Design and Technology

At Britannia we endeavour to teach our children to become creative and innovative thinkers. With an ever changing world, we aim to provide our pupils with the skills needed to create, design and build a variety of technology based products. Our curriculum is based upon the National Curriculum targets and skills, and follows a structured progression through our Britannia Curriculum Concepts for DT.

Throughout the school, pupils are taught the skills to safely use a range of materials and equipment, including ICT based software and food. In Early years the focus is on exploring the world around them and developing the gross and fine motor skills they need to successfully approach the Key Stage one curriculum. Within Key stage 1 and 2, pupils follow a structured progression of skills focussing on food, materials, textiles, electrical and electronics, construction, mechanics and computing.

Many units are designed to reflect the themes being taught within year groups and children are encouraged to make suggestions, evaluate and improve their designs during all parts of the process. Where possible, the school participates in national and local initiatives like ‘Farm to Fork’ organised by Tesco, Waitrose cooking schemes, and various other local businesses. Visitors are invited in to share their expertise with the children in order to provide meaningful and exciting learning experiences.

Whole school progression

D&T Culture at Britannia

Nursery

Reception

Expressive Arts and Design - Creating with Materials

Safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function
Share their creations, explaining the process they have used
Make use of props and materials when role playing characters in narratives and stories.

In Reception, children have opportunities to work together to develop and realise creative ideas. We provide children with a range of materials for children to construct with (in class and in provision).

We encourage our children to:

think about and discuss what they want to make,
discuss problems and how they might be solved as they arise.
reflect with children on how they have achieved their aims,

In Reception, we teach children different techniques for joining materials, such as how to use adhesive tape, different sorts of glue, split pins.
We provide a range of materials and tools and we teach children to use them with care and precision. It is important for our children to be able to notice features in the natural world.