Art & DT
Intent
The curriculum at St Peter’s aims to inspire children to learn, celebrating the rich diversity across St Peter’s school, church and wider local community. Our curriculum places every child at the centre of learning. We endeavour to nurture our children’s individuality, supporting their development of interpersonal skills and resilience to become creative, critical thinkers.
St Peter’s curriculum works in parallel with the national curriculum and aims to educate children on how best to reach their potential by providing different skills and opportunities. We are ambitious for our students learning and have mapped out a range of artists, architects and diverse designers that our pupils will learn about.
Implementation
We are situated in the heart of Belgravia, a hub for artists, designers, architects and stylish galleries. As a school, we capitalise on this rich artistic environment to enhance our student's learning. We do this through entering the many local events and competitions which provide opportunities for our pupils to showcase their work and foster their creativity. For example, this year a year 2 pupil had her creative Egg on display in Eccleston Yard along with others from other schools. This was a competition put on by Victoria Bid and she won! In recent years, our pupils have had opportunities to showcase their artwork at the renowned Saatchi Gallery too.
We have a spiral curriculum that helps to shape pupil learning and provide long-lasting skills and development. We use holidays, events and celebrations to help support our children’s art and D.T development within school as well as weekly Art and D.T lessons. Our spiral curriculum allows pupils the opportunity to revisit key concepts over time to make their learning more memorable. We have introduced an end of year art gallery event whereby our pupils showcase their work to all parents and carers and have additional opportunities to be involved in art and DT activities.
The school also works with a specialist art teacher, Mrs McCourt, who provides expert lessons for our pupils. St Peter’s also offers pupils extracurricular art clubs for both KS1 and KS2 helping them to develop their skills outside the classroom. Children find the curriculum to be accessible and meaningful within Art & D.T, allowing them to express themselves freely. We regularly use local learning opportunities within walking distance from the school, (museums and galleries), to provide meaningful enrichment opportunities for the children.
Impact
Children at St Peter’s develop detailed knowledge and skills across the whole curriculum taught and given regular opportunities to articulate their learning through opportunities for retrieval practice; to showcase that their fluency and mastery is incrementally improving. They will demonstrate a love of learning through pride in all that they do with the ability to persevere when challenges arise. The quality and breadth of work seen in books and learning environments will showcase their learning over time.
Service, hope, love, forgiveness, faith and wisdom will be integral to their values and relationships.