Charting self: exploring portrait and identity
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Why this why now
This Year 6 unit supports pupils as they reflect on identity before transitioning to secondary school. Linking emotion with creativity, it explores how culture, history, and place shape us. Pupils build confidence through artist study, expressive making, and personal exploration.
Prior knowledge requirements
- Pupils have explored working with line, colour, paint and mixed materials
- Pupils are aware that art can carry meaning, symbolism and personal stories
- Pupils have some experience drawing the human face or features
Why this why now
This Year 6 unit supports pupils as they reflect on identity before transitioning to secondary school. Linking emotion with creativity, it explores how culture, history, and place shape us. Pupils build confidence through artist study, expressive making, and personal exploration.
Prior knowledge requirements
- Pupils have explored working with line, colour, paint and mixed materials
- Pupils are aware that art can carry meaning, symbolism and personal stories
- Pupils have some experience drawing the human face or features
Charting self: exploring portrait and identity
Made in collaboration with October Gallery, in this unit pupils express personal identity through portraiture, material, memory and imagination. Pupils create textured paintings, symbolic surfaces, close-up feature portraits, and expressive self-maps that combine journey and face.
4 lessons in unit
slide decks, worksheet PDFs, quizzes and lesson overviews. You can select individual lessons from the Charting self: exploring portrait and identity unit and download the resources you need, or download the entire unit now. See every unit listed in our primary art and design curriculum and discover more of our teaching resources for primary art and design programmes.