Art and Design

In KS1 and KS2, our bespoke art and design curriculum is taught as a discrete subject each half term. Our carefully designed ‘Units of Work’ have been developed by expert teachers. Within our art ‘Units of Work’, composite tasks have been broken down into smaller component tasks to ensure a structured and progressive learning experience, where children are provided with opportunities to develop their substantive, theoretical and disciplinary knowledge alike within each unit. More specifically, this approach enables pupils to gain a deep understanding of artistic techniques, notable artists, and composition while creating high-quality work.

At Sir William Burrough, art is taught as a blocked subject. This means that the art unit for that half term is taught every day for one week in the half term; this learning is then revisited and revised through retrieval practice factored into our weekly timetable, allowing our children to benefit from the advantages of spaced learning and interleaving. We believe that blocking subjects provides children with the opportunity to become immersed into a topic and develop deep learning in the subject discipline: more time is spent learning and applying knowledge than transitioning between different subjects within the school day.