ART CURRICULUM AIMS at GIA

At Glasshoughton Infant Academy experiences are at the heart of all learning where children have ‘hands on’ learning opportunities through real life objects, visitors or visits. Children are immersed in thematic learning based on an interleaving curriculum where new knowledge is taught, learned, remembered, revisited and applied by children ‘being’ an Artist or Designer.

At Glasshoughton Infant Academy we believe that language development is vital for all children. We have high aspirations and support them to ‘be’ in their learning. The experiential and interleaving approach ensures that language is used by all stakeholders, including parents. Children develop good comprehension of the words they are using and are able to use them in context and accurately as part of their real learning.

We are a ‘talk rich’ school: talk is central to our curriculum and to the way our pupils learn. Children learn through talk. We believe oracy (the ability to communicate effectively) is a central means of extending pupils’ linguistic, social, emotional and cognitive development; it is key to the progress and attainment of all pupils across all areas of the curriculum.

Retrieval practice is planned for daily through ‘speak like an expert’ where children are expected to retrieve knowledge that has been previously taught as a strategy to support them to move learning from the short term to the long-term memory.

At Glasshoughton Infant Academy we Know that Art, craft and design embody some of the highest forms of human creativity.  A high-quality art and design education should engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design. As pupils progress, they should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of Art and Design. They should also know how Art and Design both reflect and shape our history, and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our Nation. This knowledge and experience will cultivate a cultural capital and prepare children for the next step in their education.

To create:

• Successful learners who enjoy learning, make at least expected progress with some children making better than expected progress to achieve excellence.
• Confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives.
• Responsible citizens who can make a positive contribution to society.
• Individuals who have been exposed to a wide range of artistic experiences that allow them to express their informed opinions and individuality.
• A developmental curriculum which engages children in authentic learning experiences that reflect the individual needs of all children, including disadvantaged and pupil premium, ensuring no child is left behind.
• Children who are clearly able to explain and articulate their learning, using accurate vocabulary and terminology.
• Successful learners who build upon previous learning in order to access new knowledge and skills, retrieving learning and applying it in different contexts. 
• Confident communicators who are able to explain and record their learning from across the curriculum and present it to a variety of audiences.
• Opportunities to learn outside of the classroom through home learning, minimising the possibility of children falling behind due to unforeseen time off school.
• Children will be expected to apply their artistic skills in a range of contexts across the curriculum in order to deepen their understanding of a range of artistic skills and techniques.

It is essential that the Art and design curriculum is organised in such a way that it provides learners with the opportunity to learn expected behaviours and be successful in their learning so that we can deliver our mission and aims.

Strategic Intent

The breadth and depth of the curriculum is designed to:

• Create an aspirational high achievement culture which allows pupils to develop as confident, responsible citizens;
• Provide a coherent, structured, academic curriculum that leads to key concepts, ideas and knowledge expecting children to apply skills through a variety of experiences and planned learning opportunities;
•  To provide cultural capital, so children have a deep understanding, respect and tolerance of the world around them;
• Take in to account individual needs and styles where ALL children experience success;
• To prepare all pupils for the opportunities and experiences of the Art and design curriculum.

Aspirational high achievement culture

We have developed two curriculum drivers that shape our curriculum, bring about the aims and values of our school, and respond to the particular needs of our community:

• Aspirations – which help pupils to know their future possibilities and build aspirations for their lives.
• Experiences – The school provides memorable experiences which help children to engage actively in their learning by providing real ‘hands on’ experiences, supported by exploration and investigation to make links and sense of their learning, supplemented by shared experiences provided by visitors and visits to the wider community, to link to the wider world.

Coherently planned academic curriculum

Underpinned by our two curriculum drivers our academic curriculum sets out:

• A clear breadth of topics and outcomes that will be covered
• The procedural knowledge that children will learn alongside the disciplinary knowledge that they will gain.
• Criteria for understanding the progression and sequences of learning and concepts to support retention of key knowledge
• Criteria for depth of understanding through retrieval practice and new knowledge.

Cultural Capital

Cultural capital is the background knowledge of the world pupils need to infer meaning from what they read. It includes vocabulary which, in turn, helps pupils to express themselves in a sophisticated, mature way.

Individuals

The curriculum is designed for all children to maximise their potential. This is achieved through carefully considered developmental curriculum that progresses in such a way to ensure that individual needs, strengths and next steps are built upon to ensure no child, including those who are pupil premium, SEND or disadvantaged, fall behind. At Glasshoughton Infant Academy, we understand that the assessment of learning provides vital intelligence in regards to target teaching and children’s next steps to ensure they succeed in their learning. Pre-teaching and Same Day Intervention are two strategies that are consistently applied across school to support children to experience success.

