The Arts at Watlington Primary School

The Arts team leads the following subjects: PE, Art and Music.

At Watlington Primary School we believe that the Arts curriculum:

• Provides a range of developmental musical experiences with children learning a range of instruments throughout the school, progressing to group and independent performances.
• Develops creative planning to ensure cross-curricular teaching that is progressive and challenging. Sport enables children to experience and excel in a range of different activities.  Where appropriate PE is linked to elements of topic planning.
• Inspires children with rich learning opportunities to develop competence through progressive skills development in all subjects resulting in county wide music performances, competitive sports tournaments and community ventures including singing at the local care home.
• Maximises life skills to ensure happy, healthy and resilient adults that enjoy and contribute to the arts.

Physical Education

We believe the children at Watlington Primary School:

• Engage with a range of sporting opportunities from an early age; our curriculum ensures that progressive skills are taught from Reception to year 6, building year on year.
• Feel confident in learning new skills with their peers and applying these in game situations and sporting tournaments.
• Are encouraged to take part in tournaments and competitions, whatever their ability; team work and support are embedded in lessons and these experiences.
• Are offered a range of extra-curricular sporting clubs for all age groups that develop new skills and apply skills to games. These are run both by teachers and external experts.

Music

We believe the children at Watlington Primary School:

• Are encouraged to join in with whole school and class singing, through assemblies and class sessions.
• The whole school regularly taking part in the BBC 10 pieces project.
• Have the opportunity to learn a range of instruments throughout the school including glockenspiel (KS1), recorder (LKs2) and Ukulele (UKS2). These lessons teach a progression of skills with music appreciation, reading music and relevant associated vocabulary. Composition is taught in Year 6, as part of Ukulele lessons.
• Access to the Charanga music resources to learn songs, appreciate music and develop a wide range of musical skills.
• Have the opportunity to be part of the school band and choir, performing at school events and within the wider community.
• Engage with links with the local secondary school where children have learn new skills from dedicated music teachers and older pupils.
• Develop performance skills through school performances including plays, church services, assemblies and county wide events.

Art

We believe the children at Watlington Primary School:

• The children at our school are taught art using a progressive, exciting approach.
• Children are encouraged to develop an appreciation for art in different forms, becoming critical thinkers when forming an opinion on what they see.
• We encourage the children to develop their skills by teaching a range of artistic styles and concepts.
• Art is a valued area of our cross curricular approach where children are encouraged to apply their art skills to a variety of different contexts.
• We work with our community to take part in sustainability projects such as creating our whole school values tree using plastics.

Key highlights:

• Inter-Schools tournaments throughout the academic year
• For more information on sports tournaments, follow this link: Sports Tournaments
• Early Years Olympics, led by Year 5 & 6
• Whole school cross country event
• Collaborative art projects, led by parents – The Values Tree
• Community art show
• Singing at The Big Sing
• School choir
• The chance for every child in our school to learn a musical instrument.
• Whole class ukulele lessons for Year 4, 5 and 6 pupils 
• 6 identified PP children benefit from 1:1 music lessons paid for from PP fund each year.

Knowledge and Skills Progression Ladders

These ladders are the basis for our planning, teaching and learning. They draw on Bloom's Taxonomy, the National Curriculum and subject-specific schemes where applicable.