Design & Technology
Our Design and Technology curriculum vision is:
To be inspired by the work of engineers and designers and how their work meets a need or solves a problem and therefore apply this thinking to their own designs and creations.
At Birkbeck, we believe that Design and Technology is crucial in both understanding how the world around us came to be as it is now and also why it has been designed that way. Children also develop their understanding of the links between DT and other subjects like Art and Maths and Science and so we see DT as vital to children understanding how flexible and adaptable the knowledge they learn in school really is.
Our curriculum coverage posters provide information about which units are taught in which year groups and the order in which they are taught. You can view the Design and technology one below:
Our curriculum is built around a series of key concepts which are strategically revisited at various points in the units of work children do from Year 1 to 6. This enables us to develop their knowledge in a deep and transferable way which makes what they know easier to retrieve and use when they need it. This also means that new knowledge is being built on existing knowledge, making it easier for children to quicky reach a deeper level of understanding. This is fundamental to our mission to facilitate the development of expertise within our pupils. You can read more about the threads of concept we include in our curriculum and how they are developed in each year group below.
concept thread development dt.pdf
Below you can see the development of our key concept threads in grid form so that you can see how each one is progressed and developed as children move through the school.
dt curriculum thread development table.pdf
You can also read about the precise knowledge coverage of each of our units of work by clicking on the second link below.
curriculum content by subject dt.pdf
Lesson delivery
Every Design and Technology lesson begins with a retrieval practice starter which has the aim of activating prior knowledge around the concept thread which the lesson to come is focused on.
Every lesson also includes clarification of any technical vocabulary to be used in the lesson. This always takes place before the main lesson content begins.
All Design and Technology lessons are delivered in line with our overall principles of teaching and learning and with our Principles of Design and Technology teaching. These are the principles that we believe underpin truly great teaching and learning, specifically in the context of Design and Technology teaching. You can read about these in our Design and Technology implementation guide below. This document also details which units of work children study in which terms of each year.
birkbeck primary school dt implementation guide docx.pdf
Assessment
We assess Design and Technology once per term. Children complete an assessment based on the key concepts that have been taught in the unit of work being assessed. This is combined with a subjective assessment on the extent to which the key practical skills of the unit have been acquired and are evident in the final product. The assessments take place in week two of the preceding term to allow for some forgetting to have taken place. This means that we can rely more certainly on the robustness of knowledge that children have remembered. It also means that we can use the assessment as learning opportunity in itself because the act of thinking hard to remember previously taught knowledge actually increases the retrieval strength of that piece of knowledge, meaning that it is easier to retrieve the next time round.
The outcomes from assessments inform our judgements about whether or not a child is meeting the expected standard for a year group but more importantly, they identify gaps in their knowledge that we need to address. The most common gaps are revisited as starter activities for the following six weeks to give children an opportunity to consolidate and re-learn the knowledge a second time.
We also utilise the testing effect (the act of actively trying to remember previously taught knowledge to apply it) on a weekly basis with our 'Early Afternoon Work'. For example, if Design technology is taught on a Monday then on a Thursday, (3 days after the teaching), children will have a question on the board for them to get on with when they come in from lunch that tests how well they have remembered the content taught on the Monday. Teachers then provide feedback to ensure that the correct understanding has been processed by all children.
