Design and Technology

Long Term Plan

Skills Progression Map

Intent

At St Gabriel’s, we aim to develop a sense of enjoyment in designing and making products. We want children to learn how products have been, and continue to be, created to help solve real life problems. The school intends to provide children with the skills to enable them to design, make and evaluate their own products and the products of others. We aim for our children to be innovative and to understand products are consciously imagined and developed by individual inventors or groups of innovators collaborating.

Implementation

Design and Technology is taught alongside Art and Design each half-term through weekly lessons. We follow the guidance set out in the National Curriculum and, where possible, use Design and Technology to make meaningful links to other curriculum areas such as Science and Maths. At St Gabriel’s, children learn about how and why products have been designed in the past. Children replicate design and technology processes including designing a product, making it and evaluating it.

During the design phase, children talk about their ideas, draw and make templates. These are used to support the making of products using different materials and components including construction materials, textiles and ingredients. Children use a range of tools to help them cut, shape, join and finish their design as well as mechanical and electrical systems. Children then evaluate their products, comparing them to those made by others; they use evaluations to improve their products applying their technical knowledge.

Impact

Assessment for learning strategies are employed to enable teachers to identify the strength of understanding of the children. Teachers use this information to make adaptations to their planning to meet the needs of the children. Teachers may also change the focus of learning during a lesson to ensure children are supported and challenged. Teachers use their professional judgement to support them in tracking pupils’ attainment and progress.  School leaders monitor pupil’s work termly and hold termly meetings with subject leaders to ensure they are supported to provide a high-quality curriculum. In addition, children’s views and understanding are ascertained through pupil interviews/surveys.