The Design and Technology Curriculum at St Thomas'

Excellence

Design and technology is an inspiring, rigorous and practical subject, which unlocks the creativity and imagination from within all of our pupils. All children engage in designing and making products that solve real and relevant problems within a variety of contexts, whilst acquiring a broad range of subject knowledge taught progressively through the year groups.

Experiences and Life Skills

Our D&T curriculum has been designed to ensure that the pupils of St Thomas’ experience a range of exciting, engaging and sometimes risk-taking experiences that draw upon other subject skills such as mathematics, science, engineering, computing and art.

Pupils are taught the skills needed to participate in an engaging process of planning/designing, making and evaluating. We want to ensure that our pupils have all the skills required to achieve high standards in their D&T creations, therefore basic skills such as cutting out, measuring and drawing accurately are taught and reinforced right through the school.

Celebrate Diversity

In D&T we encourage the children to reflect on inspired products, exploring the diversity of materials and techniques, while looking at ways in which design technology can be used in a wider world context. Lessons promote equality of opportunity for all abilities and genders allowing pupils to eliminate stereotypes, for example encouraging girls to use equipment that are more traditionally male dominated.

In food technology, children learn to prepare a range of dishes from different cultures and explore the different climates required to harvest different produce.

Christian Values

During D&T lessons, the children are given key safety instructions to ensure that they are able to show a mature responsibility when using different tools. Sometimes pupils will be encouraged to support others in their work or show the value of respect when equipment is needing to be shared. Once they have completed a project the children will evaluate their work and feedback on a project completed by their peers. It is important that children uphold our Christian values of friendship and respect, whilst giving honest and constructive feedback. 

Reading and Vocabulary

As with areas of the curriculum, vocabulary is an intrinsic part of the sessions, with staff modelling and developing pupils’ use of the correct D&T terminology throughout the lesson. The teacher will share a subject knowledge organiser with the pupils for the pupils to use as a visual stimulus during the lesson to ensure correct use of D&T terminology.

Knowledge Rich and Academic

The children experience a rich D&T programme, imparted by a D&T specialist teacher. The curriculum has been tailored to teach a variety of creative and practical activities progressively throughout the different year groups, with links made to previous projects made explicit to the children.