The Arts
Welcome to 'The Arts' webpage. At Sutton Green we are committed to promoting the arts and providing opportunities for children to experience a wide range of art forms, both within the school day and extra-curricularly. As well as the arts subjects covered in the National Curriculum (Art and Design, Design and Technology and Music), we also strive to include art forms such as drama and dance, both performance and audience participation. This is through partnerships with Amasing, Drama4All, Shadazzle, Theatre Porto, M&M productions and a partnership with a local school. We provide opportunities for children to take part in afterschool clubs such as dance and drama. Our Year 4s annually take part in local street dance coaching by dance company Shadazzle, with an end result of children taking part in a street dance competiton with other local schools. We are proud that we have achieved first and second place over the last couple of years.
Art and Design
Intent Statement
At Sutton Green Primary School, our intention is to provide exciting, memorable and quality art and design activities that have the Arts Council England's seven quality principles threaded through and teaches the skills set out in the National Curriculum and EYFS Development Matters Curriculum. Our Kapow curriculum fully covers the National Society for Education in Art and Design's progression competencies. We intend to inspire children and develop their confidence to experiment and invent their own works of art. We intend to give children opportunities to develop their ability, nurture their talent and interests, express their ideas and thoughts about the world, as well as becoming familiar with art and artists of different cultures and across time.
Implementation
In art and design we follow the Kapow scheme of work, taught by designated art and design practitioners providing PPA cover. This allows those members of staff quality time and consistency to teach the subject and continuous professional development via Kapow. Art and Design is timetabled for alternative half-terms to allow quality time for subject preparation, implementation and assessment. Resources required for the Art and Design topics are identified by the subject lead and Art and Design practitioners and ordered ready for each topic.
The Kapow scheme embeds strands throughout, which are:
- Generating ideas
- Using sketchbooks
- Makings skills, including formal elements (line, shape, tone, texture, pattern, colour)
- Knowledge of artists
- Evaluating and analysing
Units of lessons are sequential, allowing children to build their skills and knowledge, applying them to a range of outcomes. The formal elements, a key part of the national curriculum, are also woven throughout units. Key skills are revisited again and again with increasing complexity in a spiral curriculum model. This allows pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Units in each year group are organised into four core areas:
- Drawing
- Painting and mixed-media
- Sculpture and 3D
- Craft and design
The units fully scaffold and support age appropriate sequenced learning, and allow the skills taught to be transferred to form cross-curricular links with our topic work. Creativity and independent outcomes are robustly embedded into the units, supporting children to make their own creative choices and decisions, so that their art outcomes, whilst still being knowledge-rich, are unique to the pupils. Our art and design lessons are always practical and encourage children's exploration.
To raise the profile of Art and Design (as part of the Arts umbrella), we have an annual 'Arts Week', last held in June 2023. During this week, activities included an arts assembly, dress as an Artist day, a special lunch, art afternoons, exploring art careers sessions for upper KS2 and all classes made their own book themed scarecrow to put on display outside as part of the Little Sutton Scarecrow Festival.
We take up opportunities to work with the community on arts projects and our Year 3/4 children have worked with the local theatre company Theatre Porto to make puppets and record extracts of their puppet conversations. Our Year 5s have worked with Theatre Porto on their Topsy Turvy Arts Project which, "... is a fun and creative arts workshop designed to inspire young minds to explore their own values and beliefs. Through creative exploration, children will be encouraged to image a world where they are in charge and create their own rules." Their ideas generated during this workshop contributed to the creation of a sculpture which was displayed at the theatre over the Summer holidays.
Other arts projects we have recently held include a 'decorate a moneybox house' competition, from which donations in the houses went to the Countess of Chester Blue Skies appeal. We also designed a duck on behalf of Innospec for the Chester Duck Race and won the 'Facebook Favourite' competition! We invited children to make up their own designs and the winner took part in creating the duck.
We work in partnerships with other schools and have sent individual children to take part in art workshops at a local primary school and high school. These partnerships have also allowed our staff opportunities for continuous professional development by being taught new skills, sharing ideas and being inspired by the work of others. The Art and Design subject lead, Mrs Richards has also completed the 'Leading the Arts' professional development course with Curious Minds, the Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation.
