Design and Technology at Southey Green Primary School

Design and Technology Lead: Mrs M Irwin

Intent

At Southey Green Primary School, it is our intent that we make design and technology a creative and purposeful learning experience where children explore how things work and build up key skills to produce creative products.  Our teaching focuses on building vital skills needed for design and technology from an Early Years Foundation Stage throughout the whole school.  We are committed to ensuring children understand the value and importance of design and technology based on the six, interrelated principles created by the National Curriculum which are user, purpose, functionality, design decisions, innovation and authenticity.

Children are explicitly taught how to:

• Design, plan and communicate their ideas
• Make products by working with a range of tools, equipment and components
• Develop their technical knowledge
• Evaluate the process and products
• The fundamentals of cooking and nutrition

We teach design and technology vocabulary progressively through school enabling children to learn and use new correct technical vocabulary as well as building on and revisiting previously taught words. It is our intention that children gain a firm understanding of what design and technology is through designing, sharing ideas, working with tools and evaluating. We are committed to ensuring children understand design and technology in the wider community, are able to use their communication skills, working safely with tools and being reflective learners and how this can impact on their future career.

We have high aspirations for our children to become the next engineers, designers, manufactures, chefs and inventors of the word and in KS2 we teach children about the work of famous creators.

Year 3 - David Mellor

Year 4 - Charles Lucien Bonaparte 

Year 5 - Jamie Oliver, Dame Barbara Hepworth

Year 6 - Coco Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld

As stated in our curriculum policy, we aim for all of our children to

• Literate
• Numerate
• Being able to articulate ideas, understanding and opinions in a confident manner at all levels using rich vocabulary
• With raised aspirations with children ready to take on new challenges
• Have experiences that provoke curiosity and deepen understanding
• Become responsible and respectful members of our society
• Have strong cultural capital

There are many ways in which we strive to achieve this and below are just a few examples

Design and Technology Key Knowledge, Skills and Concepts 

At Southey Green, we recognise the importance of children understanding key concepts, skills and knowledge and how these support children’s learning.

Here are Southey Green’s key design and technology concepts which are woven into our design and technology curriculum.