Intent
At Birchwood Primary School, Design and Technology inspires creativity and imagination and enables pupils to design and make products that solve real and relevant problems within a variety of contexts, considering their own and others’ needs. We want to encourage children to question and investigate the man-made world around them in order to become resourceful, innovative, enterprising and capable citizens.
Our Curriculum covers all aspects of the National Curriculum, has been organised into the substantive knowledge, disciplinary knowledge and vocabulary. This forms our curriculum overview, which ensures a structured progression building upon children’s prior learning. Planned sequences of learning will take account of prior knowledge and skills development, building upon these to prepare for the next stage in their learning journey.
At Birchwood we believe that cooking and nutrition are essential life skills and so our curriculum has been designed to allow children to regularly refine and develop knowledge and skills within this area whilst also encouraging them to try new foods and recipes.
In line with the National Curriculum: Design and Technology programmes of study, we aim to plan inspiring and enriching learning specifically for a purpose by:
• Designing purposeful, functional, appealing products for themselves and other users based on a design criteria.
• Select from and use a wide range of materials and components.
• Explore and evaluate a range of existing products.
All teaching of Design and Technology will follow the ‘explore, design, make and evaluate cycle’, with exception of EYFS and the additional food and nutrition projects.
Through the Design and Technology curriculum, pupils will be inspired by engineers, inventors and designers to enable them to create a range of structures, mechanisms, textiles, electrical systems and food products with a real-life purpose.
Implementation
Teachers plan a clear sequence of creative and practical lessons, building upon prior skills, knowledge and vocabulary. Across EYFS, KS1 and KS2 all areas of the curriculum are covered including structures, mechanisms, textiles, electrical systems and cooking and nutrition. Additional projects involving food and nutrition have also been included to allow children to frequently refine and develop their knowledge and skills, try new foods and recipes and enhance their learning in other curriculum areas.
The design process focusses on real life, relevant contexts to give meaning to learning. Pupils are encouraged to make choices about their designs based on the knowledge they have acquired after looking at existing products, (and designers in KS2) and experimenting with different tools, techniques and materials. While making, pupils are given a range of tools to choose freely from and are encouraged to adapt their products based on ongoing evaluation. Pupils apply knowledge from maths, science and art and design to support their learning. To evaluate, pupils assess their own products against a design criteria. Each of these steps will include technical knowledge and vocabulary.
Impact
Our Design & Technology curriculum is well thought out and planned to give pupils the skills, knowledge and opportunity to be challenged in their thinking and learning and prepare for their next stage of learning and into their future lives. We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods: pupil discussions; evidence of children’s work and termly teacher assessments.
At Birchwood we inspire pupils to build and apply knowledge, understanding and skills in order to design and make high-quality prototypes and products for a wide range of users and evaluate, and test their ideas and products and the work of others. Pupils also understand and apply the principles of nutrition and learn how to cook a variety of dishes. They know about key technological events and individuals and how they have shaped our lives today. Through their learning pupils develop the creative, technical, and practical expertise needed to perform tasks confidently and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world.