Design Technology

At Widey Court Primary School, it is our intent for our Design and Technology curriculum to inspire all children, regardless of need or barrier, to use creative and critical thinking to create innovative designs which solve real and relevant problems. During Design and Technology lessons, pupils will follow a continuous process of Evaluate, Design, Make, Evaluate to help them: critically evaluate existing products, design and produce products, evaluate their own products, while considering the client, purpose and design brief throughout.

Through the evaluation of past and present products, they develop a critical understanding of the impact of the product on daily life and the wider world. Opportunities are provided for children to evaluate key products and individuals that have helped shape the world, showing the real impact of design and technology on the wider environment and helping to inspire children to become the next generation of innovators.

Wherever possible, we link Design and Technology to other disciplines such as mathematics, science, computing and art. The Design and Technology curriculum is designed to develop a deep body of knowledge and skills that are progressive, as well as transferrable not just throughout their time at Widey but beyond into further education and the world of work. Thy will learn a progressive set of techniques that will support them in this.

In our teaching we use an enquiry-based approach through the use of enquiry questions. The key concepts for Design and Technology – design, make and evaluate - are taught through every enquiry question and the specific technical knowledge and skills of cooking and nutrition, textiles, structures, mechanism, electrical systems and computing (KS2) are carefully planned by creating a medium-term plan to ensure coverage, continuity and progress in learning. The curriculum makes use of prior knowledge and revision of ideas to help build a depth to children's understanding, then builds on prior knowledge alongside introducing new skills, knowledge and challenge. To support pupils to know and remember more, concepts from previous years are referred to and built upon.

Every child, regardless of their barriers to learning, achieve and understand the full Design and Technology curriculum. Technical knowledge and key vocabulary are explicitly identified in each enquiry and this is made clear to the children through our knowledge organisers and use of ROCKS (Remembering Our Curriculum Knowledge and Skills). The revision and introduction of key vocabulary is built into each lesson, with opportunities to repeat and revise this knowledge. Every child has a copy of the Design Make Evaluate model in their books and knowledge organisers containing all learning objectives are shared with parents. Through Design and Technology lessons, we intend to inspire pupils and practitioners to develop a love of Design and Technology and see how it has helped shape the ever-evolving technological world they live in.

Impact of teaching and learning will be determined through subject monitoring, SLT reviews and teacher assessment of each child’s Design and Technology knowledge at the end of each unit. We will know if we have planned carefully for progress and achievement if children have met their ‘end points’ or age-specific national expectations for pupils at the end of Key Stage 1 and again at the end of Key Stage 2.

We will also know that children are successful if they consistently use Design and Technology technical vocabulary within their learning and through the use of success criteria.. We will know if children have made progress if they can talk confidently about the areas and enquiries they have studied using ROCKS questioning, as well as knowledge organisers. Learning will be successful if it is able to be retrieved from pupil’s long-term memory and be further built upon.

We want to instil a love of Design and Technology by pupils across school, therefore encouraging them to want to continue building on this wealth of skills and understanding, now and in the future.