Sustained Mastery

Nothing is learned unless it rests in pupils’ long-term memory. This does not happen, and cannot be assessed, in the short term. Assessment therefore answers two main questions: How well are pupils coping with the curriculum content? And how well are they retaining previously taught content?  Consequently, at Glasshoughton Infant academy we provide children with lots of opportunities to revisit and practise conceptual knowledge and understanding. This is assessed at the beginning of the lesson whereby the children are given the opportunity to ‘speak like an expert’. Feedback is given in a timely manner and acted upon to ensure that children are addressing misconceptions and monitoring the children’s long-term memory capacity. The use of cold and hot assessment tasks support assessment of progression and further next step identification.

The impact of the curriculum is assessed at 3 assessment points:

• Assessment point 1 – 28th November 2022
• Assessment point 2 – 13th March 2023
• Assessment point 3 – 10th July 2023

This will support teachers to highlight clear next steps for individuals and support leaders in school in their professional dialogue around progress, CPD, subject knowledge, outcomes and lines of enquiry to follow. Impact of the curriculum is triangulated through skills, knowledge and the ability to communicate the learning.

Curriculum Implementation

• Clear planned pathway to progress from on entry to nursery to the end of key stage 1 and beyond, accelerating progress in all sequences of learning.
  • Learning is most effective with spaced repetition
  • Interleaving helps pupils to discriminate between topics and aids long term retention.
  • Retrieval of previously learned content is frequent and regular, which increases both storage and retrieval strength.

• Effective communication is a vital skill which children are taught in order for them to demonstrate their learning from across the curriculum in a variety of different ways, including verbally and through written recordings. 
• ‘Speak like an expert’ is explicitly planned into every lesson to support daily and weekly retrieval practice where learning moves from the short term to longer term memory.
• ‘Sticky knowledge’ is key to ensure lessons are learning focused, with an emphasis on the development of children’s vocabulary. This allows children to confidently communicate their learning as an Artist.
• Application of learning in a variety of forms allows children to demonstrate that their learning has been retained long term.
• Children are provided with many opportunities to practise their learning in different contexts to ensure it is embedded into the long-term memory.

• Children are expected to explore a wide range of accomplished artists, the skills in which they use and the way in which the came to their final piece of art. These artists are chosen carefully by the teachers to ensure they provide coherent links between the skills they are learning.

• Children will be expected to unpick the processes in which an established artist goes through in order to create a piece of art. This will ensure they understand all stages of artistic design and effect and why for example, the background needs producing first before the foreground. This will also inform their own processes when expected to create their own art work. The children will be able to expertly create art work through a systematic approach due to their exploration of process.
• of art to ensure children are developing a wide appreciation of the subject and skills and foster their cultural capital.
• As well as exploring procedural approaches to art, the children will be exposed to a wide range of tools and materials that specific artists use. This will give the children a full understanding of the difficulties that an artist faces when using a resource and allow them to problem solve in order to achieve a desired effect.

• The skills in which the children will learn will be developmental and ensure that progression is made from nursery to year2. 
• Children will be expected to imitate, innovate and invent to ensure that they are fully confident with a skill before having the opportunity to explore and develop the skill further.
• Application of learning in a variety of forms allows children to demonstrate that their learning has been retained in the long term.

• The children will be fully immersed in the style and genre of the artist they are studying. They will have the opportunity to use a wide range subject specific tools for example clay tools for sculpting, materials and resources. This will give the children a full understanding of the difficulties that an artist faces when using a resource and to problem solve in order to achieve the desired effect.
• As children become skilled using a range of tools they will be able to reason through their ideas and choice of tools in order to create their desired effect.
• There should be depth before breadth.  Maximise learning time in all subjects and consider the subject specific skills, knowledge and vocabulary required.
• Additional time is given to English and Mathematics to ensure that students have the essential skills needed for life and to access the full curriculum, especially harnessing Reading as a tool for independent learning across the curriculum. Phonics is taught within a specific programme to create effective readers and writers in all curriculum areas.
• As artists, the children will be consistently expected to retrieve a range of curriculum skills in order to effectively communicate their knowledge and understanding. For example, retrieving mathematical vocabulary to explore perspective, relative size and measuring resources required as part of their art lessons.
• Targeted support and additional challenge to ensure all learners make at least national rates of progress from their starting points and over time, including Pupil Premium, SEND and Disadvantaged children.

• Ensure all students’ progress is in line with national expectations and learners and their teachers are ambitious to achieve more through deeper learning opportunities.
• Home learning is essential in minimising lost learning due to time away from school. It is planned in line with the curriculum so that no child falls behind.

• Some of our content is subject specific, whilst other content is combined in a cross-curricular approach.
• There should be depth before breadth.  Maximise learning time in Art and consider the subject specific skills, knowledge and vocabulary required.