To promote Art and Design we provide art opportunities extra-curricularly; these clubs are based on children's interests and have included drawing club, colouring club, model making, creative club, recycling for art club and arts and crafts club.
Our school is registered as an Arts Award Centre and Mrs Richards is a qualified Arts Award assessor. We are working towards all Year 2 children achieving the Arts Award Discover level, which is a national qualification resulting in a certificate from Trinity College London. To achieve this the children create a personal 'art log' of experiences showing evidence of taking part in arts activities, researching artists or craftspeople and their work and sharing their arts discoveries.
Sutton Green is taking on the Cultural Education Challenge. This means that our learning journey takes us to places where we can create, compose, perform, visit, experience, participate, know, understand and review great art and culture. Along the way, we meet inspiring artists and cultural experts that help us explore our own and others’ inventiveness. Together we inspire each other to be creative, courageous and curious - www.theculturehub.online. So far we have achieved three cultural education challenge stickers - for Artsmark Award Silver, Leading the Arts in Your School CPD and Arts Award Centre.
We are pleased to announce that we have been awarded a prestigious Artsmark Award in a momentous year for the programme as it celebrates 20 years of arts, culture and creativity in schools. The Artsmark Award is the only creative quality standard for schools, accredited by Arts Council England. It supports schools to develop and celebrate arts and cultural education, putting creativity and wellbeing at the heart of the curriculum. Artsmark ensures every young person can be creative and access a diverse, high-quality cultural education. In order to achieve our Artsmark Award, we developed our arts and culture provision to embed a broad and ambitious curriculum. This was achieved by creating an overall plan that was committed to and delivered across the whole school.
Dr Darren Henley CBE, Chief Executive of the Arts Council, said:
“I would like to congratulate Sutton Green Primary School on their Artsmark Award. Becoming an Artsmark school demonstrates that through offering a broad, ambitious, and creative curriculum, every pupil can develop character and resilience, increasing their knowledge, curiosity and skills that will remain with them through to adult life.”
Impact
Through our Art and Design curriculum children are involved in the evaluation, discussion and decision making about the quality of their outcomes and identify any improvements they need to make. This will allow children to retain facts and key information about art, as well as talking confidently about their learning.
Children will be assessed by practitioners during lessons, supported by Kapow assessment guidance. End of unit assessments will be uploaded to the Insight tracking system termly and data collated by the Arts Lead for data analysis and identification of next steps.
Our children will be familiar with a wide range of art forms and techniques and have the confidence and creativity to apply these in their work. They have the ability to discuss, compare and evaluate their art work and the works of others. When they leave our school they will have a strong foundation for their Art and Design learning at Key Stage 3 and beyond.
The expected impact through the Kapow Primary Art and design scheme of work is that children will:
- Produce creative work, exploring and recording their ideas and experiences.
- Be proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques.
- Evaluate and analyse creative works using subject-specific language.
- Know about great artists and the historical and cultural development of their art.
- Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the national curriculum for Art and design.
Good arts websites for use at home:
https://artfulparent.com/activities/kids-arts-and-crafts-activities/
Design and Technology
"Design and Technology education involves two important elements - learning about the designed and made world and how things work, and learning to design and make functional products for particular purposes and users. Children acquire and apply knowledge and understanding of materials and components, mechanisms and control systems, structures, existing products, quality and health and safety." - www.designtechnology.org.uk
Intent Statement
At Sutton Green, our intention is to provide children with exciting and memorable Design and Technology activities that have the Arts Council England's seven quality principles threaded through and that link with our cross-curricular projects and teaches the skills set out in the National Curriculum and EYFS Development Matters Curriculum.
Implementation
In DT we follow the Kapow scheme of work which ensures progression of D.T. skills throughout the year groups and provides interesting, practical and high quality D.T. lessons. Our children experience and make an informed choice when using a wide range of materials, structures, mechanisms and circuits, and test and explore how these can be improved. They are given the skills to generate and communicate ideas and evaluate their own and others' work. The cross curricular approach gives us the opportunity to support learning in other areas of the curriculum. In addition, we have special weeks dedicated to design and technology, where the skills taught are used to produce a final pieces of work which is displayed in our library area.
