Subject Rational 

We live in a rapidly changing and evolving world and at St Mary’s, we believe it is essential that our DT curriculum sets our children up to be able to confidently contribute to life in modern Britain and the global community. We want our children to have high aspirations for themselves and know they are able to have a positive and lasting impact on society. Our knowledge and skills progressions have be developed in line with the National Curriculum and are taught as part of our connected curriculum. Our aim is for children to develop a broad skill set across the key strands of DT, technical terminology to enable them to confidently talk about their creations and the skills to critique work and adapt to feedback. We want our children to be creative problem solvers, with the ability to identify specific needs, present unique designs and build upon existing products.

How we teach Design Technology

Our DT curriculum is structured around 4 key areas: Structures, Mechanisms, Food and Electrical Systems. These areas are revisited twice in each phase (with the exception of Electrical Systems which is only taught in UKS2) to ensure knowledge and skills are embedded and built upon. We weave our global curriculum throughout our units and teach DT alongside our topic, with product briefs linking specifically to the topic being taught. DT is taught in 4 parts:

Playing and Exploring: Children are encouraged to have a go at various skills and techniques. Teachers will show children how to do it, then they are able to explore these skills with various different materials, until they have come to an understanding of which techniques work best for their brief.

Planning and Developing: Children will use their newly acquired skills to design a product to fit their brief. They will present their designs in a variety of ways including sketches, labelled diagrams and prototypes.

Application: Children will use their design to create a product that fits the brief using the skills and techniques they have learnt and practised across the unit. Their products will be tested.

Evaluation: Children will spend time assessing how well their product fits the brief. They may do this for their own product or in conjunction with a peer. In UKS2, children may go back and alter designs based on their evaluations.

We ensure that DT is linked to other curriculum subjects as much as possible, in particular Science, Mathematics and Art.

How Design Technology is assessed at St Mary's

Each term, DT is assessed through teacher judgement in line with the knowledge and skills progression documents. Alongside this, pupils regularly have the opportunity to self and peer assess.