Two Year Curriculum Overview – DT
Intent
Our RMS design and technology curriculum is ‘for all’. We do ‘all the good we can’ to ensure our teaching and learning is inspiring, rigorous and practical and accessible ‘for all’. The children acquire a broad range of subject knowledge and draw on disciplines such as mathematics, science, engineering, computing and art.
The National Curriculum for design and technology aims to ensure that all pupils:
- develop the creative, technical and practical expertise needed to perform everyday tasks confidently and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world.
- build and apply a repertoire of knowledge, understanding and skills in order to design and make high-quality prototypes and products for a wide range of users.
- critique, evaluate and test their ideas and products and the work of others.
- understand and apply the principles of nutrition and learn how to cook.
Our children will acquire ‘sticky knowledge’ and will retain this knowledge in their long-term memory as life-long learning so they can always respond to new challenges, understand problems and create solutions. We aim to equip our children with the relevant and useful skills which they can then utilise to ‘do all the good they can’ in a rapidly changing world.
Implementation
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.
Through the evaluation of past and present design and technology, the children develop a critical understanding of its impact on daily life and the wider world.
The children will be taught through the main characteristics of: Designing, Making, Evaluating, Using Technical Knowledge and Food Technology.
At Key Stage 1, children will design purposefully based on design criteria. They will generate, develop, model and communicate their ideas through talking, drawing, templates, mock-ups and, where appropriate, information and communication technology. They will make, selecting from a range of tools and equipment, materials and components. The children will evaluate by exploring existing products and evaluating but also reflecting on their own creations against design technology. The children will increase their technical knowledge by building structures and mechanisms, exploring how they can be made stronger, more efficient and more stable.
At Key Stage 2, children will use research and develop design criteria to inform the design of innovative, functional, appealing products which are fit for a purpose. They will generate, develop, model and communicate their ideas through discussion, annotated sketches, cross-sectional and exploded diagrams, prototypes, pattern pieces and computer aided design. They will make by selecting from a wide range of tools, equipment, materials and components. The children investigate and analyse a range of existing products. They will evaluate their own and other’s work, using collaboration to improve. They will understand how key events and individuals in design and technology have helped shape the world. Children will develop technical knowledge and they apply their understanding of how to improve more complex structures. They will understand and use electrical systems in their products and apply their understanding of computing to programme, monitor and control their products.
The principles of cooking, nutrition and healthy eating will be taught in both key stages.
Design and Technology will be taught weekly or as a block of lessons, as appropriate.
Impact
By the end of each key stage, all pupils will know, apply and understand the matters, skills and processes specified in the programmes of study.
Instilling a lovely of cooking in pupils will open a door to one of the great expressions of human creativity. Learning how to cook is a crucial life skill that enables pupils to feed themselves and others affordably and well, now and in later life.
Our high-quality design and technology education is ‘for all’ so all can make an essential contribution to the creativity, culture, wealth and well-being of the nation as our children ‘do all the good they can’, both now and in the future.