Stranton Primary School

Stranton Primary School
Only the best is good enough

Design and Technology

In Design Technology, we use our creativity to solve real life problems.

The teaching of Design and Technology (DT) in Stranton Primary School fits in with our rationale and aims for our whole school curriculum:

They include ensuring that the curriculum:

  • Has the needs of the children at the heart of everything we do
  • Is based on a strong foundation of oracy
  • Meets the needs of our local community
  • Is full of exciting, enriching and enjoyable learning experiences
  • Provides opportunities for our children, staff and parents to all learn together.
  • Positively improves academic outcomes
  • Prepares our children to become positive role models in and effective contributors to Society
  • Gives our pupils the chance to become the very best versions of themselves.

Or in short, a curriculum which provides only the very best education, opportunities and experiences for all of our pupils.

Vision for Design and Technology

The aim of Design Technology teaching, here at Stranton Primary School is to give pupils the opportunity to explore and be creative. It allows children to follow a design process and make choices about their work and see the impact their choices make. Children develop skills in resilience and work though problems and seek ways to improve their designs and ideas. Design Technology provides all children with an opportunity to be creative and be successful especially those who achieve less in more academic subjects. Design Technology provides children will skills and knowledge that other areas of the curriculum may not. For those children who are less academic, it provided them with the skills and knowledge they may need to access a wide variety of employment. It shows all children the possibilities. It allows them to see the impact DT has had on the world we live in and it gives them a place where they can explore and develop ideas that can make positive changes in the world around them.

We aim:

  • To enable all children to have access to a varied range of high quality experiences
  • To provide an imaginative, innovative and coordinated DT programme which will foster enthusiasm for DT amongst all the children
  • To foster an enjoyment and appreciation of the Art and Design Technology and a knowledge of designers, inventors, architects and bakers/ chefs, through links with the local and wider multicultural community.
  • To stimulate children’s creativity and imagination by providing visual, tactile and sensory experience
  • To help children explore the world at first hand, using all their senses and experimentation, and so gain knowledge and understanding of the world in which they live
  • To develop children’s understanding of cooking, construction, mechanisms and electronics and their ability to use materials and processes to communicate ideas, feelings and meanings
  • To inspire confidence, value and pleasure in design
  • To cultivate children’s aesthetic awareness and enable them to make informed judgements about design and become actively involved in shaping environments
  • To teach children to express their own ideas, feelings, thoughts and experiences
  • To develop children’s design capability
  • To enhance children’s ability to value the contribution made by of designers, inventors, architects and bakers/ chefs and respond critically and imaginatively to ideas, images and inventions.

Curriculum End Points

By the end of Key Stage 1, we want ALL children to:

  • Be taught the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to engage in an iterative process of designing and making.
  • work in a range of relevant contexts [for example, the home and school, gardens and playgrounds, the local community, industry and the wider environment].

Pupils should be taught to:

Design

  • Design purposeful, functional, appealing products for themselves and other users based on design criteria
  • Generate, develop, model and communicate their ideas through talking, drawing, templates, mock-ups and, where appropriate, information and communication technology

Make

  • Select from and use a range of tools and equipment to perform practical tasks [for example, cutting, shaping, joining and finishing]
  • Select from and use a wide range of materials and components, including construction materials, textiles and ingredients, according to their characteristics.

Evaluate

  • Explore and evaluate a range of existing products
  • Evaluate their ideas and products against design criteria

Technical knowledge

  • Build structures, exploring how they can be made stronger, stiffer and more stable
  • Explore and use mechanisms [for example, levers, sliders, wheels and axles], in their products.

This will ensure all pupils are ready and able to access the Key Stage 2 curriculum and beyond.

 By the end of Key Stage 2, we want ALL children to:

  • Be taught the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to engage in an iterative process of designing and making.
  • Work in a range of relevant contexts [for example, the home, school, leisure, culture, enterprise, industry and the wider environment].

