Design and Technology

Intent:
Design and Technology at Cledford Primary School aims to:
•    Provide opportunities to ask well thought through questions
•    Encourage children to think critically and logically
•    Develop resilience and perseverance to tackle problems and find solutions
•    Allow children to communicate with each other and respectfully share opinions
•    Challenge children to research information and think for themselves
•    Build on prior learning
•    Promote progression of skills
•    Create memorable cross curricular learning experiences that link with other disciplines such as maths, science, computing and art
•    Provide hands-on, well scaffolded opportunities that challenge all to create well designed products
•    Improve analysis, problem solving, practical capability and evaluation skills
•    Teach children subject related vocabulary, helping to reduce barriers they have to learning and to communicate using the correct and appropriate terminology.

Implementation:
Our Design and Technology curriculum at Cledford is purposeful and promotes pupils’ enjoyment, achievement and confidence. Our planning is based upon the National Curriculum programmes of study for Design and Technology 2014 and the ‘Expressive arts and design’ feature of the Development Matters document for Early Years 2021. The curriculum is sequential which allows for skills to be learnt, revisited and embedded. Key skills have been mapped across the school to ensure progression between year groups. Lessons are appropriately scaffolded to ensure that Design and Technology is challenging to all. Design and technology is sometimes taught in blocked sessions so that children’s learning is focused throughout each unit of work. Food technology is taught across the school with children developing an understanding of where food comes from, the importance of a varied and healthy diet and how to prepare this.
Our curriculum incorporates a variety of different skills, including co-operative learning, to encourage the children to consider the views of others, evaluate their ideas and products against their own design criteria and to improve their work.

Impact:
Our Design Technology curriculum impacts positively on our children’s ability to acquire the knowledge, skills and understanding needed to collaborate, learn from, understand and react to others’ perspectives and strengths. Children will leave school with the confidence that they can design, make and change products and with the belief that qualifications and careers incorporating D&T are within their capability.
The curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. The impact of our curriculum is also measured through:
•    A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes
•    Pupil discussions about their learning, including discussions of their thoughts, ideas, processing and evaluations of work
•    Work scrutiny
•    Lesson observations