‘The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time’

-Thomas A. Edison

Our school vision is that as a Catholic school, God is at the heart of all we do. We believe that each person is made in His image, deserving to be treated with respect and dignity.  Through the teaching of Design and Technology we show respect, love and care for everyone and everything, there is harmony between pupils and each individual child realises their full potential, spiritually, academically, physically, socially and emotionally.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth

Genesis 1:1  

Design and Technology at St. Thomas More Catholic Primary School

Intent

At St Thomas More our curriculum is based on the key principles and beliefs of our Bishop. We ensure that through the lens of faith we develop individual, unique people and form the foundations of them being able to contribute to society. This is reflected in our Design and Technology Curriculum.

Our teaching of Design and Technology aims to enable children to ‘think, design and shape their future’ (Ofsted report March 2011), whilst meeting the expectations outlined in the National Curriculum.

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.

Our curriculum is designed to promote the development of original ideas to solve real problems through building confidence and skills year on year to allow children of all age and abilities to experience success. This links to the vision across the curriculum and is embedding the spiral curriculum. Design and Technology units have clear opportunities for cross curricular links with science, mathematics, English, geography and history. We aim for our pupils to realise their full potential spiritually, academically and emotionally through experiencing good enrichment activities in with clear purposeful designing and making in response to real needs. In DT sessions, we ensure clear scaffolding for pupils whilst building in challenge too; aiming for all children to take ownership of their learning.

Implementation

In the Early Years Foundation Stage, Art and Design and Design and Technology are covered through Expressive Art and Design. At St Thomas More we know that it is this development of children’s artistic and cultural awareness that supports their imagination and creativity. The planned continuous provision resources and activities across EYFS ensure regular opportunities to engage with the arts, enabling the children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials.

In Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, Art and Design and Design and Technology are taught alternatively for half a term each. The subjects are timetabled to be taught once per week across both KS1 and KS2. The teaching and learning in our DT sessions can be characterised as an inclusive differentiated approach where we aim to facilitate children of all abilities to experience a sense of achievement and pride through the work that they produce. 

Our DT lessons are formed around the ‘Kapow Primary’ Design and Technology scheme of work. We judge this to be a robust scheme that incorporates many cross-curriculum links. The Design and Technology national curriculum outlines the three main stages of the design process: design, make and evaluate. Each stage of the design process is underpinned by technical knowledge which encompasses the contextual, historical, and technical understanding for each strand. Cooking and nutrition has a separate section, with a focus on specific principles, skills and techniques in food, including where food comes from, diet and seasonality.

The National Curriculum organises the Design and Technology attainment targets under five sub-headings or strands:

• Design
• Make
• Evaluate
• Technological Knowledge
• Coking and Nutrition.

Through Kapow Primary’s Design and Technology scheme, pupils respond to design briefs and scenarios that require consideration of the needs of others, developing their skills in six key areas:

• Mechanisms
• Structures
• Textiles
• Cooking and nutrition (food)
• Electrical systems (KS2)
• Digital world (KS2)

The Kapow Primary scheme is a spiral curriculum, with key areas revisited again and again with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revisit and build on their previous learning.

Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work including practical hands-on, computer based and inventive tasks. This variety means that lessons are engaging and appeal to those with a variety of learning styles. Differentiated guidance is available for every lesson to ensure that lessons can be accessed by all pupils and opportunities to stretch pupils’ learning are available when required.

Strong subject knowledge is vital for staff to deliver a highly effective and robust Design and Technology curriculum. Each unit lesson includes multiple teacher videos to develop subject knowledge and support ongoing CPD.

Impact

This successful approach to Design and Technology lessons at St Thomas More Catholic Primary School will result in engaging, fun, high-quality DT lessons that promote a love, respect, care and curiosity for the World. The frequent, continuous and progressive DT learning will embed the National Curriculum aims ensuring the children are making good or better progress.

Our school vision is that as a Catholic school, God is at the heart of all we do. We believe that each person is made in His image, deserving to be treated with respect and dignity.  Through the teaching of Design and Technology we show respect, love and care for everyone and everything, there is harmony between pupils and each individual child realises their full potential, spiritually, academically, physically, socially and emotionally.

After the implementation of Kapow Primary Design and Technology, pupils should leave school equipped with a range of skills to enable them to succeed in their secondary education and be innovative and resourceful members of society.

The expected impact is that children will:

• Understand the functional and aesthetic properties of a range of materials and resources.
• Understand how to use and combine tools to carry out different processes for shaping, decorating, and manufacturing products.
• Build and apply a repertoire of skills, knowledge and understanding to produce high quality, innovative outcomes, including models, prototypes, CAD and products to fulfil the needs of users, clients and scenarios.
• Understand and apply principles of healthy eating, diets and recipes including key processes, food groups and cooking equipment.
• Have an appreciation for key individuals, inventions and events in history and of today that impact our world.
• Recognise where our decisions can impact the wider world in terms of community, social and environmental issues.
• Self-evaluate and reflect on learning at different stages and identify areas to improve.
• Meet the end of key stages expectations outlined in the National Curriculum for Design and Technology.

2022 - 2023

For World Food Day this year, we linked the food we were tasting to our celebrations for National Day for Spain! Each class tried different foods that are associated or orginate from Spain.