Intent
What Design and Technology looks like in our school:
Exciting and creative topics engage children and foster their curiosity about designers and their creations.
- Children working individually, in pairs and groups to develop their skills in Design and Technology. A progression of the key design skills is used across the school evidenced in D & T books which will be transition through the year groups with the children.
- Children’s interests are captured through topics in our Curriculum, ensuring that links are made in a cross curricular way and giving children motivation and meaning for their learning.
- Evaluation is an integral part of the design process and allows children to adapt and improve their product- a key skill which they need throughout their life.
- Children understand and apply the principles of nutrition and learn how to cook.
- Children learning through exploring different designers’ techniques whilst acquiring and developing their own skills.
- Children developing an awareness of different techniques used by different designers, building up a knowledge of how to incorporate this learning into their own creations.
- High quality modelling, scaffolding and discussion of different skills and techniques leading to children creating high-quality products for a wide range of users.
This is the knowledge and understanding gained at each stage:
By the end of EYFS pupils will:
- Represent their own ideas, thoughts and feelings through design and technology, art, music, dance, role play and stories.
- Safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and materials in original ways, thinking about uses and purposes.
By the end of Key Stage 1 pupils will:
- Design purposeful, functional, appealing products for themselves and other users based on design criteria
- Select from and use a range of tools, equipment and materials to perform practical tasks
- Explore and evaluate a range of existing products and their own designs
- Develop their technical knowledge - build structures, exploring how they can be made stronger, stiffer and more stable
- Explore and use mechanisms in their products.
- Use the basic principles of a healthy and varied diet to prepare dishes and understand where food comes from.
By the end of Key Stage 2 pupils will:
- Use research and develop design criteria to inform the design of innovative, functional, appealing products that are fit for purpose
- Generate, develop, model and communicate their ideas
- Select from and use a wider range of tools, equipment, materials and components to perform practical tasks
- Investigate and analyse a range of existing products
- Evaluate existing products and their own designs and understand how key events and individuals in design and technology have helped shape the world
- Build on their existing technical knowledge including applying their understanding of how to strengthen, stiffen and reinforce more complex structures; using mechanical systems and electrical systems and applying their understanding of computing to program, monitor and control their products
- Understand and apply the principles of a healthy and varied diet
- Prepare and cook a variety of dishes understand seasonality and know where and how a variety of ingredients are grown, reared, caught and processed.
Implementation
- Design technology is provided as either cross curricular or discrete lessons.
- Exciting topics to deepen understanding and offer challenge.
- The skills and techniques developed will be evidenced in D&T book which will transition up the school with the children.
- A progression document is used to ensure that previous knowledge and skills are built on.
- By the time the children leave Year 6, they will have explored and discussed a range of different designers and their work, focusing on the techniques used or the features designers incorporated in their inventions or products. The children will then have a chance to recreate and reimagine these into their own designs.
- All children will be given a chance to work on a range of different collaborative design projects and have their work showcased across the school and in the local community.
- Where appropriate, links will be made across the curriculum to create a more deep and meaningful design education.
- Workshops or Design and Technology days relevant to specific topics may be used to immerse children in the design experience.
This is what adults do:
- Plan inspiring, progressive lessons which work on developing or acquiring design skills and techniques.
- Create a positive learning environment where children feel comfortable discussing and sharing their own and others work and suggesting positive feedback and ways to improve.
- Regularly monitor books, listen to pupil feedback and audit planning.
- Raise the profile of Design Technology within the school, using displays, design and technology days and running extra-curricular design technology or STEM clubs.
This is how we support:
- Work will be differentiated so that all children are able to meet the learning objective in activities suitable to their own individual needs.
- Offering a range of equipment and resources so that all children can make progress during a lesson, e.g. use of templates or guides, different tools etc.
- Small group/1:1 adult support given where required.
- We use teacher and self-assessment to quickly identify any child who requires additional support developing specific skills and techniques.
- These pupils will then receive additional support or resources to use in order for them to successfully meet the learning objective.
This is how we challenge:
- Lessons will be differentiated.
- Additional activities stretch the learning within the lesson and further develop certain skills or techniques.
- Higher level questioning will be embedded
This is how ensure all children can access the curriculum:
- Children who have SEN or EAL needs are introduced to specific subject relevant language prior to the lesson.
- Seating children alongside good role models to support one another or working in groups to enable children to discuss their design choices.
- By providing equipment and resources relevant to each individual child, e.g. templates, relevant vocabulary necessary for writing up design choices, writing frames.
Impact
This is what you might typically see:
- Happy and engaged learners.
- Children posing questions about designs that they wish to research.
- A range of different activities including practical lessons, research lessons, showcase of inventions and evaluations of designs.
- Children able to self-reflect on their designs and the making process, finding both areas of success and evaluating areas of possible improvement.
- Displays around the school and showcases of children’s designs.
- Confident children who are willing to persevere with skills and techniques they are developing.
This is how we know how well our pupils are doing:
- Marking and feedback by teacher and peers. Monitoring of progress.
- Photographic evidence included in children’s Design and Technology books. Displays of work in classes.
- Book scrutiny, pupil voice and planning audits.
- Targeting both Teacher and Learning Assistant support during lessons to ensure progress of all children.
This is the impact of the teaching:
- Children who enjoy Design and Technology.
- Children who can confidently discuss their learning and progress in Design and Technology. Reflective learners.
- Increasingly resilient learners.
- Children who are able to showcase their developing skills and techniques by creating different products and inventions.
- Children who are prepared to share the learning they have acquired in a variety of ways. Children who are able to apply the different design skills and techniques they have acquired to design innovative, functional, appealing products.
- Children who are inspired by the inventions and achievements of the designers they have learnt about.
- Children who aspire to becoming designers of the future