Intent
The Design and Technology curriculum at Wolsingham primary school is designed to provide the children with practical skills that they can apply to real-life in our rapidly changing world. Children will become problem solvers who can work creatively on a shared project. We teach Design and Technology as it helps develop children’s skills and knowledge in design, structures, mechanisms, electrical control, and a range of materials, including food. DT lessons will inspire children to think independently, innovatively and develop creative, procedural, and technical understanding. Our DT curriculum follows Projects on a Page and provides children with opportunities to research, represent their ideas, explore, and investigate, develop their ideas, think about health and safety, make a product, and evaluate their work.
The Design and Technology curriculum develops the priorities for pupils at Wolsingham Primary School in the following ways:
Basic Skills
- Communication, writing and recording and vocabulary: Children will practice expressing their ideas clearly when explaining their designs, giving instructions, or describing how they’ve created their projects. This helps develop their speaking and listening skills. By keeping and recording notes in their books or writing evaluations of their projects, children will learn to document processes, describe products, and reflect on their work. Through-out the design, make and evaluate processes of their project children will learn specific vocabulary related to materials, tools, processes, and techniques to build their language skills and understanding of technical terms.
- Measurement, shapes and geometry, problem solving and estimation and data handling: Children will measure materials, sizes, and proportions with increasing accuracy when designing and building products. When creating products, children will apply knowledge of shapes, angles, symmetry, and space, which strengthens their understanding of geometry and spatial awareness. The skills of estimation and calculating quantities will be practiced as children plan for, analyse and make their products thinking about how much material they need or the time required for a process. During the evaluation of their designs or considering users’ needs, children may collect and organise information, helping them practice basic data handling skills like sorting, comparing, and analysing.
Resilience and Perseverance
- Learning through trial and error: As children work on projects that require shaping, decorating, or manufacturing products, they will encounter challenges. Through problem-solving and revising their work, they develop resilience, learning that mistakes are part of the creative process.
- Continuous improvement: Reflecting on their work, evaluating outcomes, and identifying areas for improvement helps children build perseverance and a growth mindset, encouraging them to keep working towards better results.
Social Awareness
- Understanding the impact of decisions: By considering how their designs and products affect communities, the environment, and society, children will become more socially aware of their role in the world.
- Appreciating different perspectives: Learning about key individuals, inventions, and historical events introduces children to a range of ideas and experiences, broadening their understanding of how Design and Technology impacts society and the world.
- Collaborative skills: As children work on group projects or consider the needs of users and clients, they will develop teamwork, empathy, and the ability to take others’ opinions and needs into account.
Knowledge
- Materials and tools: Children will develop a deep understanding of the properties of various materials, how to use tools, and the processes involved in creating products. This knowledge helps them make informed decisions when designing and building.
- Healthy eating: Through exploring food, diets, and healthy recipes, children will gain knowledge about nutrition, food groups, and cooking methods, which they can apply to their daily lives.
- Design principles and innovation: By building models, prototypes, and products, children will apply knowledge to create innovative solutions that meet real-world needs, developing their ability to think critically and creatively.
- Historical and current impacts: Understanding how key individuals, inventions, and events have shaped technology gives children a broader context for their work, while inspiring them to make their own contributions to the world of Design and Technology.
Implementation
Design and Technology Long Term Plan
Our long-term plan has been carefully set out to ensure the key terms of design and technology are developed from Reception to Year 6 to ensure there is clear progression of skills and vocabulary. At Wolsingham Primary School, the design process is fundamental and runs throughout our curriculum. Design Technology is taught through a variety of real-life, practical activities to allow children to develop exploring, designing, making, evaluating, technical knowledge and cooking and nutrition. Key areas are revisited again with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revisit and build on their previous learning.
Impact
As children progress through the Design and Technology curriculum at Wolsingham Primary School they will:
- Understand the functional and aesthetic properties of a range of materials and resources.
- Understand how to use and combine tools to carry out different processes for shaping, decorating, and manufacturing products.
- Build and apply a repertoire of skills, knowledge and understanding to produce high quality, innovative outcomes, including models, prototypes, CAD and products to fulfil the needs of users, clients and scenarios.
- Understand and apply the principles of healthy eating, diets, and recipes, including key processes, food groups and cooking equipment.
- Have an appreciation for key individuals, inventions and events in history and of today that impact our world.
- Recognise where our decisions can impact the wider world in terms of community, social and environmental issues.
- Self-evaluate and reflect on learning at different stages and identify areas to improve.
- Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the National Curriculum for Design and Technology.
Design and Technology in the Early Years
A designer in the early years will learn how to use tools safely, and effectively to construct with a purpose in mind. They will begin to learn how to join and assemble pieces together and adapt their work where necessary, understanding that tools can be used for a purpose and how to use these safely and effectively. Practising some safety measures without supervision. All learning will include children understanding how to use tools and techniques safely, competently, and appropriately, considering and managing some risks. They will show an interest in the way toys work with knobs, pulleys, flaps, or moving parts, and use these as inspiration when designing and making. A designer in the early years will use previous learning, discussions, stories, topics, and recent visits to move forward their designing, often making items and objects familiar to them for example a pair of binoculars to go on a bear hunt. A lot of learning in the early years takes place through purposeful play, both indoors and outdoors.