“Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it.” – Sir Henry Royce
At Christopher Pickering we have carefully designed our Design and Technology curriculum to ensure it offers all children the opportunity to exercise their creativity. We aim to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for D&T by enabling children to design and make products that solve real and relevant problems whilst acquiring a broad range of subject knowledge. Our D&T curriculum allows children to apply the knowledge and skills learned in other subjects, particularly Maths, Science, Computing and Art. At Christopher Pickering, D&T projects are carefully planned to capture children’s interests through topic-based learning, this allows for links to be made in a cross-curricular way and provides children with motivation and meaning for their studies.
Intent
At Christopher Pickering, we believe in providing children with a D&T education that is relevant in our rapidly changing world. We believe that a high-quality D&T curriculum will inspire children to think independently and innovatively and develop creative, procedural and technical understanding. We want to encourage pupils to become resilient and creative problem solvers by providing children with opportunities to research and investigate existing products, where children will understand how and why this is an important step in the design process, to develop their ideas, make their own products and be critical evaluators throughout the entire process. We want children to thoroughly enjoy their D&T learning and aim to inspire the future generation of designers and makers.
Our curriculum is designed to ensure that the relevant skills and knowledge, as set out in the National Curriculum, are built upon year by year and sequenced appropriately to maximise learning for all children. D&T units of work have been planned so that the six D&T principles are taken into account – all projects consider user, purpose, innovation, authenticity, functionality and design decisions. structured so that they follow the investigate, focused practical task, design, make and evaluate structure.
Implementation
Children have the opportunity to develop their skills and knowledge in a range of technologies including textiles, food and construction. At Christopher Pickering, we ensure that D&T learning is carefully planned to complement and enhance our key curriculum drivers (History and Geography).
To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in design and technology, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Teachers follow a clear progression of substantive and disciplinary knowledge which ensures all pupils are challenged in line with their year group expectations and are given the opportunity to build on their prior knowledge.
In EYFS the essential building blocks of children’s design and technology capability are established. The children explore and use a variety of materials, tools and techniques through a combination of child initiated and adult directed activities. They will begin to construct with a purpose in mind using a variety of resources using simple tools and techniques appropriately. They have opportunities to experiment with design, texture, form and function and adapt their work when necessary. The children will also share their creations explaining the process they have used.
In KS1 children will undertake a mechanisms, structures, textiles and food topic each year, these will be continued in KS2 when children will also undertake an electrical systems and digital world topic.
All teaching of DT should follow the instigation, design, make and evaluate cycle. Each stage should be rooted in technical knowledge. The design process should be rooted in real life, relevant contexts to give meaning to learning. While making, children should be given choice and a range of tools to choose freely from. To evaluate, children should be able to evaluate their own and their peers’ products against a design criteria. Each of these steps should be rooted in technical knowledge and vocabulary. DT should be taught to a high standard, where each of the stages should be given equal weight. There should be evidence in each of these stages in the DT books, which should also develop to show clear progression across the key stages.
Design and technology at Christopher Pickering will be fully inclusive to every child with work being tailored for children with SEND. Children will learn through similar activities with final outcomes modified to suit all needs.
Impact
The impact and measure of this is to ensure that children at Christopher Pickering are equipped with transferable technical skills and knowledge that will enable them to be ready for the curriculum at Key Stage 3 and for life as an adult in the wider world.
Pupils will be able to justify and explain why they have selected materials based on their features, in order to manipulate, join, construct and shape a full range of materials to create a quality product.
Knowledge and understanding of the importance of food hygeine will be developed alongside the skills required to create a range of sweet and savoury food, explaining how this contributes towards sustaining a healthy, varied and balanced diet.
Our pupils will become proficient in applying a range of stitching and joining techniques when making textile products.
Knowledge of how and why mechanical systems and electrical components are often used in designs will be used to develop the skill of incorporating these features into their products.
We want our pupils to have truly enjoyed learning in D&T at primary school and for this to instil a life-long love of problem solving and help to develop creative and resilient individuals.