Free Art & Design KS4 Teaching Resources for Secondary Teachers

The National Curriculum for Art & Design

At KS4 students will of course be taking their GCSE in Art and Design, so any teaching materials you use in your lesson planning need to have been developed with this in mind. In most cases, the resources on this page will have something to help you, even if it is just as a lesson starter activity or extension resource to your usual materials. They give students the opportunity to make the necessary links to contemporary and historical artists, as well as experiencing a range of craft and design processes and exploring medium, method and materials. Whether you are looking for resources for applied, fine art or photography, the resources here can help you.

Arty Factory has some brilliant examples of pen & ink drawings. It explains and shows how to create an image and then fill it with detail. The site comes with explanations of different pen styles and how they should be used.

Art, Craft and Design Activities

So how do you help your students with developing their ideas, experimenting with different mediums and techniques and recording their ideas? Sketchbooks, journals and their portfolios all help with tracking progress, as do design sheets and digital resources. Then when it comes to art history and finding out about social and historical contexts, you can use some of the museum or gallery resources to enrich learning through the use of video clips, interactive online activities and other free art lesson resources to give you new teaching ideas. These secondary resources will be relevant to the national curriculum and to GCSE specifications, complete with clear learning objectives and outcomes.

Galleries

There are a number of different galleries that KS4 students can be taken to for activities, references or just to gain inspiration. The National Portrait gallery has lots of displays, collections  and learning opportunities that can be used as part of a lesson or reference purposes. They offer workshops and sessions to young people that are based around  portraits, drawing inspiration and more.