Intent
At St. Mary’s Catholic Primary School, it is our intent to offer a Design and Technology Curriculum which is inspiring, rigorous, practical and fully inclusive. Using creativity and imagination, our children design and make products that solve real and relevant problems within a variety of contexts, considering their own and others’ needs, wants and values. At St. Mary’s Catholic Primary school, we aim for the children to become autonomous and become problem solvers, both individually and working together in a team. The subject affords opportunities for them to develop their core skills of resilience, reciprocity, reflectiveness and resourcefulness by taking risks, becoming innovative, enterprising and capable citizens. Through the evaluation of past and present design and technology, our children develop a critical understanding of its impact on daily life and the wider world. High-quality design and technology education ensures an essential contribution to the creative culture, wealth and well-being of catholic life. Through the study of design and technology, our children acquire a broad range of subject knowledge and draw on disciplines such as mathematics, science, engineering, computing and art. This fulfils the duties of the National Curriculum whereby schools must provide a balanced and broadly-based curriculum that promotes spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of children and prepares the children for the opportunities and responsibilities and experiences for later life. The links made in our Design and Technology curriculum across subjects ensures children know more, remember more and understand more, whilst developing skills and knowledge across the key stages.
Aims:-
For all children to:
- follow the Programme of Study for the National Curriculum
- work with a range of materials and components to make products. These include textiles, food, construction kits (including electronics) and sheet materials.
- design and make good quality products.
- produce work using a variety of materials and processes.
- acquire creative and technical skills.
- formulate opinions about designs
- evaluate their designs and products.
- communicate their ideas orally and visually.
- develop an interest in D & T.
- are encouraged to think for themselves develop and use the language/vocabulary of D & T, to observe and record information
Implementation
Our Design and Technology curriculum is implemented through a variety of different projects over the children’s time at St. Mary’s Catholic Primary School. We follow a clear and comprehensive scheme of work in line with the National Curriculum, teaching all five strands (structures, mechanisms, textiles, electric systems and cooking & nutrition), starting in EYFS and embedding throughout KS1 and KS2.
Whilst the EYFS and National Curriculum forms the foundation of our learning, we make sure that children learn additional skills, knowledge and understanding and further enhancement opportunities as and when necessary. This ensures that children are constantly building upon previous learning and are able to expand their knowledge and understanding of problem solving, designing and constructing different products. Children will at least complete 3 projects a year, either having one lesson a week or a two to three-day block completing each project so children are fully immersed in the design-make-evaluate process.
For each project, children follow the research-design-make and evaluate sequence, allowing children time to reflect upon their design and products and think of ways that they could be improved or adapted. Teachers support and model increasingly progressive evaluative skills to enable children to create products of high-quality throughout school.
Clear and appropriate cross curricular links underpin learning in multi areas across the curriculum giving the children opportunities to learn life skills and apply skills to ‘hands on’ situations in a purposeful context. The links made in our Design and Technology curriculum across subjects ensures children know more, remember more and understand more, whilst developing skills and knowledge across the key stages.
Independent learning:
In Design and Technology children may well be asked to solve problems and develop their learning independently. This allows the children to have ownership over their curriculum and lead their own learning in Design Technology.
Collaborative learning:
In Design and Technology children may well be asked to work as part of a team learning to support and help one another towards a challenging, yet rewarding goal.
Health and Safety:
A range of skills will be taught ensuring that children are aware of health and safety issues related to the tasks undertaken. Safety is explained and modelled at the start of and throughout each product including food hygiene instructions.
Extra-curricular opportunities
In addition to our teaching and learning, we provide a STEM / Design and Technology based after school club including; mechanisms.