Art Curriculum at Mengham Junior School
Art at Mengham Junior School stimulates children’s imagination and their creativity. Art teaching promotes children to carefully observe and to appreciate art represented throughout the world in an engaging and accessible way. Children explore ideas and meanings through studying the work of artists and designers. Artists ideas also inspire and help children at Mengham to understand and appreciate art. Through learning art, they can explore the impact it has had on contemporary life and on different periods and cultures throughout the world. All children enjoy art and, the hope is that they will always be able to draw on the creativity they have tapped into, whether it is working in the arts, or using the creative thinking and skills they have learnt in other fields.
At Mengham Junior School, we will achieve this by teaching an art curriculum that enables the children to develop their observational and technical skills. Every child has an art sketchbook, which are used to support their Learning Journey and enable them to realise that art is a process that grows from an initial stimulus, developed until the creative idea is completed. Children become part of the artistic community by learning about well-known and less well-known names from art history and today. These artists provide inspiration for them, helping them develop their technical skills and their own artistic styles. Mengham Junior school is very aware of how art can connect to the community around them and, when possible, the whole school enjoys being part of the Hayling Island Arts Trail every spring. Units have also been planned which enable children to make use of the school grounds and surroundings in their art work. Mengham offers an after-school art club to allow the children further opportunities to share and appreciate each other’s talents and abilities. A dedicated art room in school ensures the children can experiment with a range of different media. Trips to an art gallery with workshops give the children historical background while extending their art skills.
By the end of their time with us, pupils will have learned, improved and embedded a range of artistic skills. By practising art, they also improve their memory, cognitive and motor skills as well as mastering drawing, painting and other craft and design skills. In conjunction with teaching technical artistic skills, children have support, if necessary, to overcome their feelings that they are not good artists, and to understand that their work is valuable to themselves and valued by others. The children will have expanded their art knowledge, having experienced different styles of art around the world, learning and discovering new, and established, artists. Pupils at Mengham should be confident to explore, experiment and take risks. They learn to place value on the process and the journey they take, not just on the finished outcome. Most importantly, we want children at Mengham to have found and enjoyed a creative outlet, a means of self-expression that they will take with them into the future.
Curriculum Map – Art
Skills Progression in Art