Design Technology

Our school curriculum is driven and shaped by our school vision, which informs everything that we do.

St Nicholas provides a welcoming, inclusive and aspirational learning environment at the heart of its community. We nurture, encourage and support all children, adults and their families to be the best as God intended. Following God’s example of love and trust, we develop resilience and creativity in all we do.

Learning, loving and encouraging through Christ.

An uncompromising focus on pupils’ personal development has made St Nicholas Church of England Primary Academy a place where pupils always come first. Ofsted 2019

We are lucky enough to have an art / DT studio for those times when children are completing long-term projects that need space and time to dry so clearing up is not a problem! For the food and nutrition units, the children are also able to access kitchens on site and extensive school grounds mean that they can sometimes cook the produce they have grown eg: EYFS enjoyed cooking the pumpkins from the pumpkin patch earlier this year!

Aims and Objectives

At St Nicholas, we work together to ensure to provide a design and technology curriculum which allows and encourages the children to explore their imaginations, generate ideas for purpose, acquire skills, apply judgements and rejoice in their learning. Through our value of perseverance, we show that making mistakes is how we learn. Within the school we create a safe space for our children to explore, experiment and take risks without the fear of getting it wrong. We recognise that everyone is unique and therefore encourage the children to express, explore and celebrate ideas, feelings, attitudes while using the school values.

As children progress, they will become confident in their abilities and develop as critical, creative thinkers by enriching, extending and consolidating their learning in a variety of contexts using a range of different media.

We aim to foster their originality and creativity. During this the children will learn to self-reflect, communicate their opinions of others work positively and make informed choices about media and what they want to use to best achieve their design.
We plan and teach sequenced design technology lessons based on skills, using a range of media and give the children opportunities to apply the skills learned in other areas of the curriculum, making the lessons relevant and meaningful.
The national curriculum breaks design and technology down into five key areas:

Design
Make
Evaluate
Technical Knowledge
Cooking and Nutrition

We teach design and technology weekly to all children in key stages 1 and 2 using the Kapow scheme of work. In Early Years, although design and technology is not taught formally as a standalone subject, DT is incorporated into many of the early years areas of learning such as communication and language, mathematics, expressive arts and design and understanding the world. Learning within each year group is designed to build continuity and progression of skills across the school.

Children also have the opportunity to use their DT skills and knowledge within our local and school community. For example, we take part in Light Up New Romney and productions throughout the year.

By the end of children’s time at St Nicholas, they should have an idea on how design technology both reflect and shape our history, and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our nation.