At St Michael’s CE Primary School, we have designed our Design Technology (DT) curriculum with the intent that all children, regardless of background, will become confident designers with a wide range of knowledge and practical skills that they apply successfully to design and make high quality products.

Our DT strands:

We aim to ensure that our DT teaching and learning activities are relevant, resulting in products that solve real problems, linked to the wider school curriculum.

DT holds numerous opportunities for children to learn experientially, work independently and with others, widen their horizons, develop communication and language skills, apply mathematical and scientific knowledge, plus explore their own creativity. Children are encouraged to try ideas and learn from mistakes, innovating and taking sensible risks with their designs, whilst considering appropriate health and safety measures. We expect children to evaluate their products and consider improvements, continually striving to create the best products they can, of which they will be rightly proud. 

Recommended reads for Design Technology

These brilliant story books and picture books introduce a range of design ideas in a way that children will love.

INTENT

Design and Technology is an inspiring, rigorous and practical subject. It helps to prepare children for the developing world and encourages them to become curious and creative problem-solvers, both as individuals and as part of a team.

At St Michael’s, we encourage all children to use their creativity and imagination, and take risks to design and make products that solve real life and relevant problems within a variety of contexts, considering their own and others’ needs, wants and values. We aim to, wherever possible, link work to other disciplines such as history, mathematics, science, computing and art. The children are also given opportunities to reflect upon and evaluate past and present design technology, its uses and its effectiveness and are encouraged to become innovators.

IMPLEMENTATION

What do we teach? What does this look like?

At St Michael’s, our whole curriculum is shaped by our school vision which aims to enable all children, regardless of background, ability, additional needs, to flourish to become the very best version of themselves they can possibly be. We strive to support individual needs and enable children to achieve their full potential through appropriate challenge and questioning.  Children are encouraged to think and work independently and collaboratively - evaluating, extending and improving their ideas.  We teach the National Curriculum, supported by a clear skills and knowledge progression. This ensures that skills and knowledge are built on year by year and sequenced appropriately to maximise learning for all children. All teaching of DT should follow the 'design, make and evaluate' cycle. Each stage should be rooted in technical knowledge. The design process should be rooted in real life, relevant contexts to give meaning to learning. While making, children should be given choice and a range of tools to choose freely from. To evaluate, children should be able to evaluate their own products against a design criteria.

The key skills we teach the children are: · sewing and textiles · cooking and nutrition · electrical and mechanical components · Using materials

D&T is usually taught in in short blocks.

IMPACT

Children at St Michael’s will learn how to take risks, becoming resourceful, innovative, enterprising and capable citizens. Through the evaluation of past and present design and technology, they will develop a critical understanding of its impact on daily life and the wider world. High-quality design and technology education ensures that all children make an essential contribution to the creativity, culture, wealth and well-being of the nation. 

In design and technology, teachers assess children’s progress by making observations during lessons and discussions, marking topic books and evaluating end products.  The assessment process will also include the child’s voice.  Teachers make progress judgements against learning objectives and staged success criteria.

At the end of a topic, children review their own and each other’s work, focusing upon an evaluation of the finished product and how effectively it meets the learning objective.

Due to the practical nature of design and technology, evidence of work undertaken by children will be in the form of teacher’s notes or as a photographic record.  Samples of the design process and end product are also valuable evidence.