Welcome to our page for Design Technology

At Winterbourne Earls, we pride ourselves on having a well structured, varied DT curriculum which links with our class topics.

Intent

Design and Technology encourages children to learn to think and intervene creatively to solve problems both as individuals and as members of a team. At Winterbourne Earls, we encourage children to use their creativity and imagination, to design and make products that solve real and relevant problems within a variety of contexts, considering their own and others’ needs, wants and values. We aim to, wherever possible, link work to other disciplines such as mathematics, science, engineering, computing and art. The children are also given opportunities to reflect upon and evaluate past and present design technology, its uses and its effectiveness and are encouraged to become innovators and risk-takers.

Implementation

All teaching of DT should follow the research, design, make and evaluate cycle. Each stage should be rooted in technical knowledge.  The design process should be rooted in real life, relevant contexts to give meaning to learning. While making, children should be given choice and a range of tools to choose freely from. To evaluate, children should be able to evaluate their own products against a design criteria. Each of these steps should be rooted in technical knowledge and vocabulary. DT should be taught to a high standard, where each of the stages should be given equal weight. There should be evidence in each of these stages in the DT/Art  books in KS2 and on Seesaw for KS1, which should also develop to show clear progression across the key stages as the children move  up through each year group.

The Main Areas of DT are:

• Mechanical Systems
• Food and Hygiene
• Textiles
• Electrical Systems
• Structure

We follow this structure for our DT Units:

1. Research- what products are already out there? How are products made? Who makes/ manufactures the products? How much do they cost? 
2. Design- Children design their own version of a product/ or a new product to meet certain design criteria.
3. Make- Children make their design using technical skills and vocabulary dependent on the area of DT they are studying.
4. Evaluate- Children evaluate how well their design fits the design criteria. What went well? What could be better? How would I change my design if I made it again?

Technical knowledge and vocabulary is embedded at different stages of the learning.

Take a look at our DT Overview below. 

See what we have been learning in each of our classes.