Rounds Green Primary - D&T

Intention, Implementation and Impact

Design and technology is an inspiring, rigorous and practical subject. Through using creativity and imagination, pupils design and make products that solve real and relevant problems within a variety of contexts, considering their own and others’ needs, wants and values. They acquire a broad range of subject knowledge and draw on disciplines such as mathematics, science, engineering, computing and art, allowing multiply cross-curricula links. Pupils learn how to take risks, becoming resourceful, innovative, enterprising and capable citizens. Through the evaluation of past and present design and technology, pupils develop a critical understanding of its impact on daily life and the wider world.

INTENTION

At Rounds Green, we want our children to have no limits to what their ambitions are. Through offering an inspiring, engaging and exciting D&T curriculum, we provide opportunities for our pupils to solve real and relevant problems, helping them to unlock their potential to be the designers and innovators of tomorrow. Our D&T curriculum inspires our pupils to be innovative and creative thinkers, who have an appreciation for the product design cycle through ideation, creation, and evaluation. We want our pupils to develop the confidence to take risks, through drafting concepts, modelling, and testing and to be reflective learners who evaluate their work and the work of others. We aim to enhance and deepen pupils’ understanding from a variety of curriculum subjects, including Maths, Computing, Science and Art. We aim to educate our children to critically evaluate past and present design and technology and understand the essential contribution that high-quality design and technology has on culture, wealth and the well-being of the nation, as well as our local community.

IMPLEMENTATION

Design and technology is an exciting subject that allows children to use their creativity and imagination to design and make products. At Rounds Green, we implement the core D&T principles throughout our engaging curriculum:

• User – Our pupils have a clear idea of who they are designing for making products for, considering their needs, wants, values, interests and preferences. This could be themselves, others, an imaginary or story-based character, a client, a consumer or a specific target group.
• Purpose – Pupils are able to clearly communicate the purpose of the products they are designing and making.
• Functionality – Pupils design and make products that work/function effectively in order to fulfil the users’ needs.
• Design Decisions – Pupils are given opportunities to make their own design decisions. This allows them to demonstrate their creative, technical and practical expertise and use learning from other subjects.
• Innovation – Pupils at Rounds Green are given scope to be original with their thinking. Our projects are tailored to encourage innovation, which leads to a range of projects being developed and characterised by engaging open-ended started points in pupils’ learning.
• Authenticity – We believe that all of our pupils should design and make projects that are believable, real and meaning to themselves and others.

Our D&T curriculum links directly to the National Curriculum and all D&T projects follow the same process of: researching, planning, designing, making and evaluating. Each stage of the design process is underpinned by technical knowledge which encompasses the contextual, historical, and technical understanding required for each strand. As a school, we have a clear progression of skills and knowledge within these five stands across each year group and during each D&T project, pupils complete a D&T booklet which reflects the key principles of the D&T process. Our curriculum incorporates elements from Kapow Primary’s Design and Technology scheme, which allows pupils to respond to design briefs and scenarios that require consideration of the needs of others, developing their skills in four key areas: 

• Mechanisms
• Structures
• Textiles
• Cooking and nutrition (Food)

Each of these 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 curriculum. At Rounds Green our D&T curriculum is spiral, with key areas revisited again and again with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revisit and build on their previous learning.

IMPACT

Our carefully designed, well-resourced and high quality curriculum, ensures that D&T is valued and taught consistently across the school, with technical vocabulary displayed, spoken and used by all learners. Teachers constantly use formative and summative opportunities to assess pupils against the learning objectives to ensure all pupils make progress. Teachers have developed strong subject knowledge, feel confident in their teaching and have a clear understanding of the progression of skills across the key stages. We want to ensure that Design and Technology is loved by all pupils, therefore encouraging them to want to continue building on their wealth of skills and understanding, now and in the future. We measure the impact of out D&T curriculum through the following methods:

• Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.
• Summative assessment of pupil discussions about their learning.
• Child-lead assessments
• Images and videos of the children’s practical learning.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Moderation staff meetings where pupil’s projects which are written and recorded in D&T booklets are scrutinised.
• Marking of project and written work in D&T booklets.
• Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum to Governors.
• Subject Leader SWOT analysis and moderation.