HAYFIELD LANE…. BUILDING CRITICAL THINKERS OF THE FUTURE, WITH A ZEST FOR LIFE-LONG LEARNING, WHO SHARE COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY AS ACTIVE AND EQUITABLE CITIZENS.
Our Art Lessons
At Hayfield Lane, we have seven formal areas of focus in our art curriculum; as these elements will enable our students to become effective in their self-expression as future artists. By targeting these core skills, we are ensuring that our children will feel able to explore a wide variety of medium of art, sharing and critiquing art from a myriad of places.
1 - Line
The path that is left by a moving point.
2 - Shape
An area enclosed by a line.
3 - Form
A Three Dimensional shape (such as a cone, sphere or cube)
4 - Tone
The lightness and darkness of something
5 - Colour
That colours can be primary or mixed to make secondary and tertiary.
6 - Texture
The surface of something and how it looks or feels.
7 - Pattern
A design created using line, shape, colour or tones.
Teachers plan carefully to model a variety of methods to allow pupils to develop an art toolkit that will result in an end piece. In addition, pupils look at contemporary art or art from history to discuss techniques and ideas. They have time to practise their skills and then can make informed choices on how they would like to proceed. The whole process is underpinned with support from the Art lead and the correct use of key vocabulary. Final work is then shared and evaluated. Pupils think carefully about what works well and what they might do differently next time. Where possible, artwork is planned to be used for a real purpose giving it a real reason to exist. Teaching art is also done as a unit (rather than weekly), often linked with other areas of the curriculum to allow pupils to really explore the art and its application. For example, Year 5 pupils create a landscape painting of Hogwarts so that it can be uploaded to a Hogwarts Webpage and illustrate their work.
With themed links being part of the education at Hayfield Lane, we are striving for children to make automatic connections in learning which will in the future become useful when they enter a future workforce by ensuring that they are not compartmentalising knowledge and skills. Problem solving in the real world and life in the workplace requires this.
At Hayfield Lane Primary, the following items are evident in all lesson structures to enable children to access knowledge and skills and build them into their long-term memories so they can make applications and connections in future learning.
These items are not necessarily in a chronological order as the school uses a ‘chunk and chew’ approach in lessons- meaning that a small step is examined and children are then able to actively unpick, apply and digest this aspect before moving on. This can happen many times in a session to consolidate thinking.
The following items are the format of standard lessons at Hayfield Lane Primary:
REVIEW- opportunity for children to connect to prior learning from a previous learning journey or session. The connection to prior learning (and comparable themes within curriculum areas) is drawn attention to by teachers and staff/children recall previous learning with links explained by pupils. This helps to ensure that items are retained by children in the longer term. Each learning journey has been crafted to ensure that underlying connections and themes can be explicitly made-these are called the ‘schema’. Examples of this are evident in the DAILY REVIEW BOX, recap questions, retrieval practice or quizzing.
EXPLAIN- teachers then explain the small step teaching point, previous gaps and deeper understanding elements of the lesson – we call these our LEARNING STARS. These are the criteria for the children to work to, with the 3 star aspect being a deepening of understanding aspect. 1 star is the gap in knowledge from previous journeys for the class. These are progressive and enable children to build to a final outcome- the BIG PROJECT/final piece of the journey. Within this section, misconceptions from formative assessments are discussed with children.
MODEL-Pupils are given high quality examples via teacher modelling. The modelling of the example also requires lots of active practice of the pupil. In these mini ‘chunk and chew’ active elements, children are able to develop critical thinking and collaborative learning aspects which are then embedded further by the class teacher. They are given time to verbalise and refine their thinking in collaboration with others. Quality worked examples are created and added to the classroom working walls to support learning across sequences of lessons. Misconceptions are also addressed. An example of this would be a teacher modelling how to create an introduction in a report about a point in history by having mini learning connection tasks, linking to prior reading, that build to the teacher modelling of an effective paragraph of text.
APPLY- This is the element of the lesson where pupils/collaboration partners begin to undertake the task set. Additional scaffolds and methods of support may be used to allow children to succeed within this aspect- working wall support, word mats, voice dictation apps, targeted support via a teaching assistant.
DEEPEN- at the end of the lesson the teacher will examine how effectively the children have met the star grids. Within this aspect, pupils will critique, summarise, explain, compare and contrast their findings. These elements are used to enable children to transfer knowledge and skills into their longer term memory. DEEPENING LEARNING is present in the REVIEW, EXPLAIN, MODEL and APPLY stages.