DT

Intent

At Blair Peach Primary School, we aim to provide children with a DT education that is relevant in our rapidly changing world.  We want to encourage our children to become problem solvers who can work creatively on a shared project. We believe that high-quality DT lessons will inspire children to think independently, innovatively and develop creative, procedural and technical understanding. Our DT curriculum provides children with opportunities to research, represent their ideas, explore and investigate, develop their ideas, make a product and evaluate their work. Children will be exposed to a wide range of media including textiles, food and woodwork; through this, children will develop their skills, vocabulary and resilience.

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 as part of a termly topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. At Bair Peach, we ensure that design and technology is given the same importance as the core subjects, as we feel this is important in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences.

The design and technology curriculum at Blair Primary School is based upon the 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England, which provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills taught in each Key Stage. Teachers plan lessons for their class using our progression of knowledge and skills document. Teachers can use this document to plan their design and technology lessons suitable to their class’s interests and what they want to learn about. The progression document ensures the curriculum is covered and the skills/knowledge taught is progressive from year group to year group.

Impact

Within design and technology, we strive to prepare children to take part in the development of tomorrow’s rapidly changing world. We aim to encourage children to become creative problem-solvers, both as individuals and as part of a team. Through the study of design and technology, children combine practical skills with an understanding of aesthetic, social and environmental issues, as well as of functions and industrial practices. This allows them to reflect on and evaluate present and past design and technology, its uses and its impact. Our design and technology curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills and discreet vocabulary progression also form part of the units of work.

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

• Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.
• Summative assessment of pupil discussions about their learning.
• Images and videos of the children’s practical learning.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.