Our Intent
At Monteagle Primary School, our Art curriculum is to provide every child with an ambitious, inspiring, and progressive experience that nurtures creativity, curiosity, and confidence. Children will explore a broad range of disciplines including drawing, painting, mixed media, craft and design, and sculpture and 3D art. Through exposure to a wide variety of artists, designers, and styles from different cultures and time periods, children will understand that every artist has their own specialisms. We want pupils to feel encouraged to try everything, to discover their own passions, and to achieve their best. By revisiting and building on techniques over time, children develop secure technical skills as well as the ability to communicate ideas, feelings, and observations through visual language. Our curriculum fosters creativity, resilience, reflection, and a willingness to experiment, ensuring that every child leaves primary school as a confident and expressive young artist.
Our Implmentation
In Reception, creativity is nurtured daily through a range of open-ended and topic-linked activities that respond to children’s interests. These experiences develop imagination, curiosity, and fine motor skills, laying the foundations for artistic expression and early understanding of colour, shape, and texture.
From Year 1 to Year 6, Art is taught weekly and discreetly by a specialist teacher, ensuring consistent, high-quality provision across the school. The curriculum is structured into four progressive units each year, designed to build upon prior learning and develop a wide variety of skills, media, and techniques. These units encompass drawing, painting, mixed media, craft and design, and sculpture and 3D art, alongside personalised topics shaped through pupil voice and gap analysis to maintain relevance and engagement.
The specialist art teacher regularly engages in their own creative practice and professional development, producing artwork that explores and refines the full range of techniques and mediums taught to pupils. This ongoing CPD ensures expert subject knowledge and provides authentic, inspiring examples for children. The teacher’s own artwork and process steps are displayed in the classroom, allowing pupils to see how artworks evolve and demonstrating that experimentation and revision are essential parts of the creative journey.
Throughout the school, children are taught to understand and apply the formal elements of art – line, shape, colour, texture, tone, pattern and form – in increasingly complex and expressive ways as they progress. Pupils are regularly introduced to a diverse range of artists, designers, and craftspeople, analysing their work to explore different techniques, styles, and cultural influences.
Experimentation and risk-taking are actively encouraged, helping children to understand that all artists have unique styles and approaches, and that through exploration they will discover artistic methods that suit them best. Pupils are supported to see mistakes as valuable learning opportunities and a natural part of the creative process.
Working walls are used effectively to display key vocabulary, techniques, and visual examples that support and extend learning. They also showcase the teacher’s exemplar work and the key steps required to produce it, providing a clear model for pupils to refer to. Oracy is embedded in every lesson to encourage meaningful discussion, reflection, and the use of artistic language. Examples of pupils’ work are displayed and celebrated across the school, fostering pride, aspiration, and a shared sense of artistic achievement.
Our Impact
By the end of their primary journey at our school, pupils will have developed the knowledge, skills, and confidence to express themselves creatively through a diverse range of artistic techniques and media. They will recognise that art is both a personal and varied form of expression, understanding that every artist has a unique style and that their own creativity is something to be explored, respected, and continually nurtured.
Through high-quality specialist teaching, pupils will make clear and measurable progress in their understanding and application of the formal elements of art—line, colour, texture, tone, shape, pattern, and form. They will confidently discuss and evaluate their own work and that of others using precise artistic vocabulary, showing a growing awareness of how and why artists make particular choices in their work.
Children will leave each year with a heightened sense of visual awareness, creative confidence, and the practical skills to independently use a wide range of materials. They will demonstrate resilience and a willingness to experiment, understanding that mistakes are an essential and positive part of the creative journey.
Pupil voice and photographic evidence will reflect that children enjoy art and take pride in their progress. Displays and learning journeys will illustrate clear progression in skills, creativity, and ambition from Year 1 through to Year 6. By the end of Key Stage 2, pupils will be equipped with a strong foundation of artistic knowledge and a deep appreciation for art in all its forms—prepared to continue developing their skills and passion at secondary school and beyond, guided by our values of trust, respect, and working hard.
Supporting Documents
