The Importance of Art and Music
Art and Music encourage creativity and engagement in a different way from what is taught elsewhere around the school. Studying Art and Music enriches the students' experience at school and also prepares them for life in the wider world.
Both subjects encourage self-expression and creativity and can build confidence as well as a sense of individual identity. Students can explore their interests and indulge in what excites them the most. Creativity can also help with wellbeing and improving health and happiness acting as an outlet for releasing the pressures of studying as well as those of everyday life. Studying Art and Music also helps to develop critical thinking and provides students with the ability to interpret the world around them.
Studying Art and Music helps improve academic performance, not just through creativity, but it improves learning in areas like maths and science as well as the more literary based subjects such as english and history.
Art & music education also fosters collaboration and group learning. It brings people together, helping them learn from, and aid each other as they persevere towards creating something. It improves emotional balance and helps the students become team players. It also improves accountability, as kids claim responsibility for their mistakes and accept their faults when working together.
When creating a piece of art or music, the decision of what elements to apply, whether in terms of colours, notes, medium or instrument to use is left entirely to our own choices and preferences. This helps improve decision making, boosts the self confidence and makes children more self-assured, as they learn about what appeals to them, and they directly influence how their final product will look. They can become self-learners, constantly challenging themselves, and become more focused on achieving their goals.
Philosophy, Aims and Objectives
Our philosophy
The Art & Music faculty is a central and vital part of every student’s educational experience at Southborough. Those who teach within the Art & Music faculty should be well informed, highly motivated, willing to review their own attitudes in the light of knowledge and experience and reflective of the impact their teaching can have on individual students and on the school community.
Learning and knowledge acquired by students through Art & Music should be perceived by all as useful, appropriate, necessary and practical, in terms of understanding themselves and others.
Our aims
The Art & Music faculty at Southborough caters for a wide range of students from a variety of cultural backgrounds.
Our aims are to:
To enable our students to develop successful outcomes through a process of creativity of thought, risk-taking and resilience. Interest and motivate students by means of outstanding teachingPromote and develop the student’s knowledge and understanding of materials, techniques and processes.Teach a range of artistic, design and musical concepts and skillsDemonstrate the importance and continued relevance of the past to the events, values and beliefs of today - in particular, to understand the context in which artists, designers and musicians worked and to inspire the students in their own creative developments.Enable students, to find their own pathway in the subject to become artists, designers and musicians and to develop the skills relevant to their area of interest/expertiseprepare students for study, transition through the Key Stages, progression and the external examinations they will ultimately experience at KS4 and beyond by setting challenging targets and maintaining high expectations.
Our objectives
The faculty must and will reflect the objectives, ethos and vision of the school. In accordance we will endeavour always to:
consider every student with equal value and importance, regardless of age, ability, gender, religion or ethnicity and model an appropriate code of conduct accordingly be aware of our students’ needs and understand that control of language in all its forms will enable them to participate fully in society outside and beyond school recognise that learners acquire skills and knowledge in different ways and so provide varied, stimulating and meaningful activities for all our students assess students’ progress regularly and monitor their development using measurable data (including IEPs provided by the Inclusion faculty to inform planning) encourage and reward the highest standards of achievement so that all can realise their potential give students positive praise, feedback and encouragement whenever appropriate so as to develop confidence to be more independent learnersincorporate opportunities for autonomous tasks and learning within our teaching and planning set meaningful homework once a week at KS3 and twice weekly at KS4 that is designed to contribute to or extend understanding of work done in class regularly present student work for display and publication enrich the curriculum by providing extra-curricular workshops and out of school opportunities such as gallery trips support each other by sharing resources and good practice allow access to and promote Continued Professional Development for all Faculty staff – final decision subject to head teacher’s approval establish and maintain positive links with parents
Guiding Principles
KS3
At Key Stage 3 teaching should enable students to experience the key components set out by the National Curriculum. Planning and lessons should be firmly focused upon the development of the key skills highlighted by the NC’s teaching objectives. Progress within these key skills will be measured and assessed following the standardised GCSE grades 1-9.
Schemes of work within KS3 follow the guidelines of the Art & Design and Music National curriculum and deliver opportunity for all components to be taught. Each unit of work will contain core assessments that address a variety of key skills in each component. At the end of each unit of work there is an expectation that at least one core assessment has been done for each key component.
Individual teachers are responsible for the marking and correcting of student work according to the Curriculum assessment guidelines and descriptors. Discussions and shared moderation within faculty/ departmental meetings together with regular work scrutiny and feedback will ensure a consistent and accurate standard of assessment. It is expected that teachers within the faculty have a good working knowledge of the National Curriculum and, additionally, be familiar with and follow the school’s teaching, marking and feedback and assessment policies on this.
