At Bishop’s Waltham Junior School the health, safety and well-being of every child is our top priority.

Design Technology  

National Curriculum Aims for Design Technology

The national curriculum for design and technology aims to ensure that all pupils:

• develop the creative, technical and practical expertise needed to perform everyday tasks confidently and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world
• build and apply a repertoire of knowledge, understanding and skills in order to design and make high-quality prototypes and products for a wide range of users
• critique, evaluate and test their ideas and products and the work of others
• understand and apply the principles of nutrition and learn how to cook. 

 Design Technology at Bishop's Waltham Junior School  

Intent

• To use creativity and imagination to explore a range of real-life problems and find ways to solve these.
• To develop children’s awareness of conscious design in the world around them by evaluating a range of pre-existing products.
• To develop technical knowledge in how to build and strengthen products, using tools competently.
• To develop the children’s understanding of the changing role of technology in product design.

Implementation

• The subject leader plans the curriculum units, ensuring that the curriculum stays relevant and up to date through contact with other professionals. The curriculum ensures that a variety of skills and topics are covered.
• Usually, each DT unit is taught over the course of a fortnight – with evaluating existing products and focused practical tasks taught in individual lessons.  Making is frequently blocked into a day or over several days to ensure children have time to alter their products during the making stage as a result of on-going evaluation.
• During many units, children have the opportunity to use their computing skills to improve their products and designs – including using Primary CAD and Crumble boards
• Some computing units also meet many of the DT curriculum objectives – particularly the Year 5 Unit where children use Google Sketch Up to design Anderson shelters.
• The children complete one food and nutrition unit each year. The areas of mechanisms, textiles and structures are taught at least once in both the lower and upper school. 
• A local home economist also provides supplementary food and nutrition opportunities in the school. These year group specific opportunities include workshops on local food produce in conjunction with local businesses e.g. orchards and Vitacress and cookery competitions.
• Using the MTP front-sheet, teachers assess their children’s learning each unit, and these assessments are passed up to the next teacher who then has a realistic view of the children’s starting points when the skills are re-taught.

Impact

As a result of our whole school DT curriculum, pupils of Bishop’s Waltham Junior School will:

• Have an understanding of the design process and the need for each product to be suitable for its intended purpose and user.
• Understand that products can be subject to ongoing evaluation and improvement.
• Be able to use a variety of tools competently to join and strengthen materials.
• Have an understanding of how computer technology can improve product design.

Success will be monitored through:

• Summative assessment at the end of each unit, which identifies children working below or above expected levels in the key objectives.
• Discussion with staff about their successes in Design technology.
• Discussion with children to explore their own self-perceived strengths and areas for improvement in design technology.

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
• understand how key events and individuals in design and technology have helped shape the world.

Cooking and nutrition

As part of their work with food, pupils should be taught how to cook and apply the principles of nutrition and healthy eating. Learning how to cook is a crucial life skill that enables pupils to feed themselves and others affordably and well, now and in later life.

Pupils should be taught to:

• understand and apply the principles of a healthy and varied diet
• prepare and cook a variety of predominantly savoury dishes using a range of cooking techniques
• understand seasonality, and know where and how a variety of ingredients are grown, reared, caught and processed

DT - Curriculum Overview

Year Three

Year Four

Year Five

Year Six

The National Curriculum for Design & Technology

National Curriculum - Design & Technology

Read our latest DT stories on the school blog!