Pupils should be taught to:

Design

  • Use research and develop design criteria to inform the design of innovative, functional, appealing products that are fit for purpose, aimed at particular individuals or groups
  • Generate, develop, model and communicate their ideas through discussion, annotated sketches, cross-sectional and exploded diagrams, prototypes, pattern pieces and computer-aided design

Make

  • Select from and use a wider range of tools and equipment to perform practical tasks [for example, cutting, shaping, joining and finishing], accurately
  • Elect from and use a wider range of materials and components, including construction materials, textiles and ingredients, according to their functional properties and aesthetic qualities

Evaluate

  • Investigate and analyse a range of existing products
  • Evaluate their ideas and products against their own design criteria and consider the views of others to improve their work
  • Understand how key events and individuals in design and technology have helped shape the world

Technical knowledge

  • Apply their understanding of how to strengthen, stiffen and reinforce more complex structures
  • Understand and use mechanical systems in their products [for example, gears, pulleys, cams, levers and linkages]
  • Understand and use electrical systems in their products [for example, series circuits incorporating switches, bulbs, buzzers and motors]
  • Apply their understanding of computing to program, monitor and control their products.

 This will ensure all pupils are ready and able to access the Key Stage 3 curriculum and beyond.

 Cooking and nutrition (KS1 &2)

By the end of Key Stage 1 & 2, we want ALL children to:

  • Be taught how to cook and apply the principles of nutrition and healthy eating.
  • Have a love of cooking in pupils will also open a door to one of the great expressions of human creativity.
  • Appreciate the importance of cooking- a crucial life skill that enables pupils to feed themselves and others affordably and well, now and in later life.

In Key Stage 1, pupils should be taught to:

  • Use the basic principles of a healthy and varied diet to prepare dishes
  • Understand where food comes from.

 In Key stage 2, pupils should be taught to:

  • Understand and apply the principles of a healthy and varied diet
  • Prepare and cook a variety of predominantly savoury dishes using a range of cooking techniques
  • Understand seasonality, and know where and how a variety of ingredients are grown, reared, caught and processed.

Teaching of Design and Technology

Projects have been planned to allow for Art and Design and Technology skills, knowledge, and vocabulary to be weaved together; however, projects have specific Design and Technology outcomes. Sketch books are used to develop Design and Technology skills alongside other areas of DT that are specific to the project. Objectives are progressive and sequential; teaching children an array of skills that enable them to identify needs and opportunities and to respond by developing ideas and eventually making products and systems.

The school uses a variety of teaching and learning styles in DT lessons. Our principal aim is to develop the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding in Design Technology. We use a variety of teaching and learning approaches in our DT lessons to do this, including:

  • We ensure that the act of investigating and making includes exploring and developing ideas, evaluating and developing work.
  • We use a mixture of direct teaching and individual/ group activities.
  • Teachers draw attention to good examples of individual performance as models for the other children.
  • They encourage children to evaluate their own ideas and methods, and the work of others, to say what they think and feel about them.
  • We give children the opportunity within lessons to work on their own and collaborate with others, on projects in two and three dimensions and on different scales.
  • Children also have the opportunity to use a wide range of materials and resources including other artists’ work, educational visits and computing.

We recognise the fact that we have children of differing ability in all our classes, and so we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this through a range of strategies, which are differentiated by task, expected outcome and/or support from peers or adults.

Recording of Design and Technology

Children’s design work of DT will be recorded in a number of ways at Stranton School:

  • Children will maintain a sketch book which will follow the children right through School – demonstrating the progression the children make in their skills. 
  • An end of topic ‘exhibition’ will also be used to showcase children’s work;
  • Art and DT outcomes will be showcased across school with work exhibited on displays or in the school art gallery.
  • Photographs of work may be stored in assessment folders or displayed across SchooL.

Assessment of Design and Technology

In order to assess the children’s knowledge in DT, staff will informally measure children’s work against key knowledge and key skills for Aged Related Expectations – ensuring all children have the opportunity to develop the appropriate key skills and key knowledge expected of them. Throughout a unit, teachers will track the children’s progress against what has been taught to allow them to identify gaps in learning.  This will enable misconceptions or knowledge which hasn’t been retained to be addressed in the ‘revisit’ section of future lessons. At the end of each term, teachers will give an overall judgement of each child, recording attainment on the school’s curriculum tracking sheet. This judgement will be based on evidence from children’s book and performance in class. Teachers will also conduct observational assessments of children during lessons and assess verbal responses from children in line with our oracy framework.

Monitoring of Design and Technology

Monitoring will take place regularly through sampling children’s work, learning reviews and importantly talking to the children – ensuring they enjoy each subject and can recall key knowledge and skills of what they have been taught.

 

Design and Technology Curriculum Overview

Design and Technology Objectives by Year Group