Art

At Monkwick Infant and Nursery School, we believe that learning is a change in the working memory.

We aim to ensure that our children experience a wide breadth of study and have, by the end of each key stage, a long-term memory of an ambitious body of procedural and semantic knowledge.

Our curriculum drivers shape our curriculum breadth. They are derived from an exploration of the backgrounds of our children, our beliefs about high-quality education, and our values. They are used to ensure that we give our children appropriate and ambitious curriculum opportunities. 

Cultural capital gives our children the vital background knowledge required to be informed and thoughtful members of our community who understand and believe in British values.

Our curriculum distinguishes between subject topics and ‘threshold concepts’. Subject topics are the specific aspects of subjects that are studied. The threshold concepts tie together the subject into a meaningful schema. The same concepts are explored in a wide breadth of topics. This ‘forwards and backwards engineering’ of the curriculum allows our children to return to the same concepts over and over again and gradually build an understanding of them. 

The retrieval of knowledge helps students relate each topic to previously studied topics and to form a strong, meaningful schema. We know that working memory is limited and that cognitive load is too high if children are rushed through content. This limits the acquisition of long-term memory. Cognitive science also tells us that for children to become creative thinkers or to have a greater depth of understanding, they must first master the basics, which takes time.

During Key Stage 1, children will gradually progress in their procedural fluency and semantic strength through three cognitive domains, which we call: remembering, knowing, and reasoning. The aim is that by the end of KS1, our children can display sustained mastery. Children will secure knowledge, facts, and concepts and will have the ability to apply, analyse, evaluate, and prove.

Our curriculum design is based on evidence from cognition science, and three main principles underpin it:

• Learning is most effective with spaced repetition

• Interleaving helps our children to discriminate between topics and aids long-term retention

• Retrieval of previously learnt content is frequent and regular, which increases both storage and retrieval strength. 

In addition to the three principles, we also understand that learning is invisible in short-term memory and that sustained mastery takes time. Our content is subject-specific. We make intra-curriculum links to strengthen the schema wherever possible.

Continuous provision, in the form of daily routines, replaces the teaching of some aspects of the curriculum and, in other cases, provides retrieval practice for previously learnt content. 

Because learning is a change in long-term memory, it is impossible to see the impact in the short term. We do, however, use probabilistic assessment based on deliberate practice. This means that we look at the practices taking place to determine whether they are appropriate, related to our goals, and likely to produce results in the long run. We use comparative judgement in two ways: in comparing the end outcomes of a unit of work and in comparing a child’s work over time.

We use lesson observations to see if the pedagogical style matches our depth of expectations. We use the pupil voice to quality assure what the children have been taught. 

In Nursery our children will:

Start to make marks intentionally. 

Explore paint, using fingers and other parts of their bodies as well as brushes and other tools. 

Express ideas and feelings through making marks, and sometimes give a meaning to the marks they make.

Explore different materials, using all their senses to investigate them. 

Manipulate and play with different materials. 

Use their imagination as they consider what they can do with different materials. 

Make simple models which express their ideas

Explore different materials freely to develop their ideas about how to use them and what to make.  

Develop their own ideas and then decide which materials to use to express them. 

Join different materials and explore different textures

Create closed shapes with continuous lines, and begin to use these shapes to represent objects.

In Reception our children will: 

Explore, use and refine a variety of artistic effects to express their ideas and feelings. 

Return to and build on their previous learning, refining ideas and developing their ability to represent them. 

Create collaboratively, sharing ideas, resources and skills.

Creating with materials

Children at the expected level of development will:

Safely use and explore a variety of materials and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function.

Share their creations, explaining the process they have used.

Make use of props and materials when role-playing characters in narratives and stories.

Our children will become artists by understanding these ‘Threshold concepts’ in KS1: 

The picture prompts below are adopted from Chris Quigley Schema Maps, which were used alongside the National Curriculum to create the Monkwick Infant School Art and Design Offer. These picture prompts are used to help retrieve key information, which is then built upon to secure and master the basic skills. 

Take Inspiration from the Greats

Visual Language and Effects. This is the starting point for all areas of art studied. Visual language: what is the art or the artist communicating? Children also use visual language to discuss their own art and the art of their peers. 

 

Develop Ideas

Process. The process is valued, where the end product is not the principal focus. The process is the combination of planning, sorting, testing and collating ideas.

 

Master Techniques

Techniques. The techniques used to create art through drawing, painting and sculpture. These techniques are planned to follow specific skills introduced each year, whilst retrieving and building upon the skills taught previously.