Design & Technology

Intent

At Netheravon All Saints, we strive to make children work practically to solve real and relevant problems. We want them to work both individually and as part of a team to achieve success in a variety of contexts. We recognise that Design and Technology is a great pathway to helping children to become; resourceful, innovative, enterprising and capable citizens. Many of our children come from Military backgrounds where lots of skills learnt in Design and Technology can be transferable. Therefore, our curriculum allows for children to learn to take risks through the process of identifying a problem, designing a solution, making a product and evaluating its success critically. Design and Technology will allow children to build on their subject knowledge and use knowledge and skills from other curriculum areas such as Mathematics, Science and Computing.

Implementation

Developing knowledge and building on skills is essential in our Design and Technology curriculum. Our curriculum has been carefully designed to ensure that there is a suitable range of contexts for children to work in; these include textiles, construction, cooking and nutrition. Learning in a rural locality, we believe it is important for all children to experience and learn many skills, which they may not learn in their immediate environment. Where possible as part of the research process we will explore the village and the designs it has which help with everyday life. Each class will explicitly learn Design and Technology in two blocks a year. As children move through the school they will build on knowledge and skills acquired in the previous block of that context. They will use key vocabulary over and over to build familiarity and understanding, as well as expanding their vocabulary with each unit. Children will in every context build an understanding of the design process; research -design – make – evaluate. It is important to us that our curriculum also provides opportunities for children to see how the knowledge and skills they learn can apply to different contexts in life, including; at home, at school, leisure, culture, enterprise, industry, and the wider environment.

Each class will have a book which will show a class progression of knowledge and skills throughout the school. The book will hold knowledge organisers for each unit and examples of children’s work. This will mostly be captured in the form of pictures as children are encouraged to show pride in their work and will be supported in a desire to take their final products home to share with family and friends. Individual work such as research, designs and evaluations will be recorded in Topic books.

Impact

Through high quality first teaching in DT, learners will leave Netheravon All Saints with an ability to and an appreciation for problem solving. They will have built a resilience to take risks and apply what they know to find solutions to real and relevant problems. Children will be able to discuss the skills they have learnt and explain in what context these skills can be used.