Design Technology
Intent
We promise to do the best for all our pupils with everything that they learn. Children who attend our schools are supported to access the full curriculum. Our Christian ethos and values underpin all that we do within our learning and the wider activities in our school.
Our curriculum is designed and focused on equipping our learners with the knowledge and skills they need to achieve their dreams. We aim to grow their confidence, develop their social skills, and equip them to become active participants within their communities.
At Farcet C of E Primary School we believe that design and technology is an inspiring and practical subject. Our curriculum is designed to ensure that all pupils:
- Problem solve creatively whilst working as individuals and members of a team.
- 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.
- Link work, whenever possible, to other subjects including mathematics, science, computing and art.
- Reflect upon, and evaluate, past and present designs and technology identifying uses and effectiveness.
- Are encouraged to become innovators and risk takers.
- Know about great designers and understand the historical and cultural significance of their work.
As pupils progress, they should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of design and technology.
We maintain high standards and continually look at new ways of teaching our pupils the skills they require, explicitly and directly. Our curriculum is knowledge-rich, specifically sequenced, and is taught to be remembered. It promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental, and physical development of our pupils and prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities, and experiences of later life. With this in mind the Primary Knowledge Curriculum is used trust wide for foundation subjects.
Since its conception, the Primary Knowledge Curriculum (PKC) has placed ‘powerful knowledge’ at the heart of learning. This is knowledge that “is powerful because it provides the best understanding of the natural and social worlds that we have and helps us go beyond our individual experiences” (Young, 2013). Through a deep respect of the traditions of each unique subject, the PKC recognises the identity of the disciplines that are studied. Our vision, and intent, was to create a well-sequenced, well-specified and ambitious curriculum for all children to access. As a result, the PKC has been organised coherently to ensure it builds interesting and meaningful connections within and across history, geography, science, art, DT and English, allowing children to think deeply about interesting content. Our aim is to inspire the next generation of learners through teaching them essential background knowledge, so that they can embark on their next step in their journey filled with confidence, able to form their own opinions and develop a deep love for learning.
A knowledge-rich curriculum exposes children to ambitious content that has been highly specified and well-sequenced, leaving nothing to chance. Within schools, time is limited, and a knowledge-rich curriculum ensures that each moment will support children in acquiring the knowledge, skills and cultural capital that they will need to become well-educated citizens of the future. Every historical figure encountered, philosophical idea grappled with, and scientific concept applied, fits neatly into a scheme of learning that holds a sense of purpose and develops logically from lesson to lesson, unit to unit and year to year. Utilising cognitive science, the psychology of learning, memory and schemata, a knowledge-rich curriculum is designed to ensure that the knowledge is taught to be remembered. At its core, a knowledge-rich curriculum democratises knowledge – it enables all children, regardless of socio-economic background, to be provided with the opportunities to succeed in later life. The PKC has taken evidence and research into account to ensure that it incorporates the principles of spaced retrieval, formative low-stakes quizzing and plenty of practice to develop knowledge fluency in pursuit of mastery.
Wherever we look, evidence of design is all around us. From chairs to hospital equipment, from clothes to websites, from advertisements on the side of a bus to playground equipment, everything has been designed. This curriculum aims to inspire students to think about the important and integral role which design and the creation of designed products play in our society.
Implementation
The curriculum is split into three different areas: ‘cook’, ‘sew’ and ‘build’. It is designed so that each year group will complete a unit of work in these three different areas once a year. In recognition of limited time and competing curriculum demands in the primary school setting, each unit has been devised to be delivered in a five-hour block, once a term, which can be taught over a single day or two half days. Alternatively, for ’sew’ and ’build’ units schools may wish to consider delivering the five hour block over a number of weeks if this suits timetabling in their setting. ‘Cook’ units are split into two, two and a half sessions and schools may choose to distribute delivery of these two sessions over two half terms instead of within one half term.
Two different ‘aspects’ of design are interwoven into the three areas of study: the environment and sustainability, and enterprise and innovation. These ‘aspects’ acknowledge enduring and contemporary concerns of modern design.
Each unit specifies the concepts and skills which the students are expected to learn over the course of a unit. These concepts and skills progress gradually throughout the course of the six years of study.
In ‘cook’ students learn to cook from recipes which gradually build basic culinary skills, culminating in year six with the creation of a mezze-style meal requiring the pupils to produce various small dishes. Whilst studying these practical skills they learn about concepts relating to food such as nutrition, seasonality, food production, transportation and food from different cultures. Each five hour block of work is split into two, two and a half-hour sessions. In each session the children cook from one recipe.
In ‘sew’ students practise using fabric and thread to learn basic sewing techniques to create objects which demonstrate embroidery, appliqué, weaving and plaiting. Concepts such as the properties and creation of different fabrics, fast fashion, industrialisation, waste, recycling and pollution are interwoven into these activities.
In ‘build’ students learn about the creation of structures and mechanical and electrical devices to create products such as cars, moving cards, toys and books. This culminates with year six learning to consider the user in real life, designing a water wall for children in reception. Once again, the practical process of designing and creating a product is interleaved with learning about concepts which have a bearing on what the students make. These concepts, for example force, motion and the properties of materials are often connected with those encountered in the science curriculum.
The sequence of lessons in the ‘sew’ and ‘build’ areas of study follow a structure to enable the students to become familiar with, understand and practise the process of design: research and investigate, design, make, use and evaluate. The planning for each unit of work specifies the product the children will make, the purpose and user of the product. This specification acknowledges the importance of purpose and user within in the design process. Throughout the course of the lessons the students explore existing products and their uses, generate ideas and designs by creating drawings and prototypes against criteria which they devise having considered purpose, function and appeal. Evaluation against these criteria concludes the process. Discussion is an important part of this process, as is consideration of the properties of potential materials and the choice of tools. Learning about fundamental concepts, skills, developments in history and understanding of the influence of key individuals in the field are interleaved into this process-driven structure. The students’ understanding of key skills and concepts builds from year to year, assessing and cementing prior learning, and therefore the implementation of the curriculum in the given sequence is crucial.
The curriculum is designed to be delivered alongside the PKC art, science and history curricula, as parts of it directly relate to areas of knowledge which the pupils acquire in these subjects. Where a unit looks at concepts which are also addressed in these subjects, the design and technology unit is generally taught after units in these other disciplines. This allows the children to approach their study of design and technology with a degree of confidence and ‘expertise’ and to consolidate their knowledge by creating connections between the different disciplines. It should be noted that the curriculum does not include the study of digital programming and computer aided design as these elements of design and technology, as specified in the National Curriculum, are covered in the computing curriculum. As digital programming and computer aided design are not covered by this curriculum it is advisable that they are covered in a school’s computing curriculum in such a way that allows children to explore the design process, (investigating, designing, making and evaluating their own products) in the computing projects they undertake.
Children’s work will be recorded in individual folders -these should be viewed as working documents which evidence the design process and may include notes, annotated photographs, drawings, diagrams and photographs of prototypes and finished work, as well as students’ evaluation of the projects which they undertake. This will ensure that teachers and pupils alike can easily identify progression in knowledge, process and application of skills.
Impact
Our design and technology curriculum is high quality, knowledge-based, well-sequenced and is planned to demonstrate progression. If our pupils have understood and retained knowledge from the carefully sequenced curriculum we have taught, we know that they are where they should be.
At Farcet C of E Primary School we ensure that children are equipped with DT skills and knowledge that will enable them to be ready for the curriculum at Key Stage 3 and for life as an adult in the wider world.
We want the children to have thoroughly enjoyed learning about design technology, therefore encouraging them to undertake new life experiences now and in the future.