Principles for constructing a scheme of work
The following guidance may be helpful for teachers who want to review or create their own scheme of work.
Defining a key-stage plan
A key-stage plan for art and design:
- precedes the development of a scheme of work;
- takes account of the circumstances of the school and its aims and purposes;
- is a whole-school plan agreed by all staff;
- sets out an agreed time allocation for art and design per year for each year group or mixed-age class;
- is based on the requirements for art and design for the appropriate key stage;
- makes clear school priorities, for example PSHE.
When developing a key-stage plan teachers may find it helpful to consider:
- the aims and purposes of art and design at key stages 1 and 2, and the subject's contribution to the whole primary curriculum;
- the balance between two- and three-dimensional work;
- how content may best be sequenced;
- how to check children's progress;
- the practicalities of organising the teaching of art and design, for example which activities require more sustained time;
- opportunities for visits to museums, galleries and sites during the school year;
- links with other curriculum areas;
- ways in which children make progress in learning art and design.
Evaluating art and design key-stage plans and units
It is important to ask how far the school's current art and design key-stage plans and units:
- provide long- and medium-term plans that are clearly linked to the national curriculum programmes of study and level descriptions;
- provide a secure basis from which teachers can plan lessons on a daily or weekly basis to meet the needs of all children in the class;
- show how ideas and skills are built up in an organised, systematic and rigorous way based on learning that has already taken place;
- show links between the areas of the art and design curriculum, including practical skills and critical evaluation skills;
- link teaching activities to the learning they are intended to promote;
- identify what children are expected to learn, both within a unit and by the end of a specified period, and how children's learning might be assessed;
- provide opportunities for the development of literacy, mathematics and ICT and, where appropriate, links to other subjects;
- give indications of the time needed to teach each unit.
Evaluating the extent to which a key-stage plan encourages progression in children's learning
- What is known about what children have already achieved when they enter the key stage and how does this affect the pitch of the early units?
- Which ideas and skills in art and design depend on secure understanding of other ideas?
- How can units be sequenced so that earlier work lays the foundations for later work?
- Are there opportunities for revisiting and reinforcing the ideas children need to understand and which some will find difficult?
- When ideas are revisited or reinforced, is it in a different context or using different activities?
- How are children who have some competence or expertise beyond the levels expected in particular years challenged?
Evaluating the extent to which a scheme of work encourages progression in children's learning
How far do the school's key-stage plans and units provide opportunities for children, as they move through key stages 1 and 2, to progress:
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from
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to
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responding
to familiar ideas and themes as starting points for their work
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exploring ideas
for different purposes, selecting and using relevant visual and other
information to help them develop their ideas?
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using a variety
of materials and processes to make images and artefacts
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investigating and
combining materials and processes, combining and organising visual and
tactile qualities and matching these to ideas and intentions?
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describing what
they think and feel about their own and others' work |
comparing and commenting
on ideas, methods and approaches used in their own and others' work,
relating these to the context in which the work was made, and adapting
and refining their own work to realise their intentions?
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