Design Technology
Intent
At St Mary’s CE Primary School we aim to provide children with a range of inspiring, practical and relevant units of work, where children can use their creativity and imagination to design and make products linked to the real world in a variety of contexts. We also wish to equip children with the practical skills to lead informed and healthy lifestyles. We intend for all children to acquire the knowledge, skills and understanding, whilst making relevant cross-curricular links. Our aim is for children to be encourage to ‘learn to think’ creatively to solve practical problems, both independently and as a team. At St Mary’s, we recognise the significance of Design and Technology in an ever-changing world, and aim for our pupils to be aware, and conscious of the decisions they are making as explorers, testers, designers, makers and evaluators.
Implementation
The national curriculum for design and technology aims to ensure that all pupils: develop the creative, technical and practical expertise needed to perform everyday tasks confidently and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world
build and apply a repertoire of knowledge, understanding and skills in order to design and make high-quality prototypes and products for a wide range of users
critique, evaluate and test their ideas and products and the work of others understand and apply the principles of nutrition and learn how to cook.
At St Mary’s CE Primary School our planned Design and Technology curriculum has a clear progression of skills and knowledge. Our progression of skills and knowledge shows the skills taught within each year group and how these develop to ensure that attainment targets are securely met by the end of each key stage. Our whole school Design and Technology curriculum document shows which of our units cover each of the National curriculum attainment targets as well as each of the strands.
- Design
- Make
- Evaluate
- Technical Knowledge
D.T is taught each term, in rotation with Art and Design, following a two-year cycle of units of study.
To ensure our curriculum is taught to develop cumulatively sufficient knowledge by the end of each Key Stage we follow the stages outlined below:
1.) Substantive knowledge for each subject is mapped from EYFS to Year 6 to ensure our children learn cumulatively sufficient knowledge by the end of each Key Stage.
2.) Disciplinary knowledge as geographical skills and fieldwork is mapped from EYFS to Year 6 to enable children to apply their knowledge as skills.
3.) Explicit teaching of vocabulary is central to children’s ability to connect new knowledge with prior learning. Teaching identifies Tier 2 words, high frequency words used across content e.g. verify, and Tier 3 words, specific to subject domains e.g. biome
4.) Spaced retrieval practice, through questioning, quizzes and peer-explanations, further consolidates the transfer of information from working memory to long-term memory. Quizzing etc. are primarily learning strategies to improve retrieval practice – the bringing of information to mind.
5.) The use of knowledge organisers and knowledge notes for some subjects keeps essential information together to guard against split-attention effect. Children are taught to forge connections between their current learning and the ‘big picture’ of subject content.
Our Early Years Curriculum is carefully planned and implemented to enable children to achieve the Early Learning Goals (ELGs). Through the ELGs for Expressive Art and Design children will learn to safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with design, texture, form and function. They will be able to share their creation, explaining the processes they have used.
Additional enrichment opportunities, such as….
Impact
Our Design and Technology curriculum ensures that children leave St Mary’s with a range of embedded artistic skills and knowledge. They will have an awareness of a diverse range of artists and craftspeople, and be articulate and confident in articulating their artistic view points. They will be able to experiment and take risks, placing value on the process and journey they have taken, not just the finished outcome. Most importantly we want children to have enjoyed this highly creative outlet as a means of both self-expression and creativity.
