The Design & Technology Curriculum at St Robert Bellarmine

“We are God’s work of art.”

At St Robert Bellarmine, a high-quality design and technology education provides opportunities for children to become independent and creative problem solvers.  Design and technology lessons will allow pupils to use their creativity and imagination to design and make products that solve real and relevant problems within a variety of contexts, considering their own and others’ wants, needs and values.  Pupils are encouraged to take risks and show resilience, overcoming problems they may encounter by being resourceful and innovative. We will ensure that the National Curriculum for design and technology is met by providing all of our pupils with a wide breadth of design and technology lessons following the design process set out in the programme of study for Key 1 and 2 technology: design, make, evaluate and technical knowledge.  Pupils are also provided with opportunities to evaluate both past and present design and develop a critical understanding of products and their impact on life and the wider world.

Our Intended Design and Technology Curriculum

Our design and technology curriculum is built around the aims and objectives set out in the national curriculum. We aim for the design and technology curriculum content to be remembered in the long term as our basic principles are that learning only takes place if there is a change in the long-term memory.

Our design and technology curriculum takes a mastery approach. Our mastery approach is to ensure that all pupils have mastered key concepts before moving on to the next topic: it is knowledge led, (subject specific) and it focuses on the development if pupils’ long-term memory for fluency, which in turn, develops pupils’ ability to reason and deepen knowledge and understanding.

Design and Technology is taught as a discrete subject. Planning for learning carefully maps out the progression of knowledge and understanding, that fully covers the National Curriculum. Teachers are clear on the ‘key knowledge’ that we want our pupils to know and remember and this forms the basis of long-term planning for progression. The key knowledge is connected by reference to golden threads or substantive concepts and disciplinary knowledge.

The ‘key knowledge’ that we want our pupils to know and remember forms the basis of long-term planning for progression. This includes the ‘substantive concepts’ of: food and nutrition, sewing and textiles, mechanisms, electrical systems and structures. These concepts are developed using the disciplinary knowledge in design and technology of: cutting, joining, measuring, folding, assembling, strengthening and cross-section and exploded diagrams.

Curriculum breadth for design and technology outlines the core knowledge for each topic around which teachers have developed a coherent and deliberately sequenced curriculum to promote the development of pupils’ knowledge and understanding to further develop the substantive concepts building upon prior knowledge (including their experiential knowledge).

Curriculum depth in design and technology allows for children to progress in their knowledge by first remembering more, progressing to knowing more which they can then draw on as they learn to reason and explain.

We understand how important academic and subject specific vocabulary is in the acquisition of knowledge. Consequently, teachers ensure that this is planned for and taught rigorously throughout design and technology topics.

We determine progress as 'remembering more and knowing more'. We believe that when new knowledge and existing knowledge connect in pupils’ minds, this gives rise to understanding.  We look for children, as their knowledge and understanding develops, to show that they can make connections, draw parallels and use increasingly sophisticated explanations which draw upon their design and technology knowledge.

Our Enacted Design and Technology Curriculum

Our design and technology curriculum design is based upon evidence from cognitive science. Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction are fundamental in the day-to-day teaching of lessons. The main principles that underpin this are:

• regular reviews and the revisiting of prior learning
• continual checking of understanding through effective questioning
• strong teacher modelling and guided practice
• carefully sequenced lessons that use ‘chunked learning’, allowing new learning to be retained
• precise feedback to our children

In addition, we also understand that learning is invisible in the short term. Cognitive science tells us that for pupils to have a greater depth of understanding and sustain mastery they must first master the basics, which takes time.

A coherent and deliberately sequenced design and technology curriculum ensures that we practise things repeatedly, so children get better at them, and we revise things on a regular basis so that they don’t forget them.

Our Learnt Design and Technology Curriculum

 The impact of our curriculum can be measured through two main questions

• How well are our pupils coping with the science curriculum content?
• How well are they retaining previously taught content?

The vast majority of pupils have sustained mastery of the content, that is they remember more and are fluent in it. Activities are planned for pupils to combine this remembered knowledge and fluency with the opportunities to reason and demonstrate their depth of understanding. We regularly monitor pupils to ensure that they are on track to reach the expectations of our curriculum.

To explore how this curriculum area is taught in your child's class please refer to their class page.