Design and Technology Intent, Implementation & Impact

Intent

Our Design and Technology curriculum will allow children to be creative designers and engineers as they produce products that solve real and relevant problems with a variety of contexts, considering their own and others’ needs, wants and values. Children will gain an awareness of how design and technology is used within their everyday lives and they will acquire appropriate subject knowledge, skills and understanding. Children will explore ideas from the past and present, and use these as inspiration for their own designs and creations. Our curriculum will allow children to appreciate the links with other subjects, such as Mathematics, Science, Computing and Art. We want our Design and Technology curriculum to provide children with the opportunity to take risks, helping them to become resourceful, innovative, enterprising and capable citizens that are prepared for the experiences they need to be successful in later life.

Through high quality teaching, we develop the following essential characteristics of designers and engineers:

• An inquisitive mind that deploys creative, technical and practical expertise;
• Encourage the use of imagination and original thought;
• A good understanding of the audience that are creating a product or system for;
• Understand that an end product is achieved by applying a design process which includes evaluating, designing and making;
• Make high-quality prototypes and understand where adjustments can be made;
• Critical understanding how technology is used in people’s everyday lives and in the wider world;
• Evaluate their own work and the work of others;
• Critique their own work and justify with reasons how it meets a criterion;  
• Learn to follow, interpret and adjust instructions in order to produce an outcome;
• Develop automaticity and proficiency when creating and making products and systems;
• understand and apply the principles of nutrition and learn how to cook
• Encourage children to be able to respond knowledgeably to the work of other designers and engineers, knowing that there are design and technology impact on the way people live their lives.
• To recognise that learning about Design and Technology enables links to be made with other subjects across the curriculum including maths, science, computing and art;
• An extensive base of technical design and technology knowledge and vocabulary;
• A genuine interest in the subject, and igniting an internal motivation to explore the world around them.

Implementation

Design and Technology is taught as a key topic focus for half a term (as is Art and Design) but we also aim to ensure that links are made with other areas of the curriculum.

Our Design and Technology curriculum aims to develop children’s expertise in designing, making and evaluating. Selected Projects on a Page created by The Design and Technology Association are used to provide units of work that ensure quality, integrity and rigour of children’s learning. During lessons, children will use the TASC wheel (Thinking Actively in Social Contexts) to guide them through the design and technology process and enable them to reflect on the outcomes of their own work, and the work of others. Sketchbooks may be used to record a range of thoughts and ideas. The process will enable children to create a final piece at the end of each unit. The programmes of study are carefully planned so that there are opportunities for cross curricular links to be made, and they are delivered in order to ensure progression, enabling our pupils to develop their skills and knowledge.

With reading being central to our curriculum, in Design and Technology children develop their visual literacy skills as they ‘read’ products and interpret others designs, as well as read structured texts that share instructions and processes. Children will read, interpret and adjust instructional texts, such as recipes and flowcharts, and appreciate that these texts types are unique in comparison to many other texts.

Impact

• Opportunities for children to understand and apply the key skills and techniques which are used within children’s final pieces of Design and Technology.
• A curiosity about the world around them and ideas to improve products and processes.
• Children will have the knowledge and skills to explain and justify their thoughts on their own and others work.
• Children will appreciate that design and technology creations impact our lives and those in the wider world.
• Children will be creative and experimental learners.
• Children will be able to pay attention to detail and think sequentially
• There will be a clear progression of skills across EYFS, Key Stage 1 and 2 that builds on prior knowledge that can be demonstrated in sketch books and class floor books and shows good or better progress in design and technology from their starting points.  
• Children will have a good understanding of key vocabulary and terminology.
• Our children will be confident designers and be able to clearly discuss their learning from past and current topics, as well as explain their next steps.
• Out-of-class opportunities ensure skills learnt in design and technology are ongoing and embedded as part of the Egerton ethos.
• Continued training and support for teachers ensuring they are the experts in the subjects that they teach.