Art & Design
Art and Design at Dalestorth
Art & Design Intent
At Dalestorth Primary and Nursery School, we teach Art & Design by meeting the requirements of the National Curriculum. Our aim is to engage and inspire pupils to experiment, invent and create their own works of art. They should know how Art & Design have shaped our history and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our nation. Art & Design is taught progressively throughout school, ensuring a build-up of knowledge and skills over time. We want children to develop independence in being able to identify their own areas for improvement in their artwork, evaluating their work effectively and making appropriate adaptations as necessary. Where appropriate, links are also made to ensure that children’s social, moral, spiritual and cultural development is enhanced through our teaching of Art & Design.
We aim to achieve this by teaching knowledge and skills through high-quality sequences of lessons, which are designed to help pupils develop their understanding of:
- Some of the world’s great artists.
- Vocabulary linked to the area of work.
- A range of techniques including drawing, painting and sculpture.
- Applying these techniques to produce their own creative artworks.
- Evaluating and thinking critically about their own and others’ work.
Subject Information
We have recently updated our whole school curriculum planning. We will continue to follow a 2 year rolling curriculum plan, but will now cover 3 topics each year ( 1 per term). This will enable us to explore topics more thoroughly and spend time embedding our learning. Please see the Curriculum Overview below for specific Art & Design information or follow this link to see how our Art & Design topics fit within our whole curriculum: https://www.dalestorth.notts.sch.uk/our-dalestorth-curriculum/
At Dalestorth, we work on a 2 year cycle within each teaching team (EYFS, Years 1 & 2, Years 3 & 4 and Years 5 & 6) and we strive to ensure that the children build on, develop and progress their knowledge, skills and confidence in Art & Design as they move through school.
During each 2 year cycle the children will cover the following aspects of Art & Design: drawing, painting, collage, 3D construction, printmaking, textiles and ICT. We also want to ensure every child has the opportunity to experience and explore a wide range of art media during their time at Dalestorth. This includes, but is not limited to; paint, chalk, charcoal, pastels, sketching pencils, clay, Modroc, wax crayons, ink, pencil crayons, photographs, fabric, natural materials (leaves etc), felt, collage, dyes, papier mache and sponges.
Class Sketchbooks
At Dalestorth, we also want to encourage creativity and promote the enjoyment of Art & Design outside of school. Over the last few years, we have successfully introduced class skecthbooks, where a different member of the class takes home the sketchbook each week and adds their contribution. It is completely up to the children to decide what their piece of artwork will be and what type art media they use. They can be as creative and unique as they wish! When they bring the sketchbook back to school, each class will spend time sharing and celebrating the artwork together.
Useful Documents...
The Daisy Chain Project
We took part in The Ready, Steady Paint Daisy Chain Project to create the longest virtual daisy chain. The children watched a video of an artist creating a daisy and then used various resources to create their own. We did a fantastic job and Dalestorth is now on the map!
Art Week 2020
We have all been really busy during Art Week! The children in FS2 have based their work around their new topic ‘Once Upon a Time’ and have been making box model houses, collaging a textured tree and exploring a range of different art media such as paint, wax crayons and felt tip pens to add colour to their drawings of characters from traditional tales. In Year 1 and 2, the children have used African animals as their focus and have been printing animal patterns, exploring paint mixing to create African sunset silhouette pictures and making 3D animal structures using box modelling resources. Children in Year 3 and 4 have been creating lots of different pieces of artwork based on the art form Mola, experimenting with creating their designs using chalk, paint and collage techniques. In Year 5 and 6, the children have used their Ernest Shackleton topic as a stimulus for creating their own artwork. They have explored techniques including tracing, sketching, painting and ICT.
Extra-curricular
At Dalestorth we try and promote a love of Art & Design outside of the school day as well as during our lessons. We often have art and craft clubs running after school for children from Year 1 to Year 6 at different times throughout the year. Below are a few pictures taken during an art club for Years 3 & 4.
We also enjoy working with outside providers to give our children access to additional opportunities. This year, we have started working with the company Clay Creators who have already run several of their amazing after school clubs for our children. Clay Creators have developed a programme that encourages children to enhance a wide range of skills through maths, geometry, fine motor skills and imagination. We can't wait to see what the children will make and learn during each themed session!
Places fill up fast for each block of sessions, so if you aren't lucky enough to secure a place this time make sure you sign up to the waiting list through the Clay Creators website for the chance to join the club next term 
Competitions
We also give the children lots of opportunities to get involved in external art competitions where they can showcase their talents to a wider audience. Here are some of the super entries to our latest competitions:
Bottle Moments - What are you most looking forward to doing when lockdown ends?
