Design Technology
Intent
The intent of the DT Curriculum at St Bridget's is to provide opportunities for the children to learn, apply and strengthen essential skills required in the designing, making and evaluating of an effective product for a given purpose.
DT should provide children with a real life context for learning. At St Bridget's we want to allow children to aspire to be more through creating opportunities for them in the wider world. Through the DT curriculum, children should be inspired by engineers, designers, chefs and architects to enable them to create a range of structures, mechanisms, textiles, electrical systems and food products with a real life purpose, audience and function.
Please see the DT knowledge organisers for progression of vocabulary.
Implentation
At St Bridget's we use Projects on a Page to deliever exciting topics that cover the National Curriculum. DT is taught for 60 minutes weekly to ensure there are regular opportunities to recap prior knowledge.
Projects on a Page is based on the six essentials of good practice in Design Technology.
User – children should have a clear idea of who they are designing and making products for, considering their needs, wants, interests or preferences. The user could be themselves, an imaginary character, another person, client, consumer or a specific target audience
Purpose – children should know what the products they design and make are for. Each product should perform a clearly defined task that can be evaluated in use.
Functionality – children should design and make products that function in some way to be successful. Products often combine aesthetic qualities with functional characteristics. In D&T, it is insufficient for children to design and make products which are purely aesthetic.
Design Decisions – when designing and making, children need opportunities to make informed decisions such as selecting materials, components and techniques and deciding what form the products will take, how they will work, what task they will perform and who they are for.
Innovation – when designing and making, children need some scope to be original with their thinking. Projects that encourage innovation lead to a range of design ideas and products being developed, characterised by engaging, open-ended starting points for children's learning.
Authenticity – children should design and make products that are believable, real and meaningful to themselves i.e. not replicas or reproductions or models which do not provide opportunities for children to make design decisions with clear users and purposes in mind.
Each topic is delieverd with three main activties:
- Investigative and Evaluative Activities: children learn from a range of existing products and find out about D&T in the wider world;
- Focused Tasks: children are taught specific technical knowledge, designing skills and making skills.
- Design, Make and Evaluate Assignment: children create functional products with users and purposes in mind.
Impact
Children will have clear enjoyment and confidence in Design and Technology that they will then apply to other areas of the curriculum. Through carefully planned and implemented learning activities the pupils develop the creative, technical and practical expertise needed to perform everyday tasks confidently and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world.
The impact of pupil’s skills and knowledge are assessed with the following:
- Summative assessment is conducted termly by class teachers across each year group and is aimed at targeting next steps in learning as well as informing the subject leader of progress and skills/knowledge still to be embedded.
- Ongoing monitoring of children's understanding, knowledge and skills using key questioning and recap questions of prior knowledge.
- Design Technology is also monitored by the subject leader throughout the year in the form of collection of evidence (photos), book monitoring, looking at outcomes measured against age-based progression and pupil interviews to discuss their learning.