CURRICULUM COVERAGE

WHAT DOES DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY LOOK LIKE AT SOUTHFIELD?

At the heart of our Design and Technology curriculum is the expectation that children will develop disciplinary skills and knowledge to become designers. At the end of each unit of study, our pupils will produce a practical product. They will investigate designs, solve design problems and issues, build and create, and evaluate, exploring issues contextually.

Children will design, make and evaluate products using a range of materials and components; this includes construction materials, textiles, food mechanical components and, in Key Stage 2, they will use electrical components. Our Early Years Designers are introduced to the concepts and skills through the early learning goals, and these then gradually progress throughout their time as Southfield Designers.

The Southfield Designer will incorporate the following elements in all lessons:

Children will start each lesson with a story to place learning in context and to be meaningful. They will learn about well known designers or inventors and how they created tangible items from imagination and design.

Our curriculum has been split into three different areas of design and technology: ‘cook’, ‘sew’ and ‘build’. It is designed so that each year group will complete a unit of work in these three different areas once a year.

We have sequenced our lessons in the ‘sew’ and ‘build’ areas of study to follow a structure to enable our pupils to become familiar with, understand and practise the process of design: research and investigate, design, make, use and evaluate.

Each unit of work specifies the product the children will make, the purpose of the product and the user of the product. This specification shows children the importance of purpose and user within the design process.

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The children explore existing products and their uses, and then generate ideas and designs by creating drawings and prototypes against criteria which they create, having considered purpose, function and appeal. They then evaluate their product against these criteria, concluding the process.

The students’ understanding of key skills and concepts builds from year to year, assessing and cementing prior learning.

Our design and technology curriculum has been designed to be delivered alongside our art, science and history curricula, as parts of it directly relate to areas of knowledge which the pupils' acquire in these subjects.

Where a unit looks at concepts which are also addressed in these subjects, the design and technology unit is generally taught after units in these other disciplines. This allows the children to approach their study of design and technology with a degree of confidence and ‘expertise’ and to consolidate their knowledge by creating connections between the different disciplines.