Roald Dahl Competition - We designed a new classmate for Matilda...
Paint a Poppy Challenge
To mark 100 years since the end of World War 1 the children took part in a 'Paint a Poppy Challenge'. Each class chose a different type of art media and the children created their own poppy pictures. The FS2 children in Lions & Tigers worked together to create an amazing collage poppy, while the Year 1 & 2 children in Bobcats, Pumas & Panthers used pencil crayons and wax crayons to create their individual poppy pictures. The Year 3 Wildcats used watercolour paints, the Year 3 & 4 children in Lynx chose pastels and the Year 4 Cougars created chalk poppies. The Year 5 Jaguars made some beautiful origami poppies, the Year 5 Cheetahs chose tissue paper to collage their pictures and the Year 6 Leopards used paint to create their poppy designs. Thanks for all your hard work everyone, the school hall looks fantastic with all your poppies up on display!
Gloria De Piero MP Christmas Card Competition Entries
Gloria De Piero, the MP for Ashfield and Eastwood, invited us to take part in a competition to design a Christmas card for her to send across the constituency this Christmas. Here are our brilliant designs.
Congratulations to Olivia in Year 3 who has won Gloria's annual competition with her fantastic Christmas tree design. Well done Olivia! 
Roald Dahl Day Competition Entries
To celebrate Roald Dahl Day the children were given the opportunity to design their own bug buddy to accompany James and the rest of his crew aboard the Giant Peach! There were some fantastic designs and really imaginative ideas. I'm sure James would be happy to travel with any of your bugs!
Happy 30th Birthday White Post Farm!
Arts Award
Arts Award is a range of national qualifications available for young people up to the age of 25 and aims to promote a deeper understanding of a variety of art forms. During Autumn Term 2 & Spring Term 1 we will be running an after school club for children to take part in the introductory level of Arts Award called Discover. To achieve Arts Award Discover the children will collect evidence in an individual arts log to demonstrate their experiences of participating in arts activities, researching artists & their work and sharing their arts discoveries. At the end of the project the children’s arts logs will be internally assessed and moderated and they will receive an Arts Award Discover certificate to celebrate their achievement, certified by Trinity College London.
For our Arts Award Discover we have been learning about different types of art forms. We now know that art isn't just about drawing & painting and we have been thinking about the art forms we encounter in our everyday lives such as films, music, photography & drama.
For Part A if our Arts Award, we have been exploring a variety of arts & crafts and experimenting with different techniques. In our first session, we experimented with textured art and created our own colourful fireworks pictures using salt, glue and paint. We then explored printmaking by creating our own collagraphs using different craft materials such as string, matchsticks & bubblewrap. We were really pleased with the prints our collagraphs made on the paper once we'd added paint with a roller! We have also had great fun getting messy creating bubble paintings. We mixed washing up liquid into paint and used a straw to blow bubbles in it. We then printed the bubbles onto paper to create our designs.
To achieve Part B of our Arts Award, we have to find out about different artists and their work. We have researched the French painter Georges Seurat and created our own pictures using his pointillism technique (painting with dots). Then we looked at the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and made our own cubism faces from salt dough!
For Part C of our Arts Award, we have to share what we have learnt with our friends. We all created posters to show what we have been doing throughout our Arts Award and talked to our friends about which activities we have enjoyed the most.
After a bit of a wait, we were very excited to receive our Arts Award certificates in recognition of our hard work. Congratulations everyone! 
We achieved our Arts Award Discover! 2018-2019
We achieved our Arts Award Discover! 2017-2018
Artsmark
Artsmark is an award for schools designed to recognise ways in which the arts (including subjects such as art, music, dance & drama) are used to enrich the curriculum for all children. Schools have to undertake a self-assessment, submit a Statement of Commitment to Arts Council England and write a Case Study evaluating the impact of their Artsmark journey on the children and staff in their school. After submitting the Case Study, schools are then awarded Silver, Gold or Platinum based on their achievements which lasts for 2 years.
The Artsmark website states that 'Artsmark brings learning to life through arts and culture' and it lists some of the benefits to children as:
- culture and creativity increases pupils’ confidence, critical and creative thinking, communication and literacy skills, improving attainment in core subjects like Maths and English
- introduces the joys of creating and performing and experiencing art to young people who may not otherwise be exposed to it
-
helps encourage pupil voice and leadership skills
-
provides an engaging and accessible way into the curriculum for hard to reach or disadvantaged pupils
We are excited to have started our journey towards achieving Artsmark and are looking forward to developing our key objectives over the next 2 years! Please read our Statement of Commitment below to find out more.