Brockmoor Primary School
Design and Technology
INTENT
At Brockmoor Primary School, we are DESIGNERS!
We want our children to love design technology. We want them to feel ambitious and feel able to access roles as architects, graphic designers, chefs or carpenters
Design and Technology is dynamic and multidimensional. It is our intention that our D&T curriculum will provide opportunities to solve real and relevant problems, allowing our pupils to develop essential everyday skills and unlock their potential to be the designers and innovators of tomorrow. The D&T curriculum will encourage children to learn, to think and intervene creatively to solve problems both as an individual and as part of a team.
Design and Technology will allow all Brockmoor pupils to put their learning from other areas of the curriculum into practice, and will work to enhance and deepen their understanding of those areas, including maths, computing, science, and art.
Brockmoor pupils will learn about cooking, food and nutrition, ensuring that they acquire the fundamental life skills in order to be able to feed themselves healthily and independently, whilst learning about where food comes from, therefore making connections with their geographical and scientific knowledge.
IMPLEMENTATION
Our curriculum is structured to introduce and revisit knowledge, following the principles of instruction, guided by understanding how the memory works and cognitive load theory.
The CUSP Design and Technology curriculum is organised into blocks with each block covering a particular set of disciplines, including food and nutrition, mechanisms, structures, systems, electrical systems, understanding materials and textiles. Vertical progression in each discipline has been deliberately woven into the fabric of the curriculum so that pupils revisit key disciplines throughout their Primary journey at increasing degrees of challenge and complexity.
In addition to the core knowledge required to be successful within each discipline, the curriculum outlines key aspects of development in the Working as a Designer section. Each module will focus on promoting different aspects of these competencies. This will support teachers in understanding pupils’ progress as designers more broadly, as well as how successfully they are acquiring the taught knowledge and skills.
WHAT DO WE TEACH?
EARLY YEARS
Children use what they have learnt about media and materials in original ways, thinking about uses and purposes.
They represent their own ideas, thoughts and feelings through design and technology, art, music, dance, role-play and stories.
KS1 & 2 SCHOOL OVERVIEW
How do pupils learn
Class timetables have been built to ensure a broad and balanced curriculum.
Subjects have been blocked in a spaced retrieval model to support catch up and to build the frequency of science and wider curriculum subjects. This maximises learning time
D&T has been timetabled in an extended session to enable children to have time to develop depth.
OVERVIEW OF KNOWLEDGE
The overview provides a list of the expected outcomes for the block provides details of the design knowledge and skills pupils will be expected to have acquired by the end of the block. It includes detailed explanations of the core knowledge covered in each block
KNOWLEDGE NOTES
Knowledge notes focus pupils’ working memory to the key question that will be asked at the end of the lesson. It reduces cognitive load.
RETRIEVAL PRACTISE
Retrieval practise is planned into the curriculum through spaced learning and interleaving and as part of considered task design by the class teacher. Teaching and learning resources and provided for class teachers so they can focus their time on subject knowledge and task design.
INCLUSION
Within D&T ALL pupils will take part in all the lesson sequences, but we need to be clear about the critical core content for pupils with SEND.
As part of the planning and preparation for the delivery of each block, teachers will need to consider how specific activities, or the delivery, may need to be adjusted to ensure that pupils with SEND are able to access the materials and participate fully in the lesson.
Pupils with language and communication difficulties (including those with ASD) may need additional visual prompts to help them understand what is expected of them. The task could be broken down into smaller, more manageable chunks and individual task boards used to demonstrate these.
Some pupils may have sensory sensitivities. For those pupils, adjustments may need to be made in order for them to access materials.
Pupils who have difficulties with tasks requiring fine motor skills may need appropriate adjustments to be made to enable them to access the task and / or in order to keep them safe.
Knowledge notes will also be chunked to ensure learners understand key content.
This will then lead to our assessment framework. Some pupils may show extended knowledge and be skilful with it from other lessons.
VOCABULARY
The units are supported by vocabulary modules which provide both resources for teaching and learning vital vocabulary and provide teachers with Tier 2 and 3 vocabulary with the etymology and morphology needed for explicit instruction details relevant idioms and colloquialisms to make this learning explicit.
We aim to provide a high challenge with low threat culture and put no ceiling on any child’s learning, instead providing the right scaffolding for each child for them to achieve.
IMPACT
The impact of this curriculum design will lead to outstanding progress over time across key stages relative to a child’s individual starting point and their progression of skills.
Children will therefore be expected to leave Brockmoor reaching at least age related expectations for Design and Technology. Our Design and Technology curriculum will also lead pupils to be enthusiastic learners, evidenced in a range of ways, including pupil voice and their work.
HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT THE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED?
The assessment of pupils is formative and is based on pupil outcomes and questioning from each lesson. The following can be used to assess pupils’ knowledge and application of skills and techniques as well as their understanding and use of relevant vocabulary.
Expectations for each block are made explicit and outcomes are specified for each lesson.
The Questions for assessment section in each block provides specific questions to be used with pupils to elicit their level of understanding of tools, techniques and effects, e.g. How have the properties of the cotton changed? Is the cotton now more or less functional?
Oracy and Vocabulary tasks provide ample opportunities for teachers to evaluate pupils’ ability to: use the language of design and technology effectively;
explain techniques, skills and processes;
evaluate their own and others’ work.
A vocabulary quiz provides an opportunity for teachers to assess pupils’ deeper understanding and application of the technical vocabulary covered in the block.
Exemplification is available and can be used to inform assessment of pupil outcomes and to support teachers in developing their own subject knowledge. They demonstrate the expected standard against which teachers can assess pupils’ work.
The best form of assessment in design and technology is at the point of delivery, while pupils are working. This helps us to understand pupils’ development as designers, rather than their ability to produce a prescribed end outcome. By encouraging pupils to articulate their thinking and reflections, we can understand which aspects of design and technology may require additional teaching and reshape teaching to support this.
QUESTIONS FOR ASSESSMENT
A series of self evaluation questions are provided for each unit.
