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Design and Technology Policy

October 2012 Sarah Senechal

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What is design and Technology? Design and Technology allows children to take a critical look at the products and objects around them, and their uses. They can investigate how mechanisms work, what materials they are made from and how effective they are. They can think about why certain materials were uses to make these products, and how products are produced to look attractive for the consumer. With this knowledge they can plan and construct things themselves, test them out, and evaluate their own work. Within design and technology there is a wide scope of products, from food technology, where children can produce their own fruit salads or different breads, to making moving books and vehicles. Children have opportunities to make their own version of things that are already available, or they can use the knowledge they have acquired through design and technology and other subjects to create a product in response to a new idea. The latter really gives the children the experience of being an inventor.

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What are the aims of teaching design and technology? We aim to develop children’s learning and understanding of design and technology through developing their: -

Practical skills Intellectual skills Social skills Imaginative and creative skills Motor skills Understanding of health and safety Ability to use knowledge and skills from other areas of the curriculum.

We aim to:  ensure that every individual has equal access to the curriculum of design and technology  continue to develop children’s interest and enthusiasm for this subject.  provide children with an understanding of citizenship which links with PSHE.  ensure that children are aware of global issues, and that people across the world have similar needs that are catered for using different mechanisms and products. It is important that children are aware of how these products affect the environment, and can design their own product bearing recent world issues in mind. We aim to do this through whole class discussions within the design and technology curriculum.

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Planning a Design and Technology curriculum. At Beckford we are striving to plan a curriculum that is skills based. We aim to track the skills that the children are developing, and build on these throughout their time at Beckford. In line with the National Curriculum, children at Key Stages 1 and 2 will be provided with opportunities to: - Look at products available, discuss choices of materials and investigate how these products work. - Plan their own products, in the case of key stage 2, making accurate drawings and annotating these. - Choose and use appropriate tools, equipment, and materials to make their products. - To test their products and evaluate them against the success criteria. - To develop their knowledge and understanding of materials and mechanisms. For years 1 – 6 we plan in blocks of 8 sessions based on the QCA scheme of work for design technology, making sure that the activities we ask the children to complete are based on developing skills. We aim to build on the experiences the children are likely to have had in nursery and reception. The Early Years curriculum is also based on the QCA foundation stage document. The QCA schemes of work are based on the National Curriculum and each unit includes 3 specific types of activities to develop children’s knowledge and understanding. These are: 1. Investigating and evaluating a range of familiar products. 2. Focussed practical tasks to develop a range of skills. 3. Design and make assignments using a range of materials. The QCA scheme consists of 24 units. Each year group covers 3 of those units within the year. This is taught most effectively over a designated week, which allows children to be more focussed and gives them more time to develop their skills of using different tools and components. On a practical level, it means that the issue of storing the products that the children make is eliminated. (Need to include yearly time for DT for KS1 and 2) The teachers plan which term to complete their Design and Technology units by looking carefully at the topics they are covering in other subjects such as science, history, geography and literacy so as to make as many cross curricular links as possible. In this way children can apply their learning from other subjects. For example: In year 4 one of our science topics in the autumn term is circuits, so we complete our design and technology topic of ‘torches’ within the same term so the children can use their knowledge of circuits from science in their DT work and vice versa.

5 Provision for Early Years Children in the Early Years are provided with opportunities that will allow them to develop skills to help them make sense of the world. The goals for Design and Technology in Early Years are the following: 1. To ‘build and construct with a wide range of objects, selecting appropriate resources and adapting their work as necessary.’ 2. To ‘select tools and techniques they need to shape, assemble and join materials they are using.’ (Curriculum guidance for the foundation stage pgs. 90 – 91 QCA 2000). In order to achieve these goals children are given opportunities to: 1. Use construction kits to experiment with different ways of joining. 2. Use a range of different tools safely and to familiarise themselves with the names of these tools. E.g: scissors, stapler, hole punch, glue, rolling pin, cutter, knife, grater. 3. Practise a range of techniques including cutting (scissors, pastry cutter, moulds, tearing), joining (sewing, cellotape, elastic bands, paper fasteners, adhesives, stapling, masking tape, paper clips treasury tags), and finishing (weaving, crimping, pleating, tufting, painting, colouring). 4. Choose and use a range of materials within the topics of food technology, textiles, graphic media and construction. 5. Discuss the purpose of Design and Technology tasks, their ideas for their products, how they will construct their products and how they could improve them. They will develop their subject knowledge and vocabulary through these discussions. 6. Design a product using their prior knowledge. This is achieved through linking the DT topic to other areas of the curriculum e.g Literacy – linking a story with a problem – the Enormous Turnip - asking the children to design or make something that the people could use to pull the turnip out of the ground. 7. Look at stimuli to encourage them to develop their ideas, such as books, stories, photos and multicultural artefacts. 8. work independently in order to show their initiative through planning their own projects and finding their own solutions. Assessment Beckford adopts the QCA recommendations for assessment as follows: ‘Learning outcomes in each unit show how children can demonstrate what they have learnt in each unit. The work children do will serve as a record of classes working through each unit. It is not necessary to make detailed records for each child in relation to these outcomes. The end of unit expectations provide broad descriptions of achievement within each unit and should help teachers to decide whether a child’s progress differs markedly from that of the rest of the class. Teachers may wish to make a note of this,

