Design and Technology

Intent:

At Michaelchurch, Design and Technology will ignite curiosity, build confidence and encourage children to become resourceful, innovative, enterprising and capable citizens. 

In this subject, we aim to give children some of the skills to tackle practical problems they may face in life, from growing their own food, repairing clothes, toys or electronics as well as the confidence and resilience needed to overcome problems they face when doing this. Children will learn about the design process by experimenting with a wide range of resources and understanding what works and what does not. 

Implementation:

• Themes carefully designed across the classes in carefully planned cycles to promote creative teaching and link across the curriculum in learning.
• Children taught a skills based design technology curriculum through projects.
• Design & technology lessons used as a vehicle to apply numeracy measuring skills and resource management (preparing pupils for future life).
• Children encouraged to work independently and solve their own problems in order to continue to build resilience.
• Subject leader expertise readily available at all times to enable all staff to deliver design & technology lessons confidently and competently.
• Teach skills but do not apply constraints of content- a teacher will model, but not restrict the content of a pupil’s own creation.
• The ethos of neat and orderly presentation for all work applies to design technology, and is encouraged throughout the school.

Impact:

• Children are motivated by teaching of key skills and design technology opportunities.
• As children progress throughout the school, they increasingly draw on previous skills taught and begin to attempt more complex design decisions.
• They are more resilient and understand the importance of modelling to learn from their errors and make design improvements.