All teaching of DT should follow the design, make and evaluate cycle. Each stage should be rooted in technical knowledge. The design process should be rooted in real life, relevant contexts to give meaning to learning. While making, children should be given a choice of materials and a range of tools to choose from. Children should then be able to evaluate their own products against a design criterion. Each of these steps should be rooted in technical knowledge and vocabulary. DT should be taught to a high standard, where each of the stages are given equal weight. The key skills we teach the children are:
- sewing and textiles
- cooking and nutrition
- electrical and mechanical components
- using materials
DT is taught in in short blocks and all children will have Quality First Teaching. Any children with identified SEND or in receipt of Pupil Premium funding may have additional or different work to their peers, depending on their needs, in order to access the curriculum. As well as this, our school offers a demanding and varied curriculum which provides children with a range of opportunities to enable them to reach their full potential and consistently achieve highly from their starting points.
Our Design and Technology Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression year on year, giving pupils the skills, knowledge and vocabulary that they need to move forward in their learning, alongside opportunities to apply their knowledge to different situations. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum using the following methods:
- Pupil discussions about their learning; which includes discussion of their thoughts, ideas, processing and evaluations of work.
- A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes
- Images and videos of the children’s practical learning
- Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice)
- Marking of work in books