Design & Technology
During your child’s time at Jesse Gray, we endeavour to ensure that Design and Technology (DT) is a valued and integral part of our exciting curriculum. DT is about providing opportunities for students to develop their capabilities. It combines their designing and making skills with knowledge and understanding, in order to create and improve quality products.
DT at Jesse Gray is purposeful, relevant and inventive, taking ideas from their explorations of the world around them. Using creativity and imagination, children design and make products to solve relevant, real-life problems, within a variety of contexts and considering their own and others’ needs, wants and values. 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.
It involves the creative application of the principles of science, computing, and mathematics (STEM subjects) and art to solve practical problems. DT is linked closely to other subjects across the curriculum. It wouldn’t be possible to complete our projects without accurate measurements in maths, using the principles of a healthy diet from Science, programming and controlling moving devices, and our knowledge and skills in art and design to ensure that our finished products appeal to an intended user.
In DT, one of the strands is learning about food. The government has committed to the health and wellbeing of children, ensuring that children understand and apply the principles of nutrition and learn how to cook. We ensure that food and nutrition is taught in every year group, allowing children to become adept at the core life skills needed. In early years and KS1, the children love creating healthy snacks and practising the skills of chopping, grating and peeling. As they progress throughout KS2, they’ll begin to use heat sources to create simple, healthy, savoury dishes which combine the skills above, plus kneading, baking and mixing.
We’re developing problem solvers, risk takers and innovators. We’re big believers in promoting resilience through our projects – if at first you don’t succeed, evaluate, and try again! This links to SMSC and our core school values.
Spiritual development is of a very high importance in DT. The process of creative thinking and innovation inspires students, which in turn breeds a self-confidence and belief in their abilities.
In DT, we seek to develop a sense of ‘moral conscience’ in our pupils. We teach children to understand the wider impacts on the environment when designing and making new products and expect them to consider carefully the materials & components they will use when designing and making, encouraging sustainability and recycling.
Social development is a key feature of all DT lessons. We teach the concept of self-regulation to ensure that students accept responsibility for their behaviour and the safety of others. This establishes and maintains a safe, secure, learning environment. We place an emphasis on developing teamwork, cooperation and giving and accepting constructive criticism as a mode to improve learning.
We develop wider cultural awareness in DT through projects that have a connection with our heritage, and we seek to expand knowledge of other cultures’ influences on design and manufacturing.
The pupils’ learning in DT should be developed cumulatively, building on previous year’s knowledge, refining and improving their techniques used. The skills are taught repeatedly in order to build up children's confidence, problem solving and understanding of the evaluative process. The emphasis is on investigating, taking part in focussed practical tasks with a specific skill being improved upon, evaluating it and then having another opportunity at it to create a final product. They can critique, evaluate and test ideas and products, both their own and the work of others in order to learn from it.
Design and Technology is important because:
- the designing and making of products is a pleasurable activity which also helps with the understanding of the ever-changing technological world
- technological capability is essential to living and working in a technological society
- it offers opportunities for success to children who do not necessarily succeed in other areas of the curriculum
- it develops children’s skills and knowledge in design, structures, mechanisms, electrical control and a range of materials, including food.
- it encourages children's creativity and encourages them to think about important issues.