Design and Technology (DT) at Felbridge

What are we aiming for?

DT at Felbridge Primary School aims to inspire pupils to be innovative and creative thinkers who have an appreciation for the product design cycle through ideation, creation, and evaluation. We want pupils to develop the confidence to take risks, through drafting design concepts, modelling, and testing and to be reflective learners who evaluate their work and the work of others.

While we love DT and the excitement it generates in our children, we are not all 'specialists' by nature and therefore we have researched a scheme of work to support our teaching with the best resources for our children's learning. The scheme we have chosen to best support our children on this journey is produced by 'Kapow Primary.'  Through this scheme of work, we aim to build an awareness of the impact of design and technology on our lives and encourage pupils to become resourceful, enterprising citizens who will have the skills to contribute to future design advancements.

How do we achieve our aims?

Through Kapow Primary’s Design and technology scheme, pupils will respond to design briefs and scenarios that require consideration of the needs of others, developing their skills in six key areas:

• Mechanisms
• Structures
• Textiles
• Cooking and nutrition (Food)
• Electrical systems (KS2)
• Digital world (KS2)

Each of our key areas follows the design process (design, make and evaluate) and has a particular theme and focus from the technical knowledge or cooking and nutrition section of the national curriculum. The Kapow Primary scheme is a spiral curriculum, with key areas revisited with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revisit and build on their previous learning.

Lastly, Kapow Primary supports teachers with their individual technical abilities as each unit of lessons includes teacher videos to develop subject knowledge and support ongoing CPD to ensure they are supported to deliver lessons of a high standard that ensure a high level of pupil progression.

What our approach will result in

The impact of Kapow Primary’s scheme can be monitored through assessment opportunities in each lesson and teachers at Felbridge Primary School will assess pupils against the progression map on a yearly basis too.

Each lesson includes opportunities to assess pupils against the learning objectives. We also use unit quizzes at the start and/or end of the unit to inform future planning and to assess the progress made at the end of each unit for each individual pupil.

We are aiming for pupils to leave our school equipped with a range of skills to enable them to succeed in their secondary education and be innovative and resourceful members of society. In addition, children will:

• Understand the functional and aesthetic properties of a range of materials and resources.
• Understand how to use and combine tools to carry out different processes for shaping, decorating, and manufacturing products.
• Build and apply a repertoire of skills, knowledge and understanding to produce high quality, innovative outcomes, including models, prototypes and products to fulfil the needs of users and scenarios.
• Understand and apply the principles of healthy eating, diets, and recipes, including key processes, food groups and cooking equipment.
• Have an appreciation for key individuals, inventions, and events in history and of today that impact our world.
• Recognise where our decisions can impact the wider world in terms of community, social and environmental issues.
• Self-evaluate and reflect on learning at different stages and identify areas to improve.
• Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the National curriculum for Design and technology.

Supporting diversity through the curriculum

Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work including practical hands-on, computer-based and inventive tasks. This variety means that lessons are engaging and appeal to those with a variety of learning styles. Differentiated guidance ensures that lessons can be accessed by all pupils and opportunities to stretch pupils’ learning.

Opportunities to support SMSC learning

• Social: Where appropriate, DT lessons encourage collaborative learning through the sharing of ideas and resources in both paired work and group work where they will have to work together to design, make and evaluate the productivity of their creation. Also, in all DT lessons across the school, there are high expectations and rules set out clearly at the beginning of the ‘make’ stages to ensure that all children complete projects safely.
• Moral - The evaluation stage also welcomes the use of peer assessment on projects where the children are taught that critical assessment isn’t negative, and that they need to be careful with their choice of language so that they are encouraging and constructive.
• Lastly, there are many opportunities throughout our DT curriculum where children will have opportunities to be exposed to (and have a go at making) cuisines of differing cultures as well as for religious celebrations like Chinese New Year and Christmas for example, and therefore it encourages spiritual thinking and growth.