• Continuous provision, in the form of daily routines, replaces the teaching of some aspects of the curriculum and, in other cases, provides retrieval practise for previously learned content. For example, seasonal change in science is taught as a daily routine with comparisons to other parts of the world.
• Suspended learning in blocks of time where core principles in a range of curriculum areas including, health, RE, SMSC & RSHE, Heritage weeks, Creative allow children to spend a focussed block of time immersed in a depth of knowledge linked to all subject areas.
• To support induction and transition points across the Primary years for all learners and their carers.
• The curriculum is further enriched and boosted through the wide variety of after curricular activities that are available for the infant children including music classes where they learn to play an instrument, sports coaching, MFL, craft and creative clubs, computing and coding club. All children are invited to attend the clubs through an open invitation and specific children, including our most vulnerable children, are contacted individually to ensure they have had an involvement in at least one of our clubs. 

The Curriculum

We have a very broad Primary Curriculum covering 12 subjects meeting all the national curriculum requirements.

• Produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences 
• Become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques .
• Evaluate and analyse creative works using the language of art, craft and design 
• Know about great artists, craft makers and designers, and understand the historical and cultural development of their art forms. 
• Develop a range of artistic skills.

Children are provided with as many opportunities as possible to write for an audience and a purpose in a range of subject areas. Children are taught that verbal and written communication skills are imperative in order to access learning opportunities from across the curriculum.

Classroom displays support learning consistently throughout school and celebrate children’s achievements as an Artist and the contextual understanding they have been immersed in to understand the artists intention and stylistic approaches. These encourage children to reflect on their knowledge and celebrate their skills as an artist. 

Sequential schemes of learning with clear and progressive learning objectives for all Art lessons allows for children to build upon prior knowledge and skills. A progressive curriculum ensures that current learning opportunities are based upon children’s previous learning, knowledge they have retained previous lessons or the previous year group and links to year group expectations.

‘Sticky knowledge’ is carefully planned for each lesson across the curriculum, linked to the learning objective, and is progressive across a sequence of learning. This ensures that children are explicitly clear about what they are learning during each session and how previous learning will help them to develop new knowledge and skills. Children’s learning is communicated to them clearly, at the start of every lesson, to allow them to develop an understanding of why they are being taught what they are being taught at that particular time; how previous learning will help them and what the outcome will be at the end of the sequence. ‘Sticky knowledge’ also provides children with the correct vocabulary and terminology needed in order to effectively communicate their learning.

Emphasis on vocabulary that is Art and design specific is shared with all stake holders including parents. This is shared with parents termly. Children are taught that verbal and written communication skills are imperative in order to access learning opportunities from across the curriculum.

A variety of strategies are taught at GIA in order to allow ALL pupils to become successful artists as we have an understanding that not all children learn in the same way. This ensures that no children, including pupil premium and disadvantaged are left behind and achieve their full learning potential.  

Additional support is provided for children who are not meeting their targets through bespoke small group intervention led by highly skilled professionals. This is monitored through pupil progress meetings and SMART targets to ensure the impact of the intervention is as anticipated in a timely manner. 

Suspended learning – When the normal lesson timetable is suspended, take place during the year.  These days allow children to learn in different ways such as off site, with external providers or using different curriculum approaches.   These days’ cover subjects such as Staying Safe, British Values, hook days/trips/visitors etc

The curriculum is further enriched and boosted through the wide variety of after curricular activities that are available for the infant children including music classes where they learn to play an instrument, sports coaching, MFL, craft and creative clubs, computing and coding club. All children are invited to attend the clubs through an open invitation and specific children, including our most identified vulnerable children are contacted individually to ensure they have had an involvement in at least one of our clubs.  Children are also given enrichment opportunities to provide a broad and balanced curriculum. This may be in the form of theme days, trips, visitors etc.

Home learning opportunities have been carefully planned and resourced, to ensure children who are learning remotely from home, receive the same carefully planned and progressive curriculum that is on offer at school. All children have a right to an education and we do not want to allow any child fall behind so there is an expectation that home learning is shared with class teachers to ensure progress is being made and that no child falls behind. The children will be expected to share their learning with their class teacher via Tapestry or class Dojo. The children will receive bespoke feed back in response tot heir learning in line with what they would receive in school to ensure that excellent progress is being made and the even better if culture that is being developed in school is being consistently applied and installed in all pupils.

Curriculum Impact

Children are tracked throughout the year ensuring they are on track to reach the national expectations within the subject, focusing on a triangulated approach of knowledge, skills and communicating their learning both verbally and in written form. The impact of the curriculum is that by the end of the year, the vast majority of children have sustained mastery of the content, that is, they remember it all and are fluent in it. Some children will have reached a greater depth of understanding where they can apply their learning.

The curriculum design will facilitate all children within our school to ensure they are clear about their learning and are able to confidently communicate their learning using accurate vocabulary and terminology from across the curriculum. Children will be able to communicate in a variety of different contexts and talk about work displayed in classrooms, in books and on home learning apps during regular pupil discussion. Ultimately, children will be confident to communicate their learning as an artist, both verbally and in the written form, using accurate vocabulary.

Finally, a developmentally progressive curriculum, whereby children build upon their prior learning and knowledge, ensures that no child, including pupil premium, SEND and disadvantaged children, are left behind. All children have the tools to reach their full learning potential.