Intent

The DT curriculum at United Learning provides children with a relevant, coherent, progressive knowledge of the design process and an appreciation of the work of a range of craftspeople.

Children develop their ability to investigate, disassemble and evaluate products before engaging in practical tasks, designed to enhance their understanding of the techniques used to construct a product.  Finally, children design, make and evaluate their own product, using the research and skills developed throughout the learning journey.

Our curriculum is design to embed core disciplinary knowledge, and the ability to approach challenging, design questions

• Marking out and cutting skills
• Fixing and joining skills
• Mechanical and control skills
• Finishing skills, including food hygiene
• Related language skills

Implementation

Teachers are provided with an additional three planning days per year on top of their PPA, to plan their curriculum. As part of this planning process, teachers need to plan the following:  

▪ A cycle of lessons for each subject, which carefully plans for progression and depth.  

▪ Children sketches and drawings should show the build-up of knowledge and skills needed to create a purposeful product.  

▪ Children will be given the opportunity in each lesson to evaluate an aspect of their learning.  

▪ A means to display and celebrate the pupils’ design and technology work in their class.

Impact

Our Design and Technology Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression year on year, giving pupils the skills and knowledge and vocabulary that they need to move forward in their learning, alongside opportunities to apply their knowledge to different situations.  If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:    

▪ Pupil discussions about their learning, which includes discussion of their thoughts, ideas, processing and evaluations of work. 

▪ A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes.

Design & Technology progression map 2023/24