“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

Thomas Merton

Intent

At Park Lane Primary School, we aim to ensure that the performing arts plays a fundamental role within our curriculum. We believe performing arts contributes to the development of our Griffins and to the school curriculum by providing a powerful and distinctive form of communication and expression. Therefore, our vision is to expose children to a wide variety of high-quality performing arts experiences. We seek to make sure these opportunities are available to all students regardless of their financial background or attainment and believe that all pupils are artists and performers, with creativity being at the forefront of our key skills.

We recognise how the arts can also support cognitive and physical development as well as communication and presentational skills from an early age. Because of this, we strive for excellence within the Foundation Stage itself to build upon skills for the future. As pupils progress through each year group following this, they will gain a deeper understanding about the skills and aspects of drama and dance. We want the children at Park Lane to have no limits and have ambitions for careers incorporating creativity with prospects such as acting, dancing, stage production, set design, choreography and much more.

Park Lane is committed on providing our children with rich, ambitious performing arts experiences, which support pupil engagement across the curriculum, enabling children to consistently achieve highly. We recognise the importance of children being creative, gaining confidence and expressing themselves as these skills are transferable into many other areas in the curriculum. We aim to give children the platform and opportunity to achieve this.

Implementation

• The teaching of the subject of performing arts is delivered through English lessons and enhanced further in opportunities such as Griffin University and extra-curricular clubs.
• Seesaw – our online learning platform – is utilised to showcase the curriculum in action through photographs, videos and articulation of learning.
• Staff members are provided with regular CPD opportunities for performing arts and dance and are supported through a wider network of schools within The Griffin Schools Trust.
• The Performing arts lead works closely alongside the rest of the Arts Team to provide targeted and ongoing support, where needed.
• Assessment progression maps are used as a tool to ensure that children achieve highly and as a basis for future target setting within performing arts.
• Teachers make sure that each skill is modelled to enable all pupils to be successful within the lesson.
• Children are provided with ample opportunity to showcase talent within the arts such as the Chance to Dance scheme, RSC workshops, school productions and the Griffin Arts Festival.
• Within the Chance to Dance scheme, children are chosen individually by a local dance school in partnership with the Royal Opera House to pursue their talent with a scholarship.
• Children have ample opportunities to perform and visit theatres and gain knowledge and understanding about this career path.
• Collaborations with arts organisations and experts within this field are utilised to further widen children’s art opportunities.
• The Sports and Arts Fund from the Griffin Schools Trust provides children with funds to further develop skills away from the school setting.

Impact

Our Senior Leadership Team are strong advocates for the arts at Park Lane, which enables me as performing arts lead and teachers alike to maximise the impact made across the subject. This is demonstrated in a variety of ways:

• Children achieve highly in the arts, which is reflected in the standards achieved against the planned outcomes.
• Arts experiences promote a tolerance and respect for other cultures, as well as broadening children’s horizons.
• Seesaw showcases clear progression of key skills within the subject of performing arts and are used as an assessment tool for future teaching and planning. The progression maps follow the children to their next class to provide optimum opportunity for children to reflect and revisit previously learnt skills.
• Work that is produced is of consistently high quality including those children with SEN needs.
• Gifted and talented pupils have a variety of opportunities to develop their skills in preparation for the next stage.
• The enjoyment of learning the arts as a subject is apparent across all key stages and pupil voice recognises their views.
• Drop ins carried out by the Arts team provide the chance for the subject lead to evaluate the subject. Following this, targeted support is provided to ensure all lessons are ‘skills based’ and to an appropriate level to both challenge and support all learners.
• Children receiving scholarships in dance/ funding to pursue a talent have discussed the positive impacts of this on their lives/ ambitions for the future.
• As children’s oracy skills develop, we have found that the skills around articulation and the confidence underpinning this has meant that children at Park Lane can now discuss all areas of learning with conviction and purpose.

Curriculum Documents