6 and of the reasons for the difference, to pass on to the next teacher’. QCA D&T Teacher’s guide (Page 16). In accordance with the above, an assessment sheet should be completed at the end of each unit. In addition to this, KS1 and KS2 children should be encouraged to complete a self-evaluation sheet at the end of each unit and these should be stored by the class teacher to help monitor continuity and progression throughout the key stages. The Co-ordinator will compile a folder giving examples of work that have been assessed as average, below average and above in each unit. Teacher should use these examples when making their end of unit assessments to aid consistency across the school. The value of photographic evidence should be recognised and used wherever possible in the assessment process.

Equal opportunities / Every child matters. Be healthy ‘Mentally and emotionally happy’ – Through DT children have opportunities to think and work in different ways. As many of the tasks within a DT topic involve practical ‘hands on’ activities, those children who find academic subjects challenging, have the chance to shine in DT and this can boost their self-confidence and feelings of self-worth. The chance to ‘think outside the box’ with various open ended tasks allows the higher ability children to be stretched in their thinking and learning. Also for children with English as a second language, DT provides activities that will develop their language skills and success through practical making activities where spoken language is not necessarily required. ‘Healthy lifestyles’ – this is where Science and DT can be linked. Through Science topics children learn about healthy eating and how to have a balanced diet. This can be taken to a practical level through DT in Food technology, for example, Year 5 learn about bread making and think of what they could include in their breads to make them healthy and tasty. Year 3 evaluate different pizzas and design their own ‘healthy toppings’. They extend this by going on a trip to Pizza Express where they create these. Stay Safe ‘Safe from bullying and discrimination’ – At Beckford we believe that children should have equal access to the curriculum. Within DT there are many topics that are associated and /or dominated by one gender. It is our responsibility to ensure that all children independent of gender should experience all of the topics covered in DT, including sewing, food technology, circuits and moving cars. Our aim is that all children leave Beckford with a basic understanding and skill in sewing and food technology. Enjoy and Achieve.

7 ‘Attend and enjoy school’ – Children at Beckford enjoy DT, and our aim is for this to continue. We intend to do this by providing children with activities that have a purpose and that link to their everyday lives and experiences. We provide them with opportunities to be ‘inventors’ and think of ideas themselves with peer and class discussion to help them consolidate their ideas. We give children opportunities to evaluate their and other’s products and use IT wherever possible. ‘Achieve personal and social development’ – During DT, children are provided with many opportunities to develop their personal and social skills. Within each topic children will mainly work within a group of mixed ability children, possibly children they have not worked with before or are less likely to have worked with. The children work as a group to produce one product and so these activities encourage the development of team work and team building skills. To clarify their ideas the children are encouraged to discuss their ideas and this also lends itself to the development of social skills. Make a positive contribution ‘Engage in decision making and support the community and environment’ – Children are given opportunities throughout the topics, to develop an understanding of DT and how it relates to the world around us. They are given examples of structures and artefacts that suit a purpose within the local community and the world. Through these examples they learn about the decisions that have to be made when these artefacts are produced, for example, which materials would be best to use to make the product, not only for their qualities (such as metal for strength) but also considering the environment (should we use plastic for packaging? Can the packaging be recycled?) This enables the children to make these decisions themselves when designing their products and choosing and using materials. Achieve economic well-being ‘Engage in further education, employment or training on leaving school.’ – At Beckford we provide the children with a wide range of different activities that develop many different skills within DT. We aim for all children to have equal access to the curriculum and to leave Beckford with basic skills in all areas of DT. We aim for the children to go up to secondary school with enthusiasm and interest in DT, and hope that they will continue to build upon their skills. Through linking DT to the local community and the world, we aim to give the children an understanding of the different careers people have within Design and Technology and in this ay give the children some goals to work towards. Resources

1. The necessary resources for each topic covered by each year group will be stored in boxes in the back of the resource room. 2. Children will have access to non –specific classroom resources such as scissors, paper, card and glue as appropriate.

8 3. At Beckford we use a variety of different artefacts and materials from different cultures within all DT topics. The children and the parents are a valuable resource in terms of their skills and knowledge. 4. A range of appropriate broken or disused objects should be made available to the children as it is vital for them to be able to dissemble an object in order to see how it works. Parents should be encouraged to contribute to this. 5. A range of different household items should be available for children to investigate and evaluate. This will play a large role in the children developing their evaluation skills. 6. All year groups have a digital camera available to use for photographic evidence. 7. Each classroom has a computer and use of IT will be made wherever possible.

Health and Safety Whatever the method of classroom organisation or the activity being undertaken in the classroom, the safety of the children is of paramount importance and is always a consideration in the planning and execution of a lesson. Safety guidelines should be closely referenced throughout every DT lesson, wherever possible displayed within the classroom.