Curriculum: Design & Technology

At Beverley Minster Primary School, we intend to provide an inspiring, practical curriculum that ensures all pupils have the opportunity to be creative, imaginative designers. We believe that our curriculum, like a successful product, should be ‘fit for purpose’ and give the children real-life problems to solve that challenge their thinking. We intend for our children to work well as individuals and in a team and provide a curriculum that supports each individual’s progress in both knowledge and skills regardless of starting point or background. 

We intend for our children to become confident and independent learners, who make positive changes in their lives by including healthy eating as a life choice and understanding the needs of the products’ intended ‘user’. Although The National Curriculum forms the basis of our schools’ Design and Technology curriculum, we believe our local context gives us opportunities to inspire and challenge our children to ‘‘Be my best at Beverley Minster Primary School’. 

Implementation

Overall, we have split the D&T progression into three main areas: sew, make and cook. This gives clarity to the intention of our D&T curriculum and ensures children know more and remember more as they progress through school.

Design and Technology is taught generally in alternate half terms. In EYFS it is taught through the EYFS framework, through focused modelled tasks and daily provision activities. 

Design and Technology focuses on investigation, disassembly and evaluation. It looks at how materials, structures and techniques are applied, joined and evaluated on fit for purpose.

Teachers may choose to deliver Design and Technology as a blocked day/week to facilitate and immerse children in the project. When designing and making, the children are taught to:

Design

  • use research and develop design criteria to inform the design of innovative, functional, appealing products that are fit for purpose, aimed at particular individuals or groups.
  • generate, develop, model and communicate their ideas through discussion, annotated sketches, cross-sectional diagrams, prototypes, pattern pieces and computer-aided design.

Make

  • select from and use a wider range of tools and equipment to perform practical tasks (for example, cutting, shaping, joining and finishing, as well as chopping and slicing) accurately.
  • select from and use a wider range of materials, ingredients and components, including construction materials, textiles and ingredients, according to their functional properties and aesthetic qualities.

Evaluate

  • investigate and analyse a range of existing products.
  • evaluate their ideas and products against their own design criteria and consider the views of others to improve their work.

Food Technology

Food technology is implemented across the school with children developing an understanding of where food comes from, the importance of a varied and healthy diet and how to prepare this. They build upon their skills  from EYFS to Year 6 learning how to prepare foods first and then moving onto following recipes. Finally they learn to write their own recipes for a healthy diet and cook the food then using peer and self evaluation say whether it is fit for purpose of the design brief.

Progression of Knowledge and Skills