Curriculum Overview
Year 9 Textiles
The Year 9 curriculum is designed to act as a foundation year for the GCSE AQA Art Textiles course. Students are introduced to the sewing machines and to a broad range of media, methods and techniques, including batik, silk painting, needle felting and couching. Students become familiar with the assessment criteria in a supportive environment and learn the process of how marks are awarded at GCSE. Students are encouraged to work experimentally, creating test pieces and recording their ideas in a sketchbook, producing a series of outcomes that make up a portfolio of work based on two themes, ‘Circles and Spirals’ and ‘Sugar and Spice’. While exploring, developing and refining their practical skills, students learn how to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of art, craft and design in a wider context, through their independent research and investigation of other artists and practitioners.
Year 10 Textiles
Art Textiles teaching in Year 10, is tailored to individual students and their needs. Students are introduced to a new topic, ‘Stories’, and are encouraged to work independently; enquiring, researching, reflecting, and evaluating their own progress as their work develops. In this unit, students are encouraged to actively engage in the creative process. Students embed the skills learned in Year 9 by continuing to explore and acquire a variety of textile processes and techniques but with intent and conviction in relation to their own topic, as they design and produce a final outcome, such as a cushion, wall hanging, garment or headdress. Students record their ideas and observations, through drawing, written annotations, test pieces and samples, and are encouraged to talk and write more engagingly about their ideas, informed by their contextual research as the year progresses.
Year 11 Textiles
As in Year 10, the teaching in Year 11 is tailored to individual students and their needs. Students are again encouraged to actively engage in their own creative process, in order to become effective and independent thinkers, and are able to evidence this through their sketchbook studies, samples and analytical research. The focus this year is to prepare students for the Externally Set Task (worth 40% of the overall mark), where students work independently in response to a starting point, stimulus, theme or design brief set by the examining board (AQA), using a range of textile media and processes. There is a strong emphasis on critical understanding and self-evaluation, where practical studies, experimentation and developmental work is embedded within a sustained and meaningful personal investigation. An emphasis is on independent learning so teaching is supportive, but not leading, once the examination unit has begun.
Teacher of Art Textiles
Mrs R Bashforth – rbashforth@sbch.org.uk