Design and Technology

Saint Josephs's, the Borough,  develops innovation, creativity and problem solving through an understanding of designs and their impact on daily life.

Our Design and Technology curriculum aims to inspire and instil creativity, curiosity and critical thinking skills in all learners. We want our pupils to develop the creative, technical and practical expertise. We intend to provide a platform for pupils to develop this expertise needed in order to perform design tasks confidently and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world. Design and Technology equips our children with a range of skills, such as designing, selecting and manipulating a wide variety of tools, critiquing and evaluating. These are key skills, important for use in their future lives across a range of areas.

Children are exposed to a wealth of practical and thought-provoking Design and Technology experiences from the National Curriculum using the three-part, design, make and evaluate model. We frequently combine the sessions into whole mornings, afternoons, or indeed whole days for older children. We enrich our children’s lives by promoting and valuing creativity from all by providing a range of engaging lessons, workshops and collaborative opportunities to best develop the skills, knowledge and understanding needed to be successful learners. Children are exposed to a range of cross-curricular activities that promote and further strengthen these skills, knowledge and understanding. This includes designing, creating and evaluating products and devices for specific purposes. These often draw strongly on the skills learned in Mathematics, Computing, Writing, Science, History, Geography or Art.

In Key Stage 1, there is a focus on developing children’s practical tool usage and manipulation whilst also developing an understanding of the need for design and making in a range of relevant contexts. As the children progress into Key Stage 2, they cultivate their designing and making skills whilst developing their understanding of the relevance of researching and evaluating current products to inform their designs. They then progress onto generating templates and mock-ups for designs. Food technology also plays a large role throughout school, allowing the children to understand and apply the principles of nutrition, the components of a healthy and varied diet and how a variety of ingredients are grown, reared, caught and processed.

Click here for the whole-school curriculum map for Design and Technology