Design & Technology
Intent
The Longhill Primary School Design and Technology curriculum is designed to provide children with an in-depth and broad understanding of design and technology linking to food, materials, textiles, electricals, construction, mechanics and computing by teaching a range of concepts through different contexts. The curriculum aims to develop pupils’ design and technology skills to foster creativity and imagination when designing, making and evaluating a range of differing products. Pupils will become inspired to develop creative products that add value and impact to the world. They will master practical skills across a range of design methods, in addition to having a solid understanding of the design process and how to research and take inspiration from existing products. By teaching a range of concepts through different contexts, children will be able to link their knowledge to have a better understanding of effective product design and creation.
Implementation
Design and Technology is taught across the year, with a particular focus as a “curriculum driver” in the Spring term.
As a curriculum driver, our design and technology curriculum is built around the idea of threshold concepts which are ‘big ideas’ that shape children’s thinking within each subject. The key concepts that we aim to cover are:
- To master practical skills
- To design, make, evaluate and improve
- To take inspiration from design throughout history.
Children will be taught about these concepts across a range of contexts within each year group, and each year group will focus on a different aspect of creation. These are referred to as “episodes”. The more children learn, the more they will be able to link their understanding of contexts together to build an overview of each concept. At Longhill Primary School, each milestones contains a range of procedural and semantic knowledge to give more detail to each concept. This allows children to steadily build up an understanding of the 3 main concepts through carefully sequenced learning and progression.
Impact
- Children can talk about a range of pre-existing products and their impact on society. They have the skills and knowledge to be able to evaluate these products.
- Children are confident with the design, make, evaluate and improve model for the product creation process, and they can apply this to different topics including food, materials, textiles, electricals, construction, mechanics and computing.
- Children have the technical skills and the knowledge required to create a range of products.
- Children are inspired to create their own products, which may lead to work opportunities in later life.
Click on the links below for further detailed plans:
Foundation Stage 1 Plan D and T Spring
Foundation Stage 2 Plan D and T
Textiles Planning (Whole School)
Please also refer to the Foundation Stage medium term plans
