What is Design and Technology at Westglade?

At Westglade Primary School, Design and Technology is fully inclusive to every child and our aim is to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for design and technology by providing a broad and balanced curriculum that ensures the progressive development of knowledge and skills. We encourage our children to learn how to take risks, become resourceful, innovative, enterprising and capable citizens through evaluation of past and present design and technology, whilst supporting them in developing a critical understanding of its impact on daily life and the wider world. We want our children to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world using the language of design and technology and exposing them to ‘real-life’ experiences, so that they understand the most important part of design and technology is designing something for a purpose.

You can find out more about how we teach our Design and Technology curriculum at Westglade by viewing our policy.

How is Design and Technology Progressive?

At Westglade, our design and technology curriculum has been designed collaboratively by our teachers based on the latest research to ensure our children can take part in the development of tomorrow’s rapidly changing world, where we encourage our children to become creative problem-solvers, both as individuals and as part of a team. Our DT curriculum equips our children with the knowledge and skills to research, design, make and evaluate a range of products, as well as promoting aspiration, ambition and enthusiasm through the opportunities given to broaden their experiences and acquire new skills. 

The DT knowledge path was created to map out the minimum level of knowledge our children should have in design and technology within each year group. To complement this, we developed a skills ladder for DT to show the progression from Nursery to Year 6, which demonstrates how our children’s skills will build from one year group to the next. Fundamentally, it has been the professional knowledge of our children that we have used to ensure that our DT curriculum is purposeful and is appropriate for all of our children, so that as our children progress, they should be able to combine their practical skills with an understanding of aesthetic, social and environmental issues, as well as of functions and industrial practices.                                                                                                                                               

How do we teach Design and Technology?

Design and Technology at Westglade is taught from Nursery and Foundation Stage, as part of the children’s different learning areas, specifically ‘Understanding of the World’ and ‘Expressive Arts and Design’, which is based on the Early Years Outcomes Guidance for EYFS. From Years 1-6, our children are taught through explicit weekly DT lessons that are taught half-termly as part of a wider focus, where our children are encouraged to regard themselves as engineers and technical designers. Our lessons are carefully planned to include the substantive and disciplinary knowledge and this is documented in a DT project booklet that follows our children’s projects from the research and design stage right through to their final product and evaluation.

We are fortunate to have a STEM room in school where the children have access to a variety of resources and are supported in their learning from displays that showcase key specific technical vocabulary, as well as promoting the excellent projects year groups have produced.

What does Design and Technology look like?