Kapow Primary Art summary review

Date: 12.07.2022

Average star rating: 4.1/5

Overview comments:

• Just makes art easy and fun

• Curriculum coverage

• It’s a fantastic resource

• Great to have pdfs as means I can focus on gathering all the resources I need and Smart boards are quick to make

• Great resource saves teachers a lot of time

• Overall a useful resource to aid planning and coverage but lacks integrated assessment tools, remote learning access and not all the art activities actually work.

• So far, we are really enjoying using Kapow

• Overall value for money

• Needs tweaking for lower end of school in some topics.

• A great resource to help support teachers - especially those who are less confident or who do not feel they have the skills and subject knowledge to deliver high level art lessons.

• Good starting point but now we are looking to create our own art curriculum, which can be more adapted to our school's needs.

• A good resource particularly if a school does not have an art specialist as it informs teachers and can give them confidence.

• Good resource. I personally would prefer to plan my own art but it has given me some nice ideas. Needs more artist focus, more differentiation, more sequential lesson planning that builds up to the final task - these could improve it

How well does it match the curriculum?

• 5* Makes art fun for kids and teachers. Teachers who struggled before don’t now.

• 5* Excellent coverage and great for staff to access

• 5* Excellent resource that supports staff and children. The teacher videos support less confident staff.

• 4* Some great ideas given

• 4* Good resource

• 4* Progression and lessons are clearly explained and easy to navigate, it allows for coverage across the whole of Reception up to Year 6.

• 4* The content expands the vague national curriculum well which ensures we are teaching a range of skills.

• 4* Well resourced, easy to follow. Ready to pick up and teach. It can however be a little prescriptive and places a ceiling on creativity. It’s essential that teachers add and amend the lessons to get maximum outcomes.

• 3* Find that sometimes it expecting too much of the youngest children

• 3* Well mapped out against national curriculum standards and a range of ideas - weaknesses are that some lessons and topics are quite boring for the children

• 3* Strengths - Exposes children to a wide range of artists. Videos are great for subject knowledge. Weaknesses - Difficult to see progression through a unit as lessons don't link so it does not seem to build on the previous session.

• 3* The strengths are the layout and clarity if the resource. The weakness is that it is limited and if it does not fit your topic it is possibly not usable.

• 3* Has all the lesson ideas provided, matched to the curriculum, with videos for pupils and teachers. Good for teachers who are useless with art. Weakness is I don't often like the structure - the lessons don't always build on each other as much as I would like. Too many artists are covered - I usually pick 1 per topic to focus on so at least the children remember a name and some of their work e.g. Van Gogh. If you introduce multiple artists the children have no retention, it is confusing. I apply a lot of my own common sense e.g. no we don't need water, we don't need brushes, we'll change that part - experience helps me avoid the bad ideas.

How could it be improved to support different learners?

• 5* Easy to differentiate

• 5* Offers a range of levels

• 5* Lots of differentiation on there and the pupil video makes it achievable for the pupils in each class.

• 4* SEN don’t seem to find it easy so have to adapt it myself

• 4* Provides ideas of how to appeal to all students

• 3* A range of adapted resources for pupils with visual impairment or useful links to find alternative resources

• 4* Most abilities are supported by it. Sometimes the severe special needs may need something different but usually we can combine elements to ensure they are able to access the lessons

• 3* Differentiated activities and scaffold ideas and resources would go some way to help provide a more inclusive teaching opportunity.

• 3* Some topics are great. Easily accessible. Others less so

• 4* More suggestions for how to stretch the gifted and talented artists and also suggested homework tasks would be good

• 3* A clear aim for each unit with an 'end product'. Stretch tasks to give clear ideas for how to extend those who are artistic.

• 3* More choices of themes and videos of art skills to support non artist teachers who can then support children.

• 2* The differentiation seems to be by outcome. No real suggestion of how to support weaker pupils. This is true of a lot of paid for resources - they aren't differentiated to the standard the teachers are expected to differentiate to - I need to show clear 3 way differentiation in my plans

How well does it engage and motivate pupils?

• 5* Topics are fun and accessible to all

• 5* They love the pupil videos

• 5* Very motivating. Resources are available to download, the resource list is clear for teachers to prepare and the every lesson is engaging. Some lessons are pitched quite high with the expectation that the children have the skills already.

• 5* The ideas are great and the kids love it

• 4* Follows easy simple steps

• 3* Pupils enjoy doing the art tasks but some of them, despite investing in the recommended resources, didn't work, printing which didn't really work and left the pupils feeling disappointed with the results.

• 5* The ideas and support materials really help to ensure the curriculum is enjoyed by pupils and the range of ideas also help

• 3* It’s very visual and the pupil and teacher videos are extremely helpful and engaging. Teachers are prepared and confident before the lesson and pupils are completely clear on what they are working towards.

• 3* Again some topics ok, some lacking

• 3* They love having lessons which treat art as a core subject but they like to have more free choice in some of the tasks they do.

• 3* They like the range of tasks. Would be more motivational if culminated in an end product that they could work towards.

• 4* There are some great activities and fun ideas. More choices of topics or art skills and themes would be useful.

• 3* Kids like art in general. Some lovely ideas! I would prefer the lessons building up to a final project more - they feel a bit bitty

How well supported is it by any included formative assessments?

• 4* It links in with our assessment tool

• 4* Progression map is clear assessment opportunities

• 4* Lots of opportunities for assessment and all assessment materials are included on kapow.

• 4* Fits in with school assessment

• 3* It is pretty basic and doesn't have any integrated assessment record keeping

• 4* Assessment in art is an area we are working on and the curriculum does seem to help develop our assessment skills as well

• 2* Assessment opportunities are limited.

• 3* There is a good range of assessment for learning tasks which help to inform teacher judgements

• 3* An independent task as a final assessment would be useful but I have not spent much time exploring any assessment materials so it is difficult to comment.

• 4* For art this is sufficient assessment. You can use this to set up an assessment task or assess what the children do in each lesson.

• 3* Formative assessment is just your observations of the kids and questioning so that is fine In terms of summative assessment that is where we need more help

How well does it support planning?

• 5* All done for you

• 5* Planning is thorough

• 5* All planning is provided. It shows clear professions and long term planning for the whole school. Very little extra work needs to be done.

• 5* Great to have pdfs so does my job for me

• 4* Everything is planned out for you, you just need to allow yourself time to order or prep any resources that might be required.

• 5* The lessons are detailed and the supporting videos help less confident staff to ensure they know the skills which are being taught.

• 4* Planning is well prepared enabling teachers to fully understand what the lesson entails. The structure layout means it is easy to follow and user friendly.

• 3* It has been very helpful for teachers to see updated plans as many of our art plans were out of date

• 4* Like the videos- really useful as it can be overwhelming to read really long lesson plans. Would like a clearer idea for how to extend a task if they finish too quickly.

• 4* There is good art vocabulary on the site and this is very useful in terms of planning if you are a non art specialist. Ideas are good and so is progression.

• 4* It is all there. You still need to do a lot of thinking on top including adding common sense and differentiating

What improvements could make this better value for money?

• 5* Happy to pay for it

• 5* Great price discount for other subjects

• 5* Good prices and it’s discounted the more subjects you add. We currently subscribe to 3 subjects which gives us a good discount.

• 3* Integrated assessment, access for remote learning and ensuring all the art activities work - if this was the case then it would be brilliant!

• 4* I haven't been told the cost but the fact that this has been purchased by our school must mean that it isn't too expensive!

• 4* More home learning and online opportunities for pupils would be helpful

• 3* To be fair not much experience but does ensure consistency across school

• 3* It is good value for money considering how much planning is provided and the range of support videos is really helpful

• 4* Perhaps some online training to up-level teachers' skills could be useful? It would be useful to adapt resources to meet the needs of the class/school too.

• 3* Money is tight in schools but if you don’t have an art specialist to lead primary art this would be good value for money.

• 3* I do not know the cost or the comparison with other resources as I don't lead art guess more differentiation, slightly clearer less wordy planning would be nice, there are videos which I like but they miss opportunities to model the misconceptions. This is where the teacher needs to use their experience of kids and common sense

Net promoter score for this resource:

Kapow Primary

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