Skip to content ↓

Elaine Primary School

Art & Design Technology (DT)

At Elaine Primary School, we deliver an ambitious, highly sequenced, and creative Art and Design Technology (DT) curriculum. Underpinned by our commitment to social justice and educational excellence, our curriculum is designed to empower all children—including those with SEND and our disadvantaged cohort—to build both substantive and disciplinary knowledge cumulatively over time.

Through our rolling curriculum, which is aligned with the Inspire Global Curriculum, children are encouraged to think of themselves as artists, designers, and engineers. We provide structured learning sequences where children learn key technical skills, study diverse historical and contemporary artists, and co-construct solutions to real-world design problems. We weave our core school values of Excellence, Love, Aspiration, Individuality, Nurture, and Engagement into every creative project, ensuring that our pupils develop the confidence, resilience, and critical thinking skills required to succeed.

Early Years Foundation Stage: Expressive Arts and Design

A successful foundation in creative and technical education begins in our early years setting. Our Expressive Arts and Design curriculum is carefully structured to ensure children develop early sensory and motor skills:

  • Early Sensory Experiences: We ensure that all children have the early sensory experiences they need to explore texture, form, and colour.
  • Systematic Skill Progression: Our curriculum is explicit about how and when new tools, materials, skills, songs, rhymes, and stories are introduced to prevent cognitive load. Children are taught the precise techniques of manipulation, joining, and painting from low starting points.
  • Creative Independence: High-quality continuous provision, both indoors and outdoors, gives children regular opportunities to practice their learned skills independently, to appreciate their own and others’ art, and to use what they know in creative and imaginative ways.

Art & Design: Substantive and Disciplinary Mastery

Our Art and Design curriculum ensures that children develop a rigorous, progressive understanding of various mediums. The curriculum systematically builds skills from Nursery to Year 6 across core domains:

  • Drawing and Painting: Children develop precision in line, tone, texture, and colour-mixing, transitioning from early mark-making to advanced landscape and portrait work.
  • Sculpture and Form: Pupils learn to manipulate materials, such as clay, wire, and papier-mâché, to create three-dimensional structures.
  • Printing and Textiles: Children explore relief printing, block printing, sewing, and weaving techniques.
  • Appreciating Diverse Artists: In alignment with our commitment to diversity and the celebration of all protected characteristics, children study a wide range of global artists, designers, and craftspeople from different cultures, backgrounds, and historical eras.
  • Critical Thinking and Metacognition: Using our school-wide critical thinking scaffolds, such as Perspective Glasses to explore artist intent and the Opinion Continuum to debate aesthetic choices, children learn to critique art constructively and evaluate the impact of visual culture on society.

Design & Technology (DT) and STEAM Projects

Our Design and Technology curriculum follows a rigorous design, make, and evaluate cycle, connecting technical skills directly to real-world applications. We enrich our curriculum with a coherent progression of high-impact STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) projects that build aspiration and technical stamina:

  • Key Stage 1 Structures & Mechanics: Children learn to use tools safely to cut, shape, and join materials, exploring simple mechanisms like sliders and axles.
  • Year 5 Build a Lego House Maths Challenge: Pupils engage in this collaborative challenge, using architectural concepts and mathematical scales to design and evaluate physical models.
  • Year 6 Giant Tetrahedron Challenge: Year 6 pupils and children from our specialist resourced provision collaborate in this structural engineering event, testing materials for stability, force, and load.
  • The Young Eco Engineers (YEE) Initiative: In Year 6, pupils work alongside professional engineers to build and race a Goblin electric car. This flagship project gives children real-world experience in electrical systems, mechanics, aerodynamics, and teamwork, helping them see the direct application of their academic skills to engineering careers.

Removing Barriers: Inclusive Practice in Art & DT

We believe that every child has the right to access a high-quality, ambitious curriculum. We systematically adapt our Art and DT lessons to support all learners:

  • Bespoke Support via Da Vinci Class: For our children with complex Speech, Language, and Communication Needs (SLCN) and neurodivergent profiles, our specialist provision utilises small-step tracking. Creative activities are adapted using visual schedules to reduce sensory anxiety and build fine motor skills.
  • Therapeutic Nurture in the DEN: For pupils experiencing temporary emotional barriers, we utilise sand play therapy, draw to talk, and structured art therapy within the DEN to help children process worries, reduce cognitive load, and build the emotional stability required to engage with classroom learning.

Cookie Policy