Design & Technology

Intent:

Our Design and Technology curriculum is designed to be inspiring, rigorous and practical to ensure that our children develop a broad range of knowledge and skills. The curriculum supports our children in using their creativity and imagination to investigate, design, make and evaluate products that solve real and relevant problems in a variety of contexts.

Implementation:

Design Technology at  Whittingham, is taught, generally, in alternate half-terms and is cross curricular.  In EYFS Expressive Arts and Creative Designs is taught through the EYFS framework through focused modelling and daily provision activities.  

The curriculum at Whittingham provides children with a:

Relevant, coherent, progressive knowledge of the design process and an appreciation of the work of a range of craftspeople:

•Investigate, disassemble and evaluate

•How have materials and components been used?

•How has the product been made?

•Why has it been made this way?

•What are the different parts of a product called and what does each do?

•How does the way a product works relate to its intended purpose?

Focused practical task

•How can materials, structures and techniques be tested?

•How can materials and structures be joined?

•Where might materials and structures fail?

Design and make, evaluate

•How will ideas be explored, developed, communicated and modelled in a variety of ways?

•How will a product be made; what materials, equipment and processes will be used?

•What alternatives are there, if initial attempts fail?

•How well did the product work? What were the strengths and areas for development?

•How well did the final product relate to its intended purpose?

Grounding in core disciplinary knowledge, and the ability to approach challenging, design questions

•Marking out and cutting skills

•Fixing and joining skills

•Mechanical and control skills

•Finishing skills, including food hygiene

•Related language skills

When teachers plan D&T they provide the following:   

• A knowledge organiser which outlines knowledge (including vocabulary)
• Lessons that follow the sequence – disassembly task, focused practical task, deign, make, evaluate. 
• A sequence of learning which follows the Rosenshine Principles of Instruction

Impact

Our D&T Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods: 

• Pupil discussions about their learning: their thoughts, ideas, processing and evaluations of work. 
• A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes;   

Curriculum Overview

Useful Websites

https://www.howstuffworks.com/

bbc.co.uk/bitesize