Our school is registered as an Arts Award Centre and Mrs Richards is a qualified Arts Award assessor and we are proud to have been awarded the Silver Artsmark award. Our children's views are important to us and we have arts ambassadors from each class to represent the children's voices regarding The Arts.
Through extra-curricular clubs, children have the opportunity to take part in a range of Design and Technology based activities, including cooking and model making.
Impact
Our children can make design criteria and use and make choices about components and materials. They are given the skills to work safely to make structures and models and the ability to evalate their own and others' work.
Good Design and Technology Websites:
https://omny.fm/shows/fun-kids/playlists/techno-mum-fun-kids-guide-to-technology
https://www.dyson.co.uk/newsroom/overview/update/top-five-engineering-challenges-to-do-at-home
Music
Intent Statement
At Sutton Green, it is our intent to provide children with exciting and memorable musical experiences both in class and as a whole school and extra-curricularly, which have the Arts Council England's seven quality principles threaded through. We teach the skills set out in the National Curriculum and EYFS Development Matters.
Implementation
In music we follow the Charanga programme, which ensures progression of music skills throughout the year groups and provides interesting and practical musical activities. Our children are taught skills of singing, performance, pulse and rhythm, composition, notation, music appreciation, listening and significant people. Our regular singing assemblies and Year 5 brass instrument tuition provide additional musical opportunities for our children and through our Charanga subscription we have access to songs and music which we can use to complement our topics. In addition, through our links with Edsential and Amasing, we offer opportunities for children to take part in concerts, showcases and workshops.
We provide our children with experience of listening to a wide range of music, and to support this we have 'Music Mondays', during which we play different genres and styles of music in the dinner hall and classrooms. We regularly take up musical opportunities within our local community, including taking part in Amasing online singing/dancing sessions and concerts. We have also recently welcomed a visit from a local musician to teach our Year 6 class.
As a recognition of our committment to providing high-quality music education we were recently invited and accepted the opportunity to become a 'Music Mark' School. Our school offers RAD Music Tuition in drums, guitar and piano during the school day and this year we are offering singing lessons from our professional singing coach. Additionally, through our extra-curricular clubs, we offer music based activities, including our very popular school choir, drum club, ukele club and Disney Singing Club. We celebrated World Music Day in June, during our arts week. This included dressing as an 'artist' for which lots of children chose to dress up as a musician and we had outside performances from our school choir and whole school sing alongs and a musical careers presentation for our KS2 children from a professional singer.
Impact
Our children are confident with the music skills taught and can apply these in their own work. They have the ability to discuss, compare and evaluate their music pieces and the works of others.
Recommended website - www.classicsforkids.com
RAD Music Tuition
Totally RAD are at Sutton Green Primary School!
RAD believe that whatever the skill level or budget, all children deserve access to exceptional music tuition.
Our highly skilled network of professional musicians provide next-level tuition for the next generation of talent, no matter the location, budget or capability.
Provided on-site, within school hours and at a highly-competitive rate; with RAD, students can experience expert music tuition that helps them sharpen skills, express creativity, and dream BIG, with no disruption or stress – all from the very best in the business.
For more information, and to sign-up your child to RAD lessons, just visit the following website; we’ll do the rest.
https://totallyradmusic.co.uk/hub-parents
Singing lessons at Sutton Green
We are pleased to announce that we will be providing the opportunity for children to have one to one singing lessons with a professional singer/vocal coach.
The 20 minute lessons include:
A vocal warm up that not only teaches you how to take care of your voice but also improves vocal technique and strength
Working on a song of your choice to improve confidence and vocal quality
A chance to explore different genres of music
For more information about lessons please contact Mrs Dallen at carlysingingteacher@yahoo.com
Choir
At Sutton Green we are proud to have our own inclusive and very popular school choir. The choir takes part in a variety of events throughout the year, such as the Amasing Concert (held at Chester Football Stadium this year), singing around the Christmas Tree in the Port Arcades and Cheshire Oaks, and singing at our school fayres. The choir meet Tuesdays at 12:15-12.45pm. The most important quality that we ask from our choir members is enthusiasm and lots of practise at home.
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