At Our Lady’s, we believe that the Creative Arts has a fundamental impact on pupils' emotional and social wellbeing, imagination, creativity, enquiry and develops their understanding of both the natural and synthetic world around them. It enables the children to respond and enjoy expressing their ideas, feelings and imagination freely using visual media, practical manipulative skills and their bodies in a creative way. We aim to develop a love of creative art which inspires children and increases self-confidence. We offer a curriculum that supports and promotes the culture of our school as well as giving pupils relevant and new experiences both inside and outside the school environment.

 

In Key Stages 1 and 2, the Creative Arts broad and balanced curriculum is taught as part of a topic in the Creative Curriculum, as well as in other curricular areas such as RE, English, Science and PE. This gives the children the chance to apply key skills in a range of contexts and enables children to recognise the role of creative art in their own and others’ lives, in contemporary life and in different times and cultures.

 

Creative activities in the Early Years Foundation Stage gives children opportunities to explore, express, communicate their ideas and use their imagination. Creativity is fundamental to successful learning.

 

We ensure that the personalisation of the Creative Arts curriculum meets the needs of all pupils, developing a deeper knowledge of the Arts and creating links with a range of areas in the curriculum. All children are given the opportunity to master skills through a broad curriculum and enriching learning experiences both inside and outside of school, building on skills previously learnt. Children are encouraged to develop an appreciation of the Arts through opportunities to study a range of music, classical composers, artworks and a range of visual artists. In creative art, children are given the time to explore and practise the key skills, as well as experimenting with the range of media which they should apply to their own pieces. The children working at greater depth in art will be able to share creative ideas, master the key skills and demonstrate their own style.  In music, children working at greater depth will be able to improvise and create their own music, often adding creativity to the task, as well as performing their work to others.  

 

Assessment

The primary purpose of assessment is to improve students' learning and teachers' teaching as both respond to the information it provides. Assessment for learning is an ongoing process that arises out of the interaction between teaching and learning in every lesson, as well as at the end of units of work.

 

When students are able to see how they are doing in a class, they are able to determine whether or not they understand the work covered. Assessment can also help to motivate students and to develop a growth mind-set.

 

At Our Lady’s, pupils are given regular opportunities to reflect upon and evaluate their own learning in the floor books. They self-assess against the key skills and knowledge across a range of media and evaluate their own and their peer’s work too.  The teacher assesses individual skills as well as providing an overall judgement of working towards expected, expected or greater depth, against the appropriate end of year expectations. 

 

We use planned, targeted questioning based on Bloom’s taxonomy. Pupils’ knowledge of the concepts covered in the programme of study may not be immediately apparent in the work they produce so staff use open questioning as a way to both assess understanding and develop the children’s grasp of concepts. ‘Why’ and ‘how’ questions are planned for and allow for informal assessment during lesson e.g. Why would that media work best?  How does this composer create excitement in his piece?

 

Pupils are then encouraged to use similar open-ended questions to allow them to focus on what they have learned, rather than only what they have done.