Design & Technology
The Design and technology curriculum is designed by the curriculum co-ordinator, management team and governors to allow pupils to transfer key knowledge to their long-term memory. Design and technology is the purposeful use of inventive thinking and creative activity, leading to the production of an artefact or system which best satisfies a perceived need. This results in building new skills and knowledge based upon what has been taught before, allowing all pupils to work towards clearly defined end points.
We develop children’s experiences and understanding of design and technology by enabling all children to be creative and imaginative to design and make a product that solves real and relevant problems within a variety of contexts, considering their own and others’ needs, wants and values through encompassing memorable learning opportunities for example, creating a healthy sandwich, making a pair of slippers or designing and making a moving toy. The school provides a coherently planned curriculum, sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge, skills and cultural capital through informative teaching and learning activities and enhancement experiences. At St Anne’s, we recognise that design and technology is an effective motivational tool for children of all ability, as it helps promote children’s self-esteem through the production of quality outcomes, perseverance in their approach to work and independence by enabling them to take greater responsibility for their learning.
We therefore intend that all pupils will:
- Understand about how everyday objects, mechanisms and products work, from food and packaging to buildings, toys, clothes and vehicles.
- Build and apply a repertoire of knowledge, understanding and skills in order to Design and make high-quality prototypes based on these products for a wide range of users.
- Develop active learners by promoting investigation, experimentation and evaluation skills.
- Learn to productively critique and evaluate their ideas and products, and the work of others, providing them with the opportunity to test them out.
- Develop interpersonal learning skills, such as speaking and listening, collaboration and compromise, and to experience taking different but equally valuable roles in group work.
- Design and make a variety of different products for different purposes.
- Be provided with a range of activities to develop the children’s capability and confidence in their own ideas by learning how to take risks, becoming resourceful, innovative, enterprising and capable citizens.
- Develop children’s confidence and skills in safely selecting and using a range of tools, and in using and selecting a range of materials
- Develop a mastery over certain generic skills through repeated exposure to them.
- Focus, build-upon and learn key vocabulary to develop understanding of concepts and Design and technology knowledge.
- Read a variety of different books to promote over-learning and the development of pre-skills. Alongside this, children are encouraged to look at a variety of existing products both past and present to develop a critical understanding of its impact on daily life and the wider world to embed learning in the long-term memory.
- Enrich and support other areas of the curriculum.
- Build in memorable experiences to promote deep learning.
Please view our DT Policy here.