Real Art classroom lessons grouped by where they sit on the PICRAT grid.
By Andy Perryer, Director of Education Innovation27 lessonsReviewed September 2026
In art, students are nearly always making something, so the first PICRAT question answers itself. The second question does the work: what is the technology doing to the making?
A Year 6 still life painted on one layer in Procreate is Creative Replace: the same painting, on glass instead of paper. Give Year 9 a Fauvist harbour scene and let them try rival colour schemes on separate layers, or have Year 7 review a week of observation sketches through Procreate's time-lapse replay, and the tool is adding something a sketchbook cannot. That is Creative Amplify.
Transform in art usually means work that responds to the world around it: a p5.js piece driven by the live local weather, micro:bit lanterns that change as visitors pass, a Year 12 textile print generated from Met Office rainfall records since 1836. None of those could exist without the technology.
Looking still matters. Year 2 studying Van Gogh's brushstrokes zoomed on the board, or Year 8 watching a day of light in time-lapse before Monet's Rouen Cathedral, are Passive lessons that earn their place.
Each student builds a Canva collage about a place in school from three photographs, two of their own drawings and a 20-second sound recording of that place.
Each student photographs eight to ten images on one theme and edits them into a short Adobe Express video with captions, timed to music chosen for tone.
Students build a Google Sites portfolio of the term's work, with a time-lapse clip of each piece in progress and a recorded commentary on intentions and choices.
During the summer show, each student duplicates their Procreate painting every day and paints two rival next stages from the same point, visitors vote between them in Mentimeter, and the winner becomes the base for the next day.
Each student curates one room of a shared CoSpaces Edu gallery around a theme, hanging their own work beside two classmates' pieces with a written curatorial rationale.
For the end-of-year show, each student makes a short video label that plays beside their physical work, showing its making, the compositions they rejected and their own spoken statement.
Students photograph their own line drawing of a tin, bring it into Canva and build a four-panel Warhol-style repeat with a different flat colour scheme in each panel.
Each student photographs a lino print at six stages, from first drawing to final print, and sets the photos out in order in PowerPoint with a caption explaining each decision.
After looking at photos of fireworks, children draw their own bursts, trails and sparkles on a black background in Microsoft Paint, and the pictures are printed for the Bonfire Night display.
Students build a lantern from willow, card and tracing paper and code the micro:bit inside it so its light pattern changes when a passing visitor's shadow falls across it.
Students model a real spot in the school grounds to its measured size in CoSpaces Edu and design a kinetic sculpture for it, coding its parts to move and to change when a visitor clicks it.
Students take the Met Office monthly rainfall series for their region since 1836, write p5.js rules that turn every month into a mark, and print the generated design onto fabric.
Students code a p5.js piece that reads how much a spectator moves and how loudly they speak, so every visitor changes the work, with no images or sound stored.
Students post photos of their shell or seed-head sketches to Padlet, three named peers comment on each, and revised versions go up beside the originals next lesson.
Students zoom into Bruegel's Hunters in the Snow on Google Arts & Culture, choose one small detail, and post a reading of the painting's mood that the detail supports.
Each student gathers 12 portrait references from Google Arts & Culture and the web onto their own private Padlet wall, with a one-line caption for each.
The teacher zooms slowly into The Starry Night on Google Arts & Culture so the class can see the swirls and thick dabs of paint, before children practise the same marks with oil pastels.
Students read a one-page introduction to Käthe Kollwitz that the teacher drafted with Copilot and checked line by line, then look at two of her War woodcuts with that background in mind.
The teacher plays a time-lapse of one clear day filmed from the art room window, and students watch the colour of the light and shadows shift before comparing them with Monet's Rouen Cathedral series.
The teacher pours thinned paint from a stick in three different gestures while a tablet films in slow motion, and students watch the replays to see how the speed of the hand decides the mark.