Our Art & Design Curriculum

At Hill View Junior Academy, we embed our GROW approach to the art curriculum and therefore have high expectations for all of our pupils and strive to ensure art is a totally inclusive subject in which all children can achieve and reach their potential. We are committed to delivering a high-quality Art curriculum which engages, inspires and challenges all pupils. Children have the opportunity to explore and evaluate different creative ideas developing skills in drawing, painting, printing, collage, textiles, 3D work and digital art. We follow the National Curriculum and structure our long term plans to support the topics being taught across the curriculum as well as ensuring clear progression occurs across the key stages. It is a broad and balanced curriculum ensuring a wide variety of artists are studied from a range of genders, socio-economic backgrounds, nationalities and races. We want the children to learn and appreciate great artists, craft makers and designers, and understand the historical and cultural development of their art forms. This also includes local artists, craft makers and designers. We plan to enhance our Art curriculum further by inviting local artists into school to lead workshops and by providing our children with the opportunity to display their artwork in our school gallery. Parents and carers will be invited to our gallery to admire the children’s work and see the progression across the year groups.

We teach Art through a knowledge-based curriculum. Skills are developed and built upon each year so that progression can be seen clearly across the school. All children are exposed to a range of media giving them the opportunity to explore, develop and embed their skills and understanding of that media, from our youngest children in Year 3 to our eldest in Year 6. Through, self and peer evaluation the children will discuss what they have done well and what they will need to continue to practise and develop in order to continue to improve their skills in that particular area. Teachers use formative assessment to support children’s development and within Year 3, children conduct a baseline assessment where fine motor skills, creativity and literacy levels are measured as these three areas underpin all curriculum progression and provide clear starting points to measure children's future progression from. At Hill View Junior Academy, we outline clear end points for the end of each year group, including both Lower and Upper Key Stages which have clear starting points and end points from which reliable judgements about pupils’ individual progression can be made. We follow a standardisation model, which involves taking photographic samples for ranges of attainment in drawing, painting and sculpture outcomes, which are used as benchmarks from which standards can be measured. As a school we practice a classroom-based circle time reflection model to identify ‘what went well’ and ‘even better if’, future learning targets. With our GROW mindset it is important to our school that we ensure individual pupil progression is the goal, not measuring pupil’s attainment ranked against each other, which demotivates pupils in art and design. We strive for children to develop resilience and experience opportunities to identify their strengths but also their own areas for development.

From Year 3 onwards, the children use sketchbooks to develop their skills. Sketchbooks provide a record of our children’s learning in art and they make our children more independent and confident artists. In them, children are able to articulate, externalise and organise their thoughts and explore, visualise, share and communicate their ideas. Children throughout our school use sketchbooks to record observational drawing and imaginative design activities, as well as studies of artists work, which are annotated to reflect pupils’ thoughts and opinions about the artists, as well as recording factual information. Sketchbooks are also used to record key vocabulary being learned, to record assessments and learning goals, and as personal drawing spaces, where children can develop motivation and a love of art outside of lesson time. We supply one of the local churches with art work for Christmas displays as well as sending art work to local care homes within our local community. All children can access art, craft and design clubs provided by the school across the year. These are organised by staff and external providers with specialist skills. Art is celebrated across the school with wonderful displays within classrooms and shared areas.