Intent 

At Bordon Infant School we want our children to love Design and Technology and to realise its potential for their future lives so they may grow up wanting to be architects, graphic designers, chefs or carpenters. Our D&T curriculum provides opportunities to solve real and relevant problems, allowing our pupils to develop essential everyday skills and unlock their potential to be the designers and innovators of tomorrow. The D&T curriculum encourages children to begin to learn, think and solve problems both as an individual and as part of a team and to develop the necessary resilience to keep going when things don’t work out quite as planned. Our D&T curriculum enhances and deepens children’s understanding in other curriculum areas, including Maths, Computing, Science, and Art. Our children will learn about cooking, food and nutrition, ensuring that they begin to acquire the fundamental life skills in order to be able to feed themselves healthily and independently, whilst learning about where food comes from, therefore making connections with their geographical and scientific knowledge. We want to equip them with not only the minimum statutory requirements of the Design and Technology National Curriculum but to prepare them with the knowledge and skills for the responsibilities and experiences of their next key stage and later life. 

Implementation 

Design Technology learning at our school uses objectives taken from the National Curriculum. We teach DT skills discretely, making relevant cross-curricular links, and ensure all children access all areas of the curriculum. We teach through a variety of creative and practical activities in a variety of contexts, so the children experience DT at many levels. This ranges from creating a healthy breakfast in Year 1 to designing a tank for our history Remembrance topic in Year 2. We also ensure that each unit of DT makes clear links to the prior knowledge they have gained from their previous topics so the children can see how it fits together. 

In Early Years DT links to all areas of learning but particularly Communication and language, Expressive art and design, Physical Development and Understanding of the World. The environment both inside and out has a variety of types of resources of different sizes and materials to support designing and creating according to their interests. These include construction kits, junk modelling, loose parts and physical equipment to make obstacle courses. The children can access these during continuous provision throughout the day. We have several adult initiated design experiences during our half termly topics such as creating a boat or a bridge for the little gingerbread man to escape the fox, making a healthy biscuit and creating a mini-beast with moving parts using joining techniques. 

Each unit in KS1 teaches the children to design, make, and evaluate as well as building up a bank of technical knowledge and skills to support future learning. In Year 1 the children design their own space station (linked to their history topic Blast off) using the knowledge of materials and attaching them in different ways and skills such as folding and joining. They make a moving picture (linked science topic Paws and Claws) using the knowledge of different books that have moving parts and skills of making a moving part using a slider or a lever. They then design their own healthy breakfast (linked to science and PE) using the knowledge of healthy eating and the skills of designing and using various cooking equipment. In Year 2 the children design and make their own moving vehicle (linked to history topic on remembrance), they use their knowledge of moving parts and different types of axles alongside the skills of designing and evaluating a product. Finally they design their own family shield using textiles (linked to art) using their knowledge of shields and symbols and skills of sewing and painting. 

Impact 

By the end of KS1 pupils will be able to begin to approach problems creatively and in a range of ways, applying their knowledge from across the curriculum areas. They will have experienced a range of exciting and inspiring topics and the skills and attributes they develop will benefit them beyond school and into adulthood. The ability to design and evaluate and improve as well as collaborate, persevere and begin to be independent will ensure our children are well-rounded citizens who will make a difference in the wider world.