Curriculum Intent
Our school ethos is at the heart of all we do; we want our children to be motivated to learn, to persevere and to recognise their own successes in a variety of contexts. The design and technology curriculum is designed to develop the creative, technical and practical expertise needed to perform everyday tasks confidently and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world. Children will have opportunities to build and apply a repertoire of knowledge, understanding and skills in order to design and make high quality prototypes and products for a wide range of users, whilst critiquing and evaluating their ideas and products. Throughout each unit children will also have opportunity to develop their Methley Magic five skills; demonstrating motivation and perseverance when problem solving and innovating a product to suit the user. Children will show collaboration, communication and respect through working with others to develop their ideas, considering the thoughts and opinions of others and offering supportive comments when evaluating and improving products.
Motivation
We believe that Design and Technology should be a fun, investigative and enquiring curriculum. Design and technology is an inspiring, rigorous and practical subject, providing children with opportunities to use creativity and imagination to design and make products that solve real and relevant problems within a variety of contexts, considering their own and others’ needs, wants and values. We will encourage children to be aspirational and advise them on potential jobs they could do in the future, such as working as engineers, architects, fashion designers or chefs. This can be achieved by explaining the relevance of knowledge, skills and understanding to motivate them to become life-long learners and drawing on other subject knowledge across the curriculum, including mathematics, science, computing and art.
Perseverance
Children are taught to be resilient throughout the iterative process of Design and Technology, analysing and testing their products and making improvements so it is suitable for the intended user. They understand that to FAIL is a First Attempt in Learning and that Learning Pits will develop their skills in solving problems and applying their understanding and skills.
Success
We want to give our pupils every opportunity to be successful and so we have developed a Design and Technology curriculum, based on the National Curriculum, which has clearly sequenced content and stages of progression. Our approach allows children to frequently review prior learning and make connections to support the retention of new knowledge and the development of understanding and skills. Units encourage children to think about and discuss and recognise the impact Design and Technology has had on our past, present and future lives of themselves and the people around them (including visitors to school, families and professionals that they meet). We encourage children to have an understanding of how Design and Technology has changed over time and significant people that have had an impact on the world.
Implementation
The Design and Technology curriculum covers five main areas: cooking and nutrition, mechanisms, structures, textiles and electrical systems (KS2). A structured process should be followed when completing any Design and Technology project:
- Analyse and evaluate existing products, KS2 should research designers that were influential in the focus area.
- Create a success criteria for a product.
- Develop design ideas and have opportunity to test and improve designs through prototypes where appropriate.
- Develop and apply technical skills to make a product.
- Evaluate product against the success criteria.
Children are encouraged to make connections with other curriculum subjects to support them throughout a project and apply and develop these skills, recording their learning in a variety of ways. As children move through school, they will have opportunities to revisit the five areas of the D&T curriculum, building on previous skills they have acquired and challenging their learning to the next level. Though our curriculum exit events, there will also then be opportunity for children to share their skills, knowledge and understanding with peers, teachers and parents.
