St John Fisher Catholic Primary School

Design and Technology: Curriculum Statement

"Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future." Robert L. Peters

Intent

At St John Fisher Catholic Primary School our Design and Technology curriculum intends to inspire, prepare and empower children to use their imagination and creativity to design, create and manufacture a range of products that solve real and relevant problems in a variety of contexts, taking into account the needs, desires and values of oneself and other peers.

Through Design and Technology, we provide ‘a skill for life’ and allow children to pursue meaningful and significant ways of developing their creativity, culture and well-being by enabling their academic and practical skills. All children are inspired to develop their imagination, critical thinking and understanding of the world through their love and passion of Design and Technology.

Our goals are; to meet all requirements of the National Curriculum for Design and Technology, ensuring a progressive development of knowledge, skills and critical understanding of its impact on everyday life and the wider world by using the language of D&T.

We aim and encourage our children to question and to think in innovative ways about the world in order to design and develop their own imaginations and creative thinking with purpose and social characteristics in mind; such as resourcefulness, innovation and entrepreneurship, thus becoming ‘masters of core skills.’

Our pupils participate successfully in an increasingly technological world, learning by it how to communicate, co-operate, and build their courage to take risks and solve problems by self-managed evaluating and comparing past and present in creation and design.

We give them the opportunities to reflect on what they have learned through practical exploration and use this knowledge to test and make beneficial adjustments to their own products as a forward-looking and resourceful young generation of culturally educated people with social competences.

Lessons are always inspiring, hands-on and engaging and all children have the access to a wealth of resources, media and materials in order to best enhance their ambition, self-belief and achievement.

While Design and Technology provides an area for children’s development that is not covered in many other areas of the curriculum – their creative, design ability; it is also a curriculum learning tool with a wide range of subject knowledge related to Mathematics, Art, Science, Computing, History or English.

In the Catholic Primary School of St John Fisher, the Design and Technology gives all children ability to growth their mindset, define the criteria and purpose, generate and model their ideas, conduct research and evaluation as they progress and create their masterpieces.

“Design and technology should be the subject where mathematical brainboxes and science whizzkids turn their bright ideas into useful products.” James Dyson

Implementation

At St John Fisher Catholic Primary School, the children are given the opportunity to learn, understand and explore six areas within Design and Technology; Cooking and Nutrition, Mechanisms, Structure, Textiles, Electrical Systems and Digital World. Each of these stages is equally important and allows children to acquire and develop skills, vocabulary and technical knowledge.

To ensure high standards of teaching, learning and advancement in Design and Technology, we implement a framework that is progressive throughout our school with lessons that are carefully planned in cohesion with the knowledge, understanding and skills set out by the National Curriculum. In addition, teachers and support staff have access to a variety of resources and tools, and all outcomes of children’s work are regularly monitored to ensure that they reflect a sound understanding of the key identified knowledge.

Through a variety of creative and practical activities, pupils should be taught the skills, knowledge and understanding needed to engage in an iterative process of designing, making and evaluating. There should be evidence in each of these stages in the DT Booklets and Floor books, which should also develop to show clear progression across the key stages as they progress through each year group.

The DT Booklets and floor books outline the process of the children’s projects, with photographic evidence documenting each stage and their overall progress, exhibiting the careful and detailed planning maintained throughout (from the initial ideas, to the multiple opportunities given to reflect and adapt their works, to the evaluation and consideration of what could’ve yet been improved on at the end.)

Children are assessed on each topic using the descriptors outlined in the booklet. The descriptors are quite in depth and take into account each unit of work and skills acquired for each level. The ‘knowledge catchers’ and the ‘quizzes’ are used at the beginning and end of individual units to check pupils previous and newly acquired knowledge. These tools help teachers get a fuller picture of how much children have learned and whether they are able to apply the new skills. The revision and introduction of key vocabulary is built into each lesson and is included in display materials and additional resources to ensure that all children are allowed opportunities to repeat and revise this knowledge. Adult guides and accurate D&T subject knowledge are always provided within lessons to allow the teachers and Support Staff working in those lessons to feel confident and supported with the skills and knowledge they teach. 

3 units of work are planned over the year and each unit takes 5 to 6 weeks to complete. Planning includes a learning objective taking into consideration prior learning, main activity and a learning outcome. A portfolio of planning and evidence of work can be found in Teacher’s only. 

By the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the skills and processes specified in the relevant programme of study. Teaching should clarify their roles and responsibilities in achieving the objectives set out in the action plan.  

Each implementation point will be monitored to check if they are consistently applied across the school (monitor – audit – review / reflect – action plan – implement.) We sincerely hope and deeply believe that this will allow our spiritually enlightened pupils to achieve great depth in their learning and teachers to be able to see marked progress throughout the school.

Impact

“Technology makes what was once impossible possible. The design makes it real.” Michael Gagliano

At St John Fisher Catholic Primary School, we are committed to instilling creativity and life aspirations in all of our children and we are confident that our entire school D&T curriculum will teach children not only the skills necessary to be great designers while continuing their education, but also inspiring a life-long love and passion for design and creativity.

Our D&T curriculum enables and encourages all of our pupils to think critically by looking at existing projects, analysing and evaluating their effectiveness, and then considering ways of redesign and reconstruction to improve overall success. Our children learn to collaborate and take risks, while becoming resourceful, innovative and enterprising individuals.

In our school, we want Design and Technology to be loved by both teachers and pupils thus inspiring and encouraging them to continue to build upon these skills in the future.

The children have access to a full range of media and materials that will support their education in D&T to manufacture ambitious and imaginative projects and the learning environment across our school (including displays) incorporates D&T technical vocabulary which is displayed, spoken and used by all learners.

The involvement of the entire school and parents is very important and will be increased through the application of design and technology specific challenges and competitions established on DB Primary. The impact of DT on learning orientation can also be measured by key questions, goals, tasks and targets built into the lessons, as well as several assessments conducted by children and adults.

The Kapow Primary Design & Technology program covers the full requirements of the national curriculum including 'Digital World' to help prepare young students for an increasingly digital future and provide them with an insight into the world of design.

Subject Leader will carry out regular inset days, learning walks, lesson observations, floor books checks and pupil discussions. Action Plans, teacher’s planning, development of skills audits and knowledge organizers are reviewed termly by the Subject Leader and shared annually with SLT and governors.   

Each project is based on the six principles of design and technology: user, purpose, functionality, design decisions, innovation and authenticity. All children's learning in design and technology is assessed by analysing their abilities to evaluate, design, make and improve their own work, whilst considering our school ethos and values ​​of faith, love, hope, courage, justice, respect and wisdom.

The Leader for Design and Technology is Aleks Krasuska.