Design Technology at Mab’s Cross is emphasised as an avenue for children to research, design, make and evaluate within the many mediums of the discipline. In our curriculum, we provide opportunities throughout the children’s time at Mab’s to become adept at cooking and nutrition, textiles, structures, mechanics and electronics. This ensures children have an equal breadth of exposure at all intervals of their primary education. Each area has a designated project running for one term a year across KS1 and KS2. Throughout each topic, the topic is broken into distinct stages with key skills embedded during the process and links pulled from knowledge in other subjects such as Art & Design, Science and Computing. Each project culminates in a final piece whereby skills and research gained throughout the previous weeks can be showcased and celebrated.
In order to contextualise the learning and skill development, each project is related to either real life products or a significant figure in industry. These have been selected to co-work with the children’s wider learning across the curriculum in supporting their knowledge of other foundational subjects whilst providing a diverse backdrop of experiences in which to inspire the next generation of technicians – aspiration being a key curriculum driver in our school. The reference to existing products allows reflection and evaluation of the design and making process and the importance of work to wider society and how this may be developed in the future; linking to future career options which the children may endeavour to attend in the years to come.
The curriculum is structured using a bespoke progressive framework where skills are revisited at intervals throughout the years to allow consolidation and development through increased technicality and refinement as a child progresses through their education. Long-term plans ensure necessary skills are addressed and can be reinforced and extended each year. Skills progression documents enable teaching staff to view the starting points for each discipline by considering previous years’ objectives and assessing their role in preparing children for the subsequent year.
At the end of EYFS, children should have the exposure of opportunities to create and imagine using many of the disciplines where problem-solving plays a key role in the children’s own experiences. In Key Stage One, we intend for children to recognise the specific stages of the subject and the reasoning behind these steps to achieve a successful product. In Key Stage Two, there is a view of broadening of skills through replication, influence and imagination whilst allowing children to become more critical and reflective of their own and others’ products. Control and proficiency in each discipline continues to be refined and, at later stages, preferences for mediums will begin to appear in many.
All children follow the same topics in DT in-line with the class. However, expectations of response and product are modified based on an individual’s known skill bank and their previous technical ability.
At Mab’s Cross, design technology is led by an enthusiastic team of individuals who have an understanding and experience of all year groups as a collective. Teachers have good knowledge of DT and our approach to teaching the discipline. Planning and resource folders have been developed to support teachers by providing contextualised knowledge forms, key vocabulary, examples of real world products and previous children’s work as reference when making assessments for expectations. Colleagues will wholeheartedly support and offer advice during planning or discrete conversations to ensure all teachers feel confident and enthused in their DT teaching.
Each year, the arts team select a medium of focus. During this period in time, project plans are evaluated in collaboration with the year group staff and amended to make improvements. The evaluation of the medium also results in the production of resource files previously discussed and provision of resources for the discipline secured and enhanced where appropriate.
Our bespoke scheme has been written with our school’s pedagogical philosophy to connect subjects in reinforcing a child’s education as a whole rather than individual parts. The individual plans have been structured to reflect the later teaching of the subject in KS3/4, whereby the subject uses the discrete stages to work towards completing successfully the design brief.
Our curriculum ensures design technology plays an equal role in enriching each child’s education and cultural creativity in collaboration with other subjects. It is also used as a tool of communication to support team building and resilience in solving problems from the brief and when designs need to be modified in the making process.
Regular curriculum meetings allow the team to evaluate the subject and decide upon next steps for continued improvement and development of the subject.
Our agreed foundation subject assessment grid allows staff during the year to assess children’s abilities based on each medium, with DT reflecting on the diverse nature of the subject before providing an overall viewpoint for the year’s objectives. Assessments are made based on the final piece in response to the skills displayed and applied along with the level of understanding in the evaluation. Subsequent teachers are able to use this information to gain an understanding as to the varied starting points of each child.
At Mab’s Cross, our monitoring schedule allows the opportunity for subject lead and associated team members to undergo book scrutiny evaluations to ensure teaching staff follow the agreed planning. The result of which enables constructive feedback and admiration of achievements to be provided on a one-to-one basis. When applied across year groups, STEM floor books show clear development of skills progression, highlighting the effectiveness of our DT curriculum in preparing children for their later design technology education. As part of the curriculum’s enrichment opportunities, year groups have taken part in STEM engineering competitions to foster the concept of DT being part of the real industrial world, with recent EYFS children having won their competition through submission of new design technologies in the area of mechanics and electronics.
Our bespoke curriculum planning has ensured the children are able to refer to a diverse selection of industrial individuals, who work in a variety of sectors. The children are able to explain the reasoning of these selections and the impact this individual has had on their own creativity in the corresponding project. Reference to previous years’ topics, has ensured a consistency in experiences which children can build upon and endeavour to execute greater accomplishments as their skill repertoire is broadened through the years.
Following the introduction of the plans, DT has grown from a subject to make an object/product to a skill-based discipline with rigour and breadth, whereby children can justify their decisions and make informed choices.