Intent
The curriculum at Enderby Road Infant and Nursery School aims to provide our pupils with an education that responds to a rapidly changing world. As future designers and creators, children will develop progressive skills and attributes that will be transferable to their lives beyond the school environment and into adulthood. We intend to foster curiosity and resilience, ensuring that all pupils—regardless of their starting points—gain the foundational knowledge and vocabulary required to think critically and creatively about the designed and made world. Our Design and Technology (DT) curriculum provides children with opportunities to research, represent their ideas, explore and investigate, make products, and evaluate their work.
We intend to:
- Fulfil the requirements of both the EYFS Statutory Framework and the Key Stage One National Curriculum for Design and Technology by providing a fully inclusive curriculum. A two-year rolling programme has been adopted to ensure that pupils progressively develop and secure their knowledge and skills.
- Expose pupils to working with a range of media, tools and materials.
- Develop innovative, procedural and technical understanding in all pupils.
- Allow pupils to learn basic life skills such as cooking, baking, sewing, construction and woodwork.
- Enable children to talk about how things work and to develop their technical knowledge and vocabulary.
- Develop skills in researching and evaluating products to determine if they are ‘fit for purpose’ and meet the required brief.
- Allow pupils to become creative problem-solvers both as individuals and as part of a team, building resilience along the way.
- Enable deep creative, technical and imaginative thinking in children that allows pupils to develop confidence and the courage to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world. Pupils will be encouraged to test and take risks in the development of their designs and products.
Implementation
At Enderby Road Infant and Nursery School there is a clear and comprehensive progression of skills for design and technology that develops across the EYFS and into Key Stage One. It has a basis on the requirements of both the EYFS Statutory Framework and the National Curriculum. Our curriculum has been planned to ensure that the skills are taught sequentially across both key stages and that new skills build on and develop the skills taught in previous year groups.
Our curriculum framework offers robust, hands-on opportunities for pupils to engage in the full design process: conducting research, articulating concepts, investigating materials, manufacturing products, and critically evaluating their outcomes. Learning is carefully sequenced so that children are exposed to a diverse range of media, including textiles, food, woodwork, paper, and construction kits. Through these practical experiences, teachers systematically introduce and embed academic vocabulary, model resilient problem-solving, and guide pupils to safely and purposefully use tools and materials to bring their ideas to life.
The DT curriculum starts with the youngest children in the Early Years, who are encouraged to show an interest in technological toys and are provided with many opportunities to explore, describe and evaluate different materials, tools and techniques and to construct with a purpose in mind. The EYFS teachers plan activities for the provision and lessons for their class using our progression of knowledge and skills document.
In Key Stage One, pupils follow a comprehensive two-year rolling programme of units that provide a clear structure to deliver a broad and balanced variety of design and technology skills and knowledge. Pupils will undertake a textile, food and nutrition, levers, structures, joins, and axels and wheels project.
Delivery shows a clear following of the design process where each project follows: explore, research (acquiring technical knowledge,) design, make and evaluate. In addition, evaluation can be involved at each stage of the project. All pupils will be encouraged to evaluate their creative work and that of others with their peers and adults.
Teachers will use a variety of materials and teaching strategies to provide support and clear differentiation to ensure that each child develops their skills and techniques in a way that is appropriate for them. Design and Technology is a practical subject in which children play with and explore a wide range of products and designs. Pupils are provided with hands-on, purposeful learning where they learn to use tools and equipment and understand the related health and safety issues.
Impact
By the end of Key Stage 1, pupils will have developed a secure understanding of the elements of exploring, designing, making, and evaluating within a design and technology project. With the opportunities to develop their creativity and imagination, pupils are inspired to design and make products that solve real and relevant problems within a variety of contexts, which consider their own and others’ needs, wants and values. Our pupils possess the foundations of creative, technical and practical expertise needed to perform everyday tasks confidently and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world.
The impact of teaching is evident in our children’s finished pieces and models, including those displayed in floor books, around school and on our school website learning pages. Photographs and displays celebrate the progress, achievements and efforts of our pupils. Speaking to our pupils will evidence that they are passionate and excited about the designing and making of products including working with, preparing and tasting food. As a school, we measure impact through book looks, learning walks, lesson observations, moderation, teacher, pupil and parent voice and our teacher assessments.
Learning is assessed through the analysis of the pupils’ ability to evaluate, design, make, use materials and tools safely and improve their own work. Throughout the year, teachers reflect on standards against planned outcomes where most of our pupils achieve the age-related expectations in design and technology.