Art
Our Art curriculum vision is:
For children to see art as an artist's representation of how they see and understand the world at a given point and to create their own art with the intention of representing their own understanding.
At Birkbeck, we believe that Art is not just about expressing feelings and emotions about events, life and the world around us but also offering a unique opportunity to reflect on how we understand the world around us to be and how others' understanding may be different from our own.
Our curriculum coverage posters provide information about which units are taught in which year groups and the order in which they are taught. You can view the Art one below:
Our Art curriculum is structured around key threads of concept that are strategically developed and revisited as children move through the curriculum. This allows us to deepen knowledge strategically and to show children the vast array of connections that exist between different forms and periods of art. Children's understanding also enables them to take control over the styles and techniques that they use themselves in their own pieces and when analysing these pieces. You can read more about how each concept thread is developed below:
curriculum narrative art docx.pdf
Below you can see the development of our key concept threads in grid form so that you can see how each one is progressed and developed as children move through the school.
art curriculum thread development table.pdf
The document below provides a summary of what the children learn about during each unit of work from Year 1 to Year 6 as their knowledge and skills deepen and develop.
curriculum content by subject art.pdf
Lesson delivery
Every Art lesson begins with a retrieval practice starter which has the aim of activating prior knowledge around the concept thread which the lesson to come is focused on.
Every lesson also includes clarification of any technical vocabulary to be used in the lesson. This always takes place before the main lesson content begins.
All Art lessons are delivered in line with our overall principles of teaching and learning and with our Principles of Art teaching. These are the principles that we believe underpin truly great teaching and learning, specifically in the context of Art teaching. You can read about these in our Art implementation guide below. This document also details which units of work children study in which terms of each year.
art implementation guide docx.pdf
Celebrating Art
At Birkbeck, we pride ourselves on our academic outcomes but we also believe that there is far more to an education than that and we are proud of the offering we have for our pupils in the arts subjects. We want all of our pupils to be confident artists and to be proud when they excel in this area. This is why when you walk around school, you will see examples of children's work framed on our walls like an art gallery. We believe that this kind of celebration of pupils' work raises expectations and ambition and reminds our school community of how highly we value creativity.
Assessment
We assess Art once per term. Children complete an assessment based on the key concepts that have been taught in the unit of work being assessed. This is combined with a subjective assessment on the extent to which the key practical skills of the unit have been acquired and are evident in the final piece. The assessments take place in week two of the preceding term to allow for some forgetting to have taken place. This means that we can rely more certainly on the robustness of knowledge that children have remembered. It also means that we can use the assessment as learning opportunity in itself because the act of thinking hard to remember previously taught knowledge actually increases the retrieval strength of that piece of knowledge, meaning that it is easier to retrieve the next time round.
The outcomes from assessments inform our judgements about whether or not a child is meeting the expected standard for a year group but more importantly, they identify gaps in their knowledge that we need to address. The most common gaps are revisited as starter activities for the following six weeks to give children an opportunity to consolidate and re-learn the knowledge a second time.
We also utilise the testing effect (the act of actively trying to remember previously taught knowledge to apply it) on a weekly basis with our 'Early Afternoon Work'. For example, if Art is taught on a Monday then on a Thursday, (3 days after the teaching), children will have a question on the board for them to get on with when they come in from lunch that tests how well they have remembered the content taught on the Monday. Teachers then provide feedback to ensure that the correct understanding has been processed by all children.
