Intent

At Fellside,  design and technology provision is part of our broad, balanced curriculum that contributes to the development of children’s resourcefulness; their propensity to innovate; and their critical understanding of effective product design and its positive impact on our increasingly technologically driven world.  Central to our intentions for this subject is the focus on ensuring that children develop creative, technical and practical expertise needed to perform everyday tasks with increasing confidence and precision, whether that is cutting, strengthening, joining, fastening, sewing or indeed understanding the importance of nutrition and hygiene when preparing food.  Children progressively build a repertoire of knowledge, skills and understanding to be able to design and make high-quality products for a variety of users that regularly take inspiration from the existing products and innovations of current and past designers.  Managing risk through the safe use of relevant tools is pivotal to our curriculum intentions, as is the refinement of children’s critical evaluation of their own designs and product outcomes (as well as those of others) so that, over time, their core repertoire of skills to investigate; plan; design; make and critique is progressed to ensure they foster satisfaction, purpose and enjoyment in designing and making things, whether for their own use and consumption, or on a wider scale in society.

At Fellside, our core work in design technology around the National Curriculum aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Develop creative, technical and practical expertise needed to perform everyday tasks confidently and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world.
• Build and apply a repertoire of knowledge, understanding and skills in order to design and make high- quality products for a whole range of users.
• Critique, evaluate and test their ideas and products, as well as the work of others.
• Understand and apply the principles of nutrition and learn how to cook.

Implementation

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in design and technology, we implement a curriculum that is progressive and which focusses on the gradual accumulation of skills, knowledge and understanding across school. Design and technology is taught as part of a termly unit curriculum learning that repeatedly returns to key themes that include

• Investigating and evaluating existing designs
• Designing (innovating for own design)
• Making
• Evaluating (own design) for improvement
• This process affords the opportunity to deconstruct and critique products and designs already in existence and employ children’s own design ideas, sometimes based on a specific brief (this might include following the outcomes of market research, for example).  The development of preliminary sketches and making of prototypes is part of the expected line of enquiry undertaken by children, including the documentation of ‘failures’ that might have been encountered en route to the final outcomes.  As part of this process, children begin to
• use research and develop design criteria to inform the design of innovative, functional, appealing products that are fit for purpose, aimed at particular individuals or groups;
• generate, develop, model and communicate their ideas through discussion, annotated sketches, cross-sectional and exploded diagrams, prototypes, pattern pieces and computer-aided design;
• select from and use a wider range of tools and equipment to perform practical tasks [for example, cutting, shaping, joining and finishing], accurately;
• select from and use a wider range of materials and components, including construction materials, textiles and ingredients, according to their functional properties and aesthetic qualities;
• investigate and analyse a range of existing products;
• evaluate their ideas and products against their own design criteria and consider the views of others to improve their work;
  understand how key events and individuals in design and technology have helped shape the world.

Crucially, experience of different technologies extends children’s knowledge and understanding of how to strengthen, stiffen and reinforce more complex structures; to understand and use mechanical systems in their products [for example, gears, pulleys, cams, levers and linkages]; and to  understand and use electrical systems in their products [for example, series circuits incorporating switches, bulbs, buzzers and motors].

As part of their work with food, pupils are taught how to cook and apply the principles of nutrition and healthy eating. Through instilling a love of cooking, this will also enable pupils to be able to feed themselves and others affordably and well, now and in later life.

Impact

The impact of our design and technology curriculum is that we prepare children to understand and participate in the development of tomorrow’s rapidly changing world. Children are encouraged  to become creative problem-solvers, both as individuals and as part of a wider team; they 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.

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

• Assessing children’s understanding of key knowledge (including linked vocabulary and processes) before and after the unit is taught;
• Summative assessment of pupil outcomes;
• Images and videos of the children’s practical learning;
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Moderation staff meetings where pupil outcomes are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
• Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.

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