Intent
The DT curriculum at Abbey Hey provides children with relevant, coherent and progressive knowledge of the design process.
Building on the Framework for Excellence, The United Learning Primary Curriculum has six core principles:
•Entitlement
All pupils have the right to learn what is in the United Learning curriculum, and schools have a duty to ensure that all pupils are taught the whole of it.
•Coherence
Taking the National Curriculum as its starting point, our curriculum is carefully sequenced so that powerful knowledge builds term by term and year by year. We make meaningful connections within subjects and between subjects.
•Mastery
We ensure that foundational knowledge, skills and concepts are secure before moving on. Pupils revisit prior learning and apply their understanding in new contexts.
•Adaptability
The core content – the ‘what’ – of the curriculum is stable, but schools will bring it to life in their own local context, and teachers will adapt lessons – the ‘how’ – to meet the needs of their own classes.
•Representation
All pupils see themselves in our curriculum, and our curriculum takes all pupils beyond their immