Intent

At St Joseph's Infant School, children receive a design and technology curriculum which provides them opportunities to be creative by designing and making. We use Kapow Primary’s Design and technology scheme of work to inspire pupils to be innovative and creative thinkers who have an appreciation for the product design cycle through ideation, creation, and evaluation. We want pupils to develop the confidence to take risks, through drafting design concepts, modelling, and testing and to be reflective learners who evaluate their work and the work of others.

Through Kapow, we aim to build an awareness of the impact of design and technology on our lives and encourage pupils to become resourceful, enterprising citizens who will have the skills to contribute to future design advancements. Kapow Primary’s Design and technology scheme enables pupils to meet the end of key stage attainment targets in the national curriculum and the aims also align with those in the national curriculum.

Implementation

We teach the EYFS Framework, Birth to 5 Matters and National Curriculum, supported by a clear skills and knowledge progression. This ensures that skills and knowledge are built on year by year and sequenced appropriately to maximise learning for all children. All teaching of DT should follow the 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.

The key skills we teach the children may include:

• sewing and textiles

• cooking and nutrition

• electrical or mechanical components

• Using materials

Impact

By the time pupils leave us, we aim for the children to have developed a curiosity as to how things work in order to acquire knowledge of moving parts and how to apply this knowledge along with creative thinking to solve problems. The children enjoy experimenting with ideas, take risks and have confidence in asking questions. They will be able to make clear plans using labelled diagrams and communicate their ideas clearly with others using appropriate vocabulary about how they will produce their end products.