INTENT

At Larwood School, our Design and Technology curriculum is intended to be ambitious, engaging and designed to give all pupils, regardless of background, the equal opportunity to gain the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life and in future education.  Our Design and Technology topics are based on the fundamentals outlined within the National Curriculum (2014) and are designed to provide broad and balanced opportunities that are differentiated appropriately to ensure the progressive development of design concepts, knowledge, and skills. Furthermore, we strive to promote an appetite and fascination about design that will carry them through future studies. At Larwood School, we also intend to prepare the children to deal with tomorrow’s rapidly changing world by encouraging children to become independent, creative problem solvers and thinkers as individuals and part of a team. Design and Technology enables them to identify needs and opportunities and to respond to them by developing a range of ideas and by making products and systems. Through the study of Design and Technology, they combine practical skills with an understanding of aesthetic, social and environmental issues, as well as functions and industry. This allows them to reflect on and evaluate past and present technology, its uses, and impacts.

IMPLEMENTATION

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in Design Technology, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school and therefore designed to help the children to build upon and recall previous knowledge and skills in the long term. Design technology is taught in all year groups within at least two of the terms in KS1. KS1 and space hub pupils have food tech lessons once a week. In KS2 and in space hub, DT is taught throughout our creative curriculum. The main school has hand on Monday and Skills on Thursday. All these sessions are hand on ‘skill based’ learning linked to wider curriculum.  The content of the teaching is focused on the knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum.

Opportunities for Design and Technology learning take place in different environments at Larwood School. Every year group look at appropriate products to their topic that spark curiosity and engagement in the study of Design and Technology. As well as this, teachers are encouraged to plan fun, intriguing products for their topics that take the children away from their desks and out of their classrooms. Each topic starts with a ‘Stunning Start’ that should pique the children’s interest and ends with a ‘Fantastic Finish’ that in some way shows off or demonstrates the children’s learning within the topic.

The curriculum leader ensures that teachers’ subject knowledge is appropriate through regularly evaluating planning and outcomes from Larwood mentoring and book scrutinises as well as discussions with colleagues. This results in the leader working closely with any member of staff who needs assistance or support with their subject knowledge and/or improving and adapting the curriculum where needed. The leader also provides pointers, ideas and relevant resource pools for all members of staff to ease workload and assist with planning and engagement with the subject knowledge they are being asked to teach.

As aforementioned, the Design and Technology curriculum at Larwood School is based upon the Chris Quigley essentials curriculum, which is in line with the national curriculum and, which provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills taught in each milestone. Teachers plan lessons for their year groups using our progression of knowledge document, matching each piece of knowledge to a lesson where the children’s understanding of their current topic area is built upon. Alongside this, teachers consider how to include transferable skills – such as reading fluency and numeracy skills – within their planning.

At our school, Design and Technology is challenging yet accessible to all – including SEN and gifted and talented children. We differentiate our lessons and activities to suit a range of abilities ensuring that all children can learn at a pace and level that is appropriate to their needs, whether that means extending and stretching gifted and talented children through the design, aesthetic, social and environmental issues or scaffolding learning and providing more adult support for with children with additional needs.

IMPACT

The Design and Technology curriculum at Larwood is of a high quality, well planned and demonstrates progression.

The impact of this is measured through the following methods:

• Assessing children’s understanding of topic vocabulary through Larwood mentoring
• Images and videos of the children’s practical learning
• Moderation of children’s work within their books
• Staff meetings with an opportunity to scrutinise and discuss children’s progress and outcomes
• Marking of written work in books
• Annual reporting of standards across the design and technology curriculum
• Assessing products created