Design & Technology
Intent
At Wychwood Primary School we want our children to use 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. We intend for all children to acquire appropriate subject knowledge, skills and understanding as set out in the National Curriculum. We want Design and Technology to prepare our children and give them the opportunities, responsibilities, and experiences they need to be successful in later life.
Implementation
Through a variety of creative and practical activities over a rolling two year cycle, we teach the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to engage in the process of designing and making.
Key skills and knowledge for DT have been mapped across the school to ensure clear progression through the year groups. Key concepts and technical vocabulary are also included in planning which follows an overall design, make, evaluate structure. Encouraging the use of technical vocabulary during discussion opportunities links directly into our whole school focus on improving oracy skills. Units on nutrition are taught ensuring that children have a growing understanding of where food comes from, its seasonality and the need for a healthy and varied diet. Children will complete 3 projects a year, either having one lesson a week or a one day block to complete each project so that children are fully immersed in the design-make-evaluate process
By following the design-make and evaluate sequence, it allows 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 a high-quality throughout school.
EYFS
The Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum supports children’s understanding of Design and Technology through the planning and teaching of ‘Expressing Arts and Design’. Children have access to a variety of resources within their continuous provision that helps to both develop and consolidate knowledge, skills and understanding when designing and making within their own play. The following opportunities are available to children in our setting which enable them to do this:
Construction area: Children have access to a wide variety of construction kits where they can build, join, stack, balance and adapt their own constructions.
Art Area: Children have the opportunity to use a range of materials to create their own models. There are prompt boards to encourage higher level design work e.g. using tabs to attach boxes to each other.
Funky Fingers Area: Activities are changed weekly and introduce children to a different range of tools for design and technology e.g. scissors, hole punchers, threading and hammering.
Large loose parts construction: Outside the children have access to a wide variety of large scale resources such as, crates, drain pipes, tubes & planks giving them the opportunity to design make, adapt, problem solve, modify and put structures to the test together alongside their peers.
Cooking: We have regular opportunities for cooking within our EYFS setting.
Glue gun Area: Children have access to using a glue gun in the inside Art Area.
Woodwork Area: Children can use the Woodwork Area under the supervision of an adult. They use hammers, saws and screwdrivers and are encouraged to take part in the design process where they create a plan of what they would like to do, build their model and then evaluate.
Impact
Children will have clear enjoyment and confidence in Design and Technology that they will then apply to other areas of the curriculum. Through carefully planned and implemented learning activities the pupils develop the creative, technical and practical expertise needed to perform everyday tasks confidently and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world. Pupil’s skills and knowledge are assessed ongoingly by the class teacher, throughout lessons and at the end of a unit of work.
