Design & Technology

Curriculum Overview

Design Technology at Curry Mallet reflects our vision ‘Life in all its fullness’. We aim for all children to work creatively using their imagination to solve real and relevant problems.

Intent

Design Technology has its own substantive knowledge; disciplinary knowledge and particular skills. Our curriculum is a spiral curriculum in which key concepts are taught repeatedly throughout the year groups, but with deepening layers of complexity.
Curry Mallet is a three class school with mixed age and mixed key-stage classes. Due to demographic changes and unpredictable in-year admission numbers, our class structure is not guaranteed to be the same year on year. Therefore, we have sequenced the content of our curriculum offer for DT using a two or three year rolling program for each class which ensures that whatever path a child takes through our school the National Curriculum content is covered. Our spiral curriculum enables key concepts to be re-visited and built on as a child progresses through our curriculum.

The Key Concepts in our DT curriculum are:

The disciplinary knowledge of DT is reinforced through the Key Concepts. By revisiting the Key Concepts each time a new DT topic is taught, children can make connections with prior learning and reinforce links in their learning across the curriculum. We aim to make the learning stick by revisiting Key Concepts.
The design of our curriculum will help the children to know more and remember more.

Implementation

In Design Technology, knowledge and skills are taught through six strands which are repeated throughout a child’s learning journey through our curriculum:

• Cooking and nutrition
• Structures
• Textiles
• Mechanical systems
• Electrical systems
• Digital - programming

DT is taught as a unit of work each term in each class. DT is planned to closely align to the enquiry project being investigated and will complement, in particular, the Art and Design units taught within each year of our rolling program. Curriculum links are made explicit to enhance the children ‘s learning and understanding of subject specific knowledge in context.
High expectations are set and cultural capital is gained by the use of:

• High quality texts
• Authentic resources
• Valuing and teaching subject specific vocabulary

Assessment for learning strategies are used to regularly check learners’ understanding, identify misconceptions and provide concise, timely feedback.

We make sure learning sticks by:

• Low stakes quizzing, and recap and recall of prior learning
• Explicit reference to links between all subjects
• Interactive dynamic displays to enhance learning
• Building new knowledge within existing schemata by teaching key concepts
• Pre and post teaching to enable all learners to make good progress

Impact

In Design Technology our children will develop detailed knowledge and skills and as a result achieve well. Learning will be evident in DT ‘end products’, and their self-evaluations at the end of each unit of work. We want children to be able to talk confidently about their work; make links and show understanding of how DT is connected to other areas of learning.

Leaders of Learning will use a range a tools to evaluate our DT curriculum; to include book looks, staff discussion and pupil voice interviews.

They will ask:

Is the curriculum working well? Are all children making progress?
Does the work link clearly to the curriculum map and practise key Design Technology concepts?
Are the activities appropriate, engaging and fit the intended learning outcome/objectives? Is there evidence that the child has made progress against the key concepts in Design Technology on the curriculum map? Can children use and understand subject specific vocabulary?

Our Design Technology curriculum has been reviewed and improved during the academic year 2021-22 to ensure children meet learning opportunities missed during Covid closures.

 Design Technology Curriculum OverviewDesign Technology Rolling Program