Design and Technology helps us to teach Maths and English and indeed other compulsory subjects on the curriculum in a fun manner and put these subjects into context making them easier to digest and more understandable to younger primary age pupils.
D&T gives children the opportunity to develop skills, knowledge and understanding of designing and making functional products. We feel it is vital to nurture creativity and innovation through design, and by exploring the designed and made world in which we all live and work.
We follow the National Curriculum, which includes Design and Technology as a compulsory subject at Key Stages 1 and 2.
Each class has 3 DT Days (Technology Thursdays) throughout the year, each with a different focus – Food Technology, Mechanisms & Materials and Structures. Throughout the day, children will have a chance to research, practise the skills, design, make and evaluate their product. Children speak highly of this way of completing a DT project and say that it enables them to “really get stuck in and have a go all in the same day!”.
How do we use our context to St John Fisher to engage pupils in the DT curriculum?
As an Eco-School and a Healthy School, we wanted to have a focus on cooking topics. There will be at least one cooking project per year for each year group. We will be using our school gardens as much as possible for produce. Leicester City has a long tradition in textiles and we wanted to ensure this was an important part of our DT curriculum. As a school in the Midlands, where there is a tradition of car building and engine building ( Sir Frank Whittle, Rolls Royce Derby), we wanted to ensure that this was a learning experience for our children.
