DT

DT Leads: Mrs Case, Mr Giles and Mrs Gray

Governor Lead: Leah Sinclair

At Heath, our aim is to have an ambitious, forward thinking DT curriculum that equips our children with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a quickly changing world that presents challenges and opportunities. The learning should have a clear purpose, with the end-user providing a clear focus for the projects undertaken. This should incorporate the school community, the local community, and local businesses and industry. Our aim is for our children to innovate, think creatively and problem solve, and to embrace the challenges and opportunities that our DT curriculum presents to them.

Background to our Curriculum

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is a way of describing the blurring of boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. It’s a fusion of advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3D printing, genetic engineering, quantum computing, and other technologies. It’s the collective force behind many products and services that are fast becoming indispensable to modern life. This is causing a fundamental change in the skills needed in our workforce: soft skills (creativity, complex problem solving, critical thinking, communication…), technical skills (technology-based skills, coding, programming…) and entrepreneurial skills are central to the fourth industrial revolution. For this reason, it is vital that our curriculum, especially in subjects such as DT, computing and science, prepares our children for the future.

DT Progression

• DT Strand Progression

• Learning Phases Progression 

Our Approach to DT

• Each DT unit starts with a design specification that is presented to the children. This will detail the end user, the purpose of the product and the parameters to work within. For units where there is a link with an outside organisation, the design specification might be set by the company itself.
• This is followed by a research stage. This can include trips to visit local companies, market research and product testing/tasting.
• During the technical knowledge/skills stage, the children learn about the theory behind concepts (e.g. pneumatic systems) and learn and practise techniques (e.g. types of stitches, measuring, cutting and joining).
• The design stage is an opportunity for the children to draw designs, use computer aided design, build prototypes and get feedback about their initial ideas (extension of the research stage).
• During the production stage, the children make the product; this can include scaling up the production if the children will be selling their product.
• The evaluation stage provides the children with the opportunity to reflect upon their product and the overall process of design. This may include gathering feedback from the end user and calculating profits.
  
  
• Enterprise and community links are key components of our DT curriculum. We worked with a number of local businesses in order to bring 'real life' experiences to our children. 
• Key questions are used to provide focus and depth to the learning.
• Knowledge organisers, knowledge maps and low stake quizzes are used to help embed the knowledge learned into the long term memory.