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Design and Technology

Impact

Design and Technology is an important subject here at St Augustine’s. It encourages pupils to design and make products suitable for creative challenges, it gives them opportunities to use a wide variety of media and tools and it ensures they have real-world skills to find practical solutions to problems they may come across in their adult life and in their future careers. Using creativity and imagination, pupils will 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 will acquire a broad range of subject knowledge and draw on disciplines such as mathematics, science, engineering, computing and art. Pupils will learn how to take risks, becoming resourceful, innovative, enterprising and capable citizens. Through the evaluation of past and present design and technology, they will develop a critical understanding of its impact on daily life and the wider world. High-quality design and technology education ensures the pupils will make an essential contribution to the creativity, culture, wealth and well-being of the nation.

D&T has four main strands (Structures, Textiles, Food and Nutrition) which will be covered at St Augustine’s on a two year rolling programme. However, food and nutrition will be covered in every year group as we recognise the importance of this skill in developing the life experiences of our children and preparing them for the future life.

 In the Early Years, D&T comes under the curriculum area of “Expressive arts and design: Exploring and using media and materials”. Children have access to a variety of resources within their continuous provision that helps to both develop and consolidate knowledge, skills and understanding when designing and making within their own play. This includes large scale construction toys for building, beads and strings to encourage fine motor skills like weaving and sewing, and learning to safely use everyday objects like scissors and hole punches.

Implementation

We provide quality resources and thoughtful stimuli, and the pupils are given real-world problems to solve. They will design products that will meet the challenges, and are encouraged to choose their own equipment, with safety in mind and guidance where necessary. After they make their products they will evaluate their work, deciding what worked well and what needed to be changed. 

The following three step design process will be followed in all year group: Step 1 – Design - Pupils will: - Be faced with a practical problem to solve. They will have to ensure their products are functional, appealing and fit for the purpose and suitable people they are intended for, be it groups or individuals, have chance to discuss with their classmates, share views and revise their ideas before committing their design to paper or computer and be able to design their product in a variety of ways to suit them, on paper, using technology, annotated sketches and prototypes.   Step 2 – Create/Make -  Pupils will: Be shown how to use tools safely and be able to practise with them to determine which would be most suitable for the challenge ahead, select from a wide range of tools and equipment so they can cut, shape, chop, slice, join and finish accurately and select from and use a wide range of ingredients, construction materials and textiles to suit the challenge. Step 3 – Evaluate - Pupils will: Investigate and analyse a range of existing products and evaluate their ideas and products against their own design criteria and consider the views of others to improve their work.

Impact

The design and technology curriculum will contribute to children’s personal development in creativity, independence, judgement and self-reflection. This will be seen through pupil voice and children’s ability to talk about the processes they have taken to meet the design brief following the design, make and evaluate structure. Progress will be seen through the outcomes achieved but also the deign making process taken to get there and the critical evaluation carried out at the end.

Please click below to view our DT overview: