At St Botolph’s, we pride ourselves on offering our children quality education within a safe and nurturing environment. We continually strive to improve, giving our children exciting opportunities to broaden their horizons.
The St Botolph’s Curriculum has carefully planned activities and learning which matches our children’s needs, expanding their opportunities and widening their horizons. Learning is carefully connected, interweaving knowledge and skills to make it meaningful, while ensuring that the National Curriculum is followed.
“During our DT lessons, we aim to inspire creative and resourceful product designers who can solve real and relative problems whilst developing an understanding of its impact on daily life and the wider world.”
Mr Stanton (Design and Technology Lead)
At St Botolph’s, we aim to provide children with a Design and Technology (DT) education that is relevant in our rapidly changing world. Children have planned opportunities to use their creativity and imagination to design and make products that solve real and relevant problems within a variety of contexts, considering the needs, wants and values of themselves and others. This gives the learning a real-life purpose and relevance to the activities. We plan our curriculum to prepare our pupils for life beyond primary education and prepare them for the jobs of the future. This means that we encourage children to use their creativity and imagination, to design, make and evaluate products using a range of materials, including textiles, woodwork, and electrical circuits. Children also learn life skills through food technology, learning how to bake and cook using the safest techniques. The skills acquired within DT lessons draw upon those learned in other areas of the curriculum, such as maths, science computing and art, enabling them to build upon previous experience in the classroom.
Through the DT curriculum, we intend for pupils to recognise how DT has helped shaped the ever-evolving technological world we live in and to be inspired to become the next generation of innovators and engineers.
Our DT curriculum consists of a coherently planned sequence of lessons to ensure progressive coverage of the knowledge, understanding and skills required in the National Curriculum.
In KS1, teachers build on the knowledge and skills gained in DT during early years. Children design, make and evaluate projects using key vocabulary and critical thinking about the topic area to gain specific technical knowledge, such as exploring how buildings can be made stronger and the use of mechanisms (levers, slides, wheels). When evaluating, we encourage children to refer to their initial project design and evaluate how well they have completed it. As part of their work with food, pupils will be taught how to cook and apply the principles of nutrition and healthy eating.
In KS2, the children plan, design, make and evaluate their work at a deeper level. When designing, the children follow a design criterion and describe their design using pictures, diagrams, models, words and ICT and have an awareness of their target audience.
Once a project is complete, the children will evaluate and reflect on their design criteria to assess and critique their own work and at times, the work of their peers. Food technology is implemented across KS2 with children developing an understanding of where food comes from, the importance of a varied and healthy diet and how to prepare this.
DT lessons encourage children to identify real and relevant problems, critically evaluate existing products and then take risks and innovate when designing and creating solutions to given problems. Time is built in to reflect, evaluate and improve on any initial design and prototype stages, using design criteria throughout to support this process.
Opportunities are provided for children to evaluate key events and individuals in history, who have helped shape the world, showing the real impact of design and technology on the wider environment and helping to inspire children to become the next generation of innovators.
Our Design and Technology curriculum enables and encourages our children to becomes designers and critical thinkers. Evaluation of past and present design and technology, develops their critical understanding of its impact on daily life and the wider world. Children learn to be passionate and excited by the designing and making of products. By the end of the curriculum, all pupils will have a coherent technological knowledge and range of skills and aspire to become designers of the future.
Teacher assessment is ongoing, monitoring children’s understanding, knowledge and skills throughout each lesson. Through skillful questioning, focused practical tasks, pupil observations and purposeful evaluations, teachers make informed assessments of pupil learning. Children receive feedback throughout the lessons to help them improve or develop their work. They are also given opportunities to self-evaluate their work and offer ways in which to improve it.
Through our curriculum, we want to ensure that Design and Technology is loved by pupils across school, therefore encouraging them to take risks and become resourceful, innovative and enterprising individuals.