Intention

Design and technology at St Thomas’ is an inspiring, rigorous and practical subject taught throughout the school, which uses creativity and imagination as a tool for promoting, scaffolding and deepening our children’s problem-solving skills and also develops their creative, technical and practical expertise to apply what they have learnt progressively to an ever evolving and developing technical world.

When faced with contextual problems, we look to develop our children’s theoretical knowledge of techniques and skills (especially the use of different tools and mechanisms) which will then be applied to scaffold and bring about a practical knowledge of how they can use them and when these skills will be needed in real-life scenarios.

Children are encouraged to promote a deeper level of thinking by discussing their focus/context and developing steps and strategies on how to influence this and how to successfully overcome the given problem and become inquisitive and creative problem solvers. Within our curriculum, 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, when designing, making, and evaluating their own (and the work of others’) work based on research, real-life examples and taught uses of tools and materials.

Our overall aim is to, wherever possible, link work within Design and Technology to other curriculum areas such as mathematics, science, computing, and art, with a purpose of developing potential ‘engineers’ and ‘innovators’ of the future.

Implementation

• Children receive a half termly focus on Design and Technology projects, with two hour lessons each week to build upon. 

• Teachers lead and support students to consider problems and encourage them to call upon their skills to solve these. 

• Children are at the forefront of their projects through discussion and planning of steps to take to design their own pieces of work. 

• Reflective practise aids opportunities to consider what went well or how the object could be changed to better suit the needs of the learning aim. Children will share ideas and try different techniques to find and demonstrate different outcomes.

• Opportunities to use a range of resources arise.

Impact

Children display a willingness and excitement to participate in Design Technology topics. They become more confident to share their ideas with their peers and consider different ways to find a solution. Pupils work as part of a team to encourage one another to complete specific skills and to also reflect on their creations. As a result, they develop resilience and perseverance.