In the Early Years Foundation Stage, design and technology forms part of the learning children acquire under the ‘Knowledge and Understanding of the World' branch of the Foundation Stage curriculum. Children will learn through first-hand experiences. They will be encouraged to explore, observe, solve problems, think critically, make decisions and to talk about why they have made their decisions.

In Key Stage 1 we follow the National Curriculum and use the Kapow Design and Technology resource which offers our children a broad and balanced curriculum and provides them with memoraable projects and specialised skills in textiles, food, structures, mechanisms and electrical systems.

Design and technology is taught in block units each term to allow children to become fully immersed in their learning and the units they are studying. This is included on each year group’s long-term plan as a discreet unit of work. The medium-term plan offers a clear overview of each learning objective for the lessons and the short-term plan explains how each lesson follows the teaching pattern of design, make, evaluate to form a full project. Food units also follow the design, make, evaluate process for example by tasking the pupils to develop recipes for a specific set of requirements and to suggest methods of packaging the food product including the nutritional information.

Digital world units in Key Stage 2 are cross-curricular with Computing objectives. This is to ensure that the children can follow a natural progression of skills and knowledge to support them when coming to develop programmed products.

At the end of each unit, an assessment quiz and knowledge catcher is used to track pupil progress. Assessment of each unit’s end point is recorded in non-core evidence books by each year group. This includes pupil voice relating to the unit as well as photographs of examples of each category of assessment.