Design & Technology: Vision

DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY LEADER

Mrs Czarnecka

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'ALWAYS START WITH WHY'

What is Design & Technology?

How do designers carry out their work?

We have set out in these two website pages how we consider these questions with our children by mapping out and delivering a clear, consistent and challenging curriculum for our children to meet their needs. You can download copies of every central document at the base of the relevant pages (VISION or CURRICULUM OVERVIEW) in PDF format. The subject guide and policy itself can be found at the base of this page.

To take a look at our curriculum overview page CLICK HERE.

Our Vision For Design & Technology

Design and Technology is an inspiring, rigorous and practical subject. At Mayfield, we value the creative potential of Design & Technology and believe that it can have a powerful and positive effect on children, helping them to become confident, creative learners who are able to express their individual interests, thoughts and ideas. We encourage the children to use their creativity and imagination to design and make products that solve real and relevant problems that have occurred in the past or present, as far as possible, within a variety of contexts considering their own and others’ needs, wants and values. We aim to make links to designs and designers throughout history, providing opportunities for children to critically reflect upon and evaluate others' designs and the overall effectiveness of the product before evaluating their own. As pupils progress, we support them to be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of Design & Technology.

Through DT work in the classroom, the children at Mayfield have the opportunity to develop their skills in moveable mechanisms and electrical systems, structures, textiles and food and diet. These areas are developed continuously throughout the school from early years through to year six and the children have the opportunity to revisit skills from previous years before learning new ones. We encourage children to express individuality in their work and to generate their own sketches and designs where they can explore ideas in their Project Notebooks, using a clear brief but offering freedoms around decisions and designs, in this way the children can be inventive and take risks. When children leave Mayfield, we expect them to have a wide range of well-developed knowledge and skills in the substantive and disciplinary areas of learning, so they can build on and develop them further as they continue in their education.

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How We Plan For, And Teach, Design & Technology

The Mayfield ‘I Dream Of Being…’ scheme of work is designed around the four disciplinary areas referenced in the National Curriculum: research, design, make and evaluate. From early years onwards, children visit knowledge and skills in four key substantive areas (with the disciplinary knowledge consistently and progressively present within this): moveable mechanisms and electrical systems, structures, textiles and food and diet. The route through the curriculum ensures that prior knowledge and skills are revisited to ensure retention in long-term memory and built upon to develop increasingly sophisticated understanding in meaningful contexts. The planning and assessment system places great emphasis upon mapping progression in the disciplinary areas of being a designer.

Design & Technology is planned to visit each of the substantive areas at least once in each key stage in their own planned termly projects. Projects are completed termly across school. Children design products with a purpose in mind and an intended user of the products. Food technology (food and diet) 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. The design process is always linked to real life, relevant contexts to give meaning to the learning. When making their products, the children are given choice and a wide range of tools and materials to choose from.

Design & Technology projects at Mayfield incorporate the following elements: explicit teaching of new vocabulary; recap and revisiting via Brain Gym, teacher modelling and questioning and a range of progressive, disciplinary learning stages culminating in a central, purposeful outcome/final piece. When evaluating, the children are taught to evaluate their own products against the initial design criteria to see how well it has met the needs and wants of the intended user and to identify any changes that could be made.

Each project has a Project Notebook created as a core guide for each child and to support teachers’ ongoing professional development. All teachers at Mayfield are supported to have strong subject knowledge across the Design & Technology curriculum and to know how new learning builds on prior understanding and towards future knowledge and skills.

Design & Technology’s presence is maintained through the creation of our Tech Room where most sessions take place, whilst the profile of DT reward, achievement and celebration throughout the school year is maintained via the roles of our Student Subject Champions, Subject Celebrations and Subject Achievement Displays. Rewards always have a specific eye upon personal progress rather than summative attainment. Design & Technology continues via our enrichment, wider curriculum opportunities: DT Club & Formula One DT which run during the year.

How We Assess Design & Technology Learning

The impact of our DT curriculum can clearly be seen in the children’s Project Notebooks which build to form a portfolio that the children take to the following year group and through school.

At the beginning of each project, a page in the Project Notebooks outlines the main learning objectives alongside the skills that the children will build on. The format of the notebooks means the children see the progression between disciplinary areas from project-to-project. The opportunity to evaluate and reflect on the learning is planned throughout each project to enable the children to see how their learning is progressing and where they need to take it next. On completion of the project, the children are able to self-assess against the learning objectives.

Big Questions are prompted and carefully positioned within Project Notebooks. Each project has a quiz and self-quiz opportunity to assess the retention of new knowledge and vocabulary. Summative judgements are made using the Key Milestone Document. At the end of the year, class teachers then use the children’s work and outcomes to make a judgement as to whether each child is working at the expected standard. The most frequently used approach is our Brain Gym strategy which is devised to hold some of the activities highlighted above but above all else as a planned opportunity for regular review. This aims to strengthen the connections between what the children learn and can recall then frees that working memory for the new learning and work to come.

How We Adapt Learning, And Record Outcomes, In Design & Technology

The subject leader has created Project Notebooks to assist with progression and knowledge in each project. They act as a central support for session preparation and are created in a format that allows for adaptation and subsequent use with children to capture their learning. Above all they provide a spine for teachers and supporting adults that should then be personalised, adapted and differentiated to meet the starting point needs of the children in each class.

Ways of demonstrating progress and outcomes must be adaptable to suit the needs of learners and the requirements of the subject. Therefore each subject has its own bespoke way of gathering evidence from learners. Otherwise recording work becomes a barrier to learning rather than a chance to celebrate children’s achievements and specialist skills and knowledge in areas where they may otherwise excel.

In Design & Technology, children’s work is gathered in:

Design & Technology Big Books (Per Cohort) & Children’s Individual Project Notebooks

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A Design & Technology Vocabulary

A core Design & Technology vocabulary has been created for the children across school. The vocabulary is progressive from EYFS onwards and at all times retains vocabulary previously introduced. We have chosen this language based upon the perspective of being a designer considering the broader concepts and skills ahead of ‘project specific terms’. The vocabulary is contained within each Project Notebook and referred to throughout. These are also present around the Tech Room.

Unit based DT terminology is highlighted within the body of each Project Notebook and prompts adults to discuss this new terminology linked to the project being studied at the appropriate time. It is not expected that these terms are permanently added to the vocabulary for designers, although we clearly aspire for the children to hold onto terms in order to aid their ability to discuss units across their studies. It is expected that the children maintain and use their designers vocabulary above all else.

Here are examples of the two kinds of vocabulary we have identified. Designers Vocabulary: function, join, fix Project Vocabulary: longship, carving, steering oar

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Design & Technology Enrichment Opportunity:

DT Club & Formula 1 DT as part of our beyond hours offer.