Design and Technology

The person responsible for developing Design Technology at our school is Mrs H. Hemnell.

At Whiston Willis Primary Academy our Design and Technology curriculum provides children with a real-life context for learning. Our Design and Technology is inspiring, rigorous and practical encouraging creativity and Innovation. Design and Technology should solve real and relevant problems in our rapidly changing world. It provides our children with the knowledge, skills and understanding to create products or prototypes for someone for some purpose.

At Whiston Willis Primary Academy, we follow the ‘Projects on a Page’ scheme supplied by the Design and Technology Association. This scheme has been carefully chosen as it is designed to help Primary schools implement the National curriculum for D & T in an imaginative way. The scheme offers more flexibility and less prescription, ensuring children get to design something for someone for a particular purpose. Each project planner emphasises the essentials of good practice in D & T to ensure children receive a genuine D & T experience. The project planners also provide instant CPD with user friendly guidance such as sketches, diagrams, tips and techniques. Projects are suitable for single year group classes and mixed-age classes which we have here at our school. Children also have opportunities to make links with other National Curriculum subjects as they complete their D & T project.

Projects on a Page ensures that D & T makes a high-quality contribution to a broad and balanced primary curriculum, helping to raise standards in English and Mathematics. Projects on a Page is based on the six essentials of good practice in D & T. These need to be in place in teachers’ planning to ensure children’s learning is genuinely design and technological in nature. They are consistent with the new national curriculum requirements and should be applied whenever children are designing and making products. The 6 principles are user, purpose, functionality, design decisions, innovation and authenticity. The 6 principles are embedded into the Project Planners.

Our children are taught to combine their designing and making skills with knowledge and understanding in order to make a new product. In these fun and engaging lessons, the children will also develop their use of technical vocabulary. In D & T lessons, children will be inspired by engineers, designers, chefs and architects to enable them to create a range of structures, mechanisms, textiles, electrical systems and food products with a real-life purpose.

Pupils will complete three projects per year. To ensure coverage with our mixed-age classes, we use atwo year rolling cycle. In KS1, we teach 2 mechanisms projects, one on sliders and levers and the other on wheels and axles. This will ensure the necessary prior learning for mechanical systems projects in KS2 on levers and linkages and pulleys or gears.