Purpose and aims
Purpose Use creativity and imagination to design and make products that solve real and relevant problems. Develop an understanding of the impact of high-quality design on daily life and the wider world by evaluating past and present design and technology. Aims Produce creative work, using technical and practical skills. Become skilful at designing and making high quality products for a wide range of users. Evaluate and analyse products. Test own ideas. Learn how to cook and apply the principles of a healthy and varied diet.
Provision
Our curriculum is categorised in two ways: Breadth – which gives pupils experiences to investigate and analyse a range of existing products. Depth – which helps pupils think imaginatively, taking their research knowledge and applying it in a range of different contexts. Our curriculum drivers – reflection, initiative, diversity – shape our teaching of design and technology so that every opportunity is taken to relate projects to the needs of our pupils, and to encourage children to be critical thinkers. Design and Technology teaching is organised into 3 focussed projects at the end of terms 2, 4 and 5. One of these projects is linked to healthy eating. A research session is taught during the week leading up to the project and a linked home learning activity set to provide further opportunity to research existing products before designing.
Progression and Assessment
The D&T curriculum has five key areas; evaluate, design, make, technical knowledge and cookery. A growing bank of evidence and the progression of these skills can be seen in pupil’s D& T folders which are passed up from year to year. Areas of success and next steps are shared with the children. Teacher’s record assessments simply to show which children are ‘working towards’ the criteria for their year group, and which children are working at ‘greater depth’.
Monitoring, evaluation and improvement
The DT leader will analyse the data from each year group to look for patterns and address any areas of concern. This will inform target setting in the D&T action plan.