Many of our present schemes of work at KS3 are currently under review, being rewritten or changed. This is a faculty development target for this year and it is expected that all members of the faculty will contribute to producing a complete scheme of work at the end of every half term or completion of a unit of work for classes in KS3. This production, collection and review of schemes of work is very much an on-going progress to be critically reviewed at the next curriculum content meeting scheduled at the end of the summer term, 2022.
At Key Stage 4 & 5
The schemes of work and programmes of study for KS4 and A level/ BTEC L3 are shaped largely by the syllabi of the respective examination boards.
Our approach
teachers should have a deep understanding and extensive knowledge of their subject and be effective in communicating their enthusiasm to their students teachers should keep up-to-date with current developments in their subject/s and be aware of changes to the GCSE & A level/ BTEC level 3 syllabi teachers should plan, organise and work together closely to devise and implement schemes of work that provide effective progression and continuityall schemes of work should have clear learning objectives that match the assessment objectives and desired learning outcomes which should be made explicit to the students schemes of work are not so prescriptive to stifle a teacher’s style or creativity and so it is expected and encouraged that SoWs be supplemented by a variety of rich and diverse resources - remember to add notes to alternative resources on scheme and attach additional or replacement resources teaching groups continue to be mixed-ability at KS3, rather than setted, and so within class students should be taught and grouped in ways that most facilitate the learning process – taking into account both ability in skills and styles of learning. appropriate differentiation should be employed in all classes at all times, teachers should do their best to make provision for students with special educational needs and for those whose ability in Art and Music is exceptionally high homework should be set to support and reinforce learning taking place in the classroom and also encourage students to be better self-learners Art & Music should be delivered and received in a manner that inculcates an appreciation of the attitudes and beliefs of others and takes into account the diverse and linguistic backgrounds of our students the teaching and learning of subjects within the Art & Music faculty should be an enjoyable, motivating and meaningful experience for all involved.
Intent, Implementation and Impact: The Three I’s
Intent
It is our intent that both the Art and Music curriculum invests in our students the necessary knowledge, skills and understanding to become lifelong learners. We will make the difference to all of our students by providing an Art and Music curriculum that;
Inspires Personal ExpressionProvides Cultural Understanding Elicits the Creation of Imaginative Responses
All of our students are unique and as such require an art & music curriculum that supports and elicits their own creative voice. The staff in our faculty are passionate about both their subjects and the opportunity they have to empower the students with an appreciation of Art and Music from both a practical and historical context.
When our students join us in year 7, they do so having experienced varying levels of exposure to art and music at primary school and at home. There are some crucial lessons ath must be taught right at the start of year 7 to ensure that all our students can flourish over the course of their time with us. We start with the basics and build from there.
Implementation
In Art, we do this by providing our students with an introduction to an ever increasing range of materials, techniques and processes and by allowing them each to have the time to work independently to explore their own creative journeys. Each student will begin year 7 learning critical observational drawing techniques and colour mixing processes before embarking upon their first program of study entitled ‘animals’. By the time they embark upon their GCSE course in year 10, every student will have studied paint, print, illustration, photography, animation, film as well as sculptural projects including ceramics and casting. As well as teaching our students these processes, I believe it is also essential for them to understand the history of art. It is a question of cultural capital that all students have an entitlement to. Therefore, we do this through a process of research based homework tasks where the students explore the stories behind the paintings, learning about the artists and their practice. I believe this provides inspiration and context to the practical work they explore in class.
In Music we build upon the students previous exposure to music. Our aim is to engage and inspire our students to develop both a love of music and their individual talent as musicians. This increases their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon. Our aim is to ensure that all pupils: perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, eventually creating and composing music on their own and with others. We provide the opportunity for them to learn a musical instrument of their own as well as to use music technology and in doing so, provide them with the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence.
It is my belief that as teachers we must remain practitioners in our own right and keep up to date with developments in our subject area, new resources, methods and national objectives.
Impact
We strive to ensure that our students’ attainment is in line with or exceeds their potential when we consider their different starting points. In tracking the progress of our learners, we consider the age-related expectations for each year group and use a range of performance measures to evaluate curriculum impact: this includes learning walks and student voice, alongside summative outcomes.
We believe that our mission is to help students prepare for a rich, meaningful and engaged life that goes well beyond job titles and salary levels. Exposure to and understanding of the arts is key to developing qualities of responsible citizenship. The arts enable us to imagine the unimaginable, and to connect us to the past, the present, and the future, sometimes simultaneously.
We aim to make the difference to all of our students.
“I teach because I am as passionate about Art today as I was first starting out. I love seeing that passion and interest for Art grow in the students we teach here. It’s such a great process to be part of. We have students arrive at Southborough in year 7 that believe they can’t draw and have little confidence in their artistic ability, and they leave with the skills to build their own career within the subject as subject specialists in their own right.”
Curriculum Maps
