Art and DT
At Ash Grove Academy, we value Art and Design and Design Technology as important elements of our children’s education.
In the Early Years, children explore and use media and materials as part of the Expressive Arts and Design Framework. Using the National Curriculum Art and Design and Design and Technology Programmes of Study, we have planned a spiral curriculum for Years One to Six where units of work are linked and build progressively across year groups. This allows children to revisit their previous learning experiences and supports greater retention of knowledge and skills. A focus artist, designer or design technique has been chosen across a range of units, which ensures that by the end of Year Six, pupils have a wealth of cultural capital to aid their future studies.
Art and Design
Art and Design is a key subject in building children's ability to express themselves creatively and to be inspired by the wealth of human achievement and culture. The art curriculum for Years One to Six is built around four strands – drawing, colour (painting), printing and sculpture. Children revisit these strands and progressively develop their understanding and skills as they move up the school. Each unit of work has a focus artist or technique, and the children start by evaluating and critiquing these creative works before using them as inspiration for their own pieces, allowing them to express their creativity and practise the new skills they have acquired.
We have recently achieved our gold level Artsmark award, which demonstrates our commitment to arts and cultural education.
Design and Technology
Through our Design and Technology curriculum, we encourage the children to design, make and evaluate products for a purpose, using creativity and imagination. Our curriculum provides children with opportunities to develop their design and engineering skills to explore current products on the market, build prototypes and develop their own design criteria, testing, evaluating and adapting as they go. The Design and Technology curriculum for Years One to Six is based on four strands – textiles (weaving and sewing), structures, mechanisms and systems, and food technology. Each unit of work gives children the opportunity to explore the functional and aesthetic properties of a range of products and use this as inspiration for their own work. The children apply the ‘evaluate, design, make, evaluate’ cycle, creating prototypes and exploring a range of materials and joining techniques across the units. Each strand builds on the children’s previous learning, allowing them to revisit and therefore retain the vocabulary, knowledge and skills already learnt, as they develop and apply their understanding of more complex and intricate techniques.
Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page to see the Ash Grove subject-specific vocabulary progression document.
