Design & Technology

Intent

The aim of the Design and Technology curriculum is to prepare children for an ever-changing and developing world and help them think critically about how to improve everyday items in their lives. The children will be able to identify needs and respond to these using critical, unique and creative thinking and eventually produce products and systems. When needed, children will be given extra skills support and idea generation support to ensure they are all given an equal opportunity to succeed. Through high expectations, children will become informed consumers and potential innovators using a range of practical skills whilst understanding aesthetic, social and environmental issues.

Implementation

From Nursey to Year 6, the children will cover the full breadth of the Design and Technology National Curriculum. They will cover a full range of skills, from designing to creating to evaluating. These skills will be demonstrated, explained and the children will be given ample time to practise and experiment with each one.

In a Design and Technology lesson at Allfarthing, you will see gentle guidance but with an ultimate goal of appropriate creative freedom. The children will be taught new skills such as cutting or joining. However, as much as possible, they will be given no restriction on what they will create with these skills within the brief. You will see children being encouraged to make mistakes and experiment with materials and techniques they are not certain will work as this is where some of the greatest learning lies.

All children will have the opportunity to be creative and, although there will be an overall brief to each creative task, they will have the opportunity to work within their means and celebrated because of that. Children’s skills will be built on year-by-year with the complexity of the research, skill and brief increasing throughout.

Impact

By the time children leave Allfarthing they will have been encouraged to question the world around them, find areas to improve, be creative in their process and evaluate their success. Over their time at Allfarthing, they will have learnt a number of different skills outlined by the National Curriculum, which will enable them to be pragmatically creative, and, essentially, we hope to have instilled a love of designing and experimenting. Through photographic evidence, we will have documented their Desing and Technology journey from folds in Early Years to more complex leavers and joins in Year 6.