Our vision at Norwood...

We believe that through the Design and Technology curriculum at our school, and through EPIC teaching of the subject, children should have the opportunity to explore creativity, innovation, independence and reflection. Motivating projects and challenging goals will allow all children to flourish, while developing key technical competency and vocabulary, alongside key skills, such as teamwork, resilience and resourcefulness. Children will have the opportunity to explore the different factors that affect design decisions and by the end of their primary years, children will be able to independently set design criteria, research a project, evaluate and use a wide range of tools, equipment and materials and reflect on the design process and their learning journey.

The 5 key strands of D&T:

Our Design and Technology programme of study links closely with our cross curricular topic themes. The children have the opportunity to design, make and evaluate products connected with their learning -  from vehicles to puppets to smoothies and many more - while learning to use a range of tools and techniques. There are 5 key strands of learning: Materials and Structures, Mechanisms, Textiles, Cooking and Nutrition and Electrical Systems.

Materials/Structures: Children progressively learn how to measure, cut and join materials to create specific structures, following a design criteria. In KS1, the focus is on learning about ways to strengthen, stiffen their products, and by the end of KS2, children will be applying this knowledge to a wide range of more complex structures.

Mechanisms

With strong links to our Science curriculum, in our Mechanism units, children will study levers, sliders, wheels and axels - in Key Stage One - leading onto work on pulleys, gears and cams in Key Stage Two.

Textiles: In our textile units, children learn how to design items for a purpose and then measure, cut and join materials using a variety of different methods.

Cooking and Nutrition: Our work in cooking and nutrition work focusses on healthy eating and understanding where food comes from. Children will have the opportunity to learn about foods and to develop a variety of skills and techniques in order to make food and prepare dishes.

Electrical systems: Working with aspects of electrical systems is introduced in Key Stage Two, where we try to incorporate electrical circuits, including light bulbs, motors and switches into our designs.

Key Documents