Curriculum Intent

DT is an inspiring, rigorous and practical subject. Using creativity and imagination, pupils design and make products that solve real and relevant problems within a variety of contracts, considering their own and others’ needs, wants and values. They acquire a broad range of subject knowledge and draw on disciplines such as mathematics, science, engineering, computing and art. Pupils learn how to take risks, becoming resourceful, innovative, enterprising and capable citizens. Through the evaluation of past and present design and technology, they develop a critical understanding of its impact on daily life and the wider world. High-quality design and technology education makes an essential contribution to the creativity, culture, wealth and wellbeing of the nation.

As detailed in our overall curriculum intent, DT teaching at Amberley embraces all three of our core values: nurturing, innovation and aspiration.

Curriculum Implementation

The children at Amberley complete at least 3 large DT projects a year as part of our DT weeks. During these weeks, DT is taught every afternoon and an exciting product is designed, made and evaluated. We ensure that each project is a true DT experience and involves the following 6 key principles.

User – the children will create a design to meet the needs of the end user.

Purpose – the children will be able to communicate the purpose of the product being designed

Functionality – they will ensure that the product meets the needs of the user

Design Decisions – They will demonstrate creative, technical and practical expertise and draw on knowledge from other subject areas.

Innovation – from an open-ended starting point encourage original thinking.

Authenticity – design and make real, believable and meaningful products.

We feel that it’s important that our children are able to use the vocabulary of Design and Technology as early as possible so we introduce these terms from Year 1 onwards.

We ensure that there is a clear progression of Design and Technology skills from Reception to Year 6 so that the children leave Amberley Primary School well on their path towards becoming the next designers, inventors, engineers and trades people of the future. 

We are very fortunate that we are able to highlight some of these careers paths during our annual STEM careers week and through our participation in several other national STEM projects, such as the Greenpower Goblin Electric Car construction project.

Some of our Design and Technology sessions are delivered in our Invention Shed. This purpose-built space also allows us to create genuine cross-curricular links with many other subjects e.g. building robots from reclaimed materials when writing explanation texts in English. Children have access to the Invention Shed throughout the year, both during lesson time and lunchtime clubs, which enables them to further develop their Design and Technology skills and imaginatively explore the use of different materials.

Curriculum Impact

Teaching staff and support staff use a wide range of formative assessment tools during the lesson to judge the impact that the teaching is having on the children's learning. The Design and Technology co-ordinator uses regular and robust triangulated monitoring to gauge the impact of our Design and Technology curriculum design and reviews the curriculum to ensure that it meet the needs of all learners.