Design Technology

Intent

At Lydiard Millicent, we aim to offer a high quality design and technology education that makes an essential contribution to the creativity and cultural wealth of our school. This subject offers our children the opportunities to solve real life problems as they consider designing and making products for a real purpose with an audience and their needs in mind. This process will give the children the confidence to take risks and become more resilient. We believe it is important to ensure that the children appreciate the importance of the role that design and technology has in their daily lives and the lives of others.

Design and technology will give the pupils the chance to do these things in collaboration with other pupils and to communicate their ideas in a range of ways.

We will focus on ensuring that the following will be applied during the design and making process:

• User- children should have a clear idea of who they are designing and making products for, considering their needs, wants, interests or preferences. The user could be themselves, an imaginary character, another person, client, consumer or a specific target audience.
• Children should know what the products they design and make are for. Each product should perform a clearly defined task that can be evaluated in use.
• Functionality- children should design and make products that function in some way to be successful. Products often combine aesthetic qualities with functional characteristics. In design and technology, it is insufficient for children to design and make produces which are purely aesthetic.
• Design decisions- when designing and making, children need opportunities to make informed decisions such as selecting materials, components and techniques and deciding what form the products will take , how they will work, what task they will perform and who they are for.
• Innovation- when designing and making, children need some scope to be original with their thinking. Projects that encourage innovation lead to a range of design ideas and products being developed, characterised by engaging, open-ended starting points for children’s learning.
• Authenticity- children should design and make products that are believable, real and meaningful to themselves, i.e not replicas or reproductions or models which do not provide opportunities for children to make decisions with clear users and purposes in mind.

Implementation

The teaching of design and technology will provide children with design projects that are linked to the topic theme each term. Lydiard Millicent CE Primary School uses the “Projects on a Page” scheme of work produced by the Design and Technology Association. This scheme is flexible and less prescriptive than other published schemes. Meaningful links are able to be made to other subject topics or themes as the project planners are context free. Children are encouraged to draw on maths, science, computing and art skills to improve their design and technology skills.

Children will have the opportunity to engage in the design, make and evaluate process. This process will be taught through a range of contexts such as mechanical systems, electrical systems, cooking and computing. The process consists of the following aspects:

Design: The children will research and design functional, appealing products for themselves and others based on set design criteria. These designs will be communicated in a variety of ways such as annotated sketches. Their individual designs will be evaluated and adapted at various stages to ensure they are fit for purpose.

Make: the children will use a range of tools and materials to create models and prototypes before creating the final product. This stage provides the opportunity to evaluate their design, so that they can refine and make improvements.

Evaluate: the children will investigate and analyse a range of existing products to identify areas of strength and areas for improvement. This will be also applied to their own ideas and products throughout the process.

Children will be given the opportunity to learn about the principles of a varied and balanced diet. As they learn these processes, they will prepare and cook a variety of dishes, discussing how the ingredients are grown, caught, reared and processed.

Impact

Our Design and Technology curriculum contributes to children’s personal development in creativity, independence, judgement and self-reflection. This can be seen in the children’s work on display and their Design and Technology.

Further information is gathered through pupil questionnaires; highlighting strengths and achievement and any improvements, knowledge and skills that still need to be embedded. The children are keen to learn new skills and work hard to perfect those shown to them.

Teachers make formative assessments against objectives and use this information to inform future lessons; ensuring children are supported and challenged appropriately. Children are given an assessment on their end of year reports and this is shared with parents.

Children in Foundation Stage are assessed within Expressive Arts and Design, Physical Development, Health and Self Care and Technology. Age related expectation levels are reported to parents at the end of the reception year.