has been structured in a cross-curricular way to provide maximum inspiration to our artists and teachers create a positive attitude to Art and Design to encourage all children to reach their full artistic potential. 

At St Marks, each of our artists has their own sketch book, in which they can record ideas, practise new techniques and to further refine their skills. These sketchbooks journey through the school and exemplify the children's growing skills and techniques.

Art is celebrated throughout the school in the form of displays and galleries. We also encourage our children to use our beautiful school grounds and local area as a source of inspiration for their own artwork.

For those children with additional, identified needs or a barrier to learning we adapt our teaching in many different ways. including:

  • modelling examples of skills and step by step processes showing a variety of outcomes
  • visual aids / actions / symbols 
  • pre-teaching of new vocabulary/ visual wordbanks
  • extra space to work
  • a broader selection/ larger scale of resources eg chunkier paintbrushes
  • use of sentence starters
  • frames or adhesives to hold down learners' work to surfaces
  • pictorial examples

Impact

The impact of our art and design curriculum can be seen not only in our children’s sketch books but also through the use of art displays in classrooms and around the school which highlight the importance of the art curriculum to our children’s personal development in creativity, independence, judgement and self-reflection.

Everything we do is with the child in mind, and strong relationships are built between pupils and staff which create an atmosphere for learning which is conducive to success. Children will leave St Mark’s knowing that it is okay to make mistakes along their journey, they will think for themselves and be critical about their own and other’s work- knowing how they can improve it or knowing when to stop if they are satisfied with their creative work.

By the end of each Key Stage, children can apply and understand the skills, knowledge and processes they have been taught so that they are proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft, and design techniques. Assessment is based on our Pilgrim Progress, which is shared across out Multi-Academy Trust.

Art Displays at St Marks

 

 

Art at St Marks

 

Pupil Voice

What do St Mark's children think about art?

How do you feel in art lessons?

'I feel relaxed in art lessons because you can express your feelings when you are drawing or painting. It helps me relieve my feelings' Zach 

'I feel calm because we have music on and art takes me somewhere else' Jazmyn 

'Art is calming because it's quiet, focused and you only have to think about your art and nothing else' Molly 

What skills have you learnt in art?

'I've learnt how to sketch 2-point perspective drawings and used different pencils to create different shades. I've also learned how to blend oil pastels.

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