'Let all that you do be done in love'

1 Corinthians 16:14

Intent

At Great Milton Primary School we celebrate Art as a subject, to inspire and develop our children’s creative thinking, to encourage their imaginative flair and to support and develop their cultural understanding and emotional well-being. We motivate all our children to express their thoughts and emotions in an environment where they feel safe and where making mistakes and experimenting is how we learn.

We plan and teach sequenced art lessons based on skills, using a range of media (eg pencil, paint, clay, collage, digital) and give the children opportunities to support the learning from other areas of the curriculum, making the lessons relevant and meaningful. 

We take inspiration from great artists, architects and designers in history and enhance our curriculum further by providing our children with the opportunity to take part in whole school art displays to celebrate cultural events.

Implementation

At Great Milton we teach Art through a skills based curriculum. The skills are developed and built upon each year and all children are exposed to a range of media to give them the opportunity to explore, develop and embed these skills. During each lesson progress will be assessed in differing ways. Through the use of sketchbooks which the children take with them as they move up the school, we give the children an opportunity to reflect upon the progress that they have made through the years. During the lessons, teachers will use self and peer evaluation so that the children can discuss what they’ve done well, and what they need to continue to practise and develop in order to improve their skills. At Great Milton we want children to feel secure enough in their environment to be open to making mistakes. Art is a subject where opinions differ and therefore it’s important that children ‘have a go’ and become comfortable with taking risks to allow their creativity to really flow.

Impact

At the end of each school year, each child will have been exposed to a variety of new art skills and been able to develop these using different types of media. Previous skills will be reinforced and then built upon to develop understanding. Children will become comfortable expressing themselves creatively and experimenting freely to really allow their creativity to flow. As they move up the school, children will be able to develop their own preferences of media and styles as they will have been exposed to them during their time at Great Milton. Our approach of providing a safe and secure space for the children to feel secure enough to express themselves and make mistakes in art lessons, will extend to other area of their lives. Learning how to have a ‘growth mindset’ can support learning in all other areas of the curriculum and beyond.