Design and Technology at Hensall Community Primary School

Intent

At Hensall Community Primary School, we aim for D&T to help prepare children for the world around them by encouraging them to become creative problem solvers and by developing practical life skills. We always put safety as a top priority when teaching D&T.  We use a cyclical approach: we evaluate existing products and ask questions about them; then we plan/design our own products; then we make the products; and finally we evaluate these against the initial criteria. Each D&T project has a real-life focus - designing something for a specific purpose. We aim for our children to be inspired and become the next innovators of the world!

Implementation

D&T is usually taught as part of a wider theme or topic and we endeavour to make positive links particularly to Science, ICT and Maths. Each project has a real life focus. Our cyclical approach of evaluating existing products, planning, making and then evaluating new products allows for the revision of ideas to become part of good practice and ultimately helps to deepen children's understanding. Through revisiting and consolidating skills, our lessons help children build on prior knowledge alongside introducing new skills, knowledge and challenge. Key vocabulary is included in displays.

Please click below to see our 2022-2023 whole school DT overview.

Impact

The learning environment across the school will be more consistent with design and technology technical vocabulary displayed, spoken and used by all learners. We want to ensure that Design and Technology is loved by teachers and pupils across school, therefore encouraging them to want to continue building on this wealth of skills and understanding, now and in the future. Impact can also be measured through key questioning skills built into lessons, child-led assessment such as success criteria grids and KWL grids and summative assessments aimed at targeting next steps in learning.

Here's what some of our pupils think about DT at Hensall:

"I loved making something new out of recycled materials." ( Andorra)

"I've still got my bird feeder." ( Bryce)

.

Curriculum Progression Documents 

The curriculum progression document for D&T shows how we map subject knowledge and skills sequentially from EYFS to Year 6. In each year group, we know the order of what our pupils have learnt, what they are learning and what they will need to learn in the future. This document enables us to identify any gaps in learning that need to be addressed to ensure that new learning makes sense to our pupils.

In addition to this we also map out subject specific vocabulary across school and examples of texts that may be used in different year groups.