DT

(Design & Technology)

Intent:

At Warley Primary School we aim to provide all children with a broad and balanced Design and Technology curriculum, which is fully inclusive and prepares them for life beyond primary education. Design and Technology is an inspiring and practical subject and we emphasise to our pupils how it can be found in many of the objects they use each day.

 Through our DT curriculum, we encourage children to use their 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. Our curriculum ensures the progressive development of knowledge and skills, encourages pupils to learn how to take risks, becoming resourceful, innovative, enterprising and capable citizens through evaluation of past and present design and technology. It also ensures they develop a critical understanding of DT’s impact on daily life and the wider world, whilst also enabling them to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world using the language of design and technology.

Implementation

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in Design and Technology, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Design and technology is taught focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum and each year group has three separate topics, which are taught in the second half of each term. Teachers are provided with planned schemes of work for their topics, however are encouraged to adapt the planning where necessary and according to the needs of their pupils.

Each topic has been carefully selected for each year group to ensure there is a build-up of knowledge and skills as the children move their way through the school and teachers are aware of our children’s cultural capital, ensuring there are opportunities in Design & Technology to allow them to develop key life skills, for example, within cooking & nutrition.

We provide a variety of opportunities for Design and Technology learning to take place inside and outside the classroom such as DT themed whole-school curriculum days as well as educational visits or visitors linked to Design Technology topics.

Please click on the link to view our DT Curriculum Overview.

Please find the Knowledge and Skills progression document here: DT Knowledge and Skill progression

 Impact:

Evidence of learning and progression in Design and Technology lessons can be found in children’s Art/DT Sketch books. These books document children’s learning for every DT topic, as they have moved through the school. We also showcase the children’s learning through DT displays around the school and evidence of learning about a topic within each classroom.   

 We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

 Evidence of learning in Art/DT Sketch books – research, design and make processes.

• Photographs of the children’s practical learning.
• Children’s own evaluations of products.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Staff meetings to discuss the impact of each scheme of work.
• Ongoing assessment through our whole-school assessment tool (Target Tracker) and analysis of end of year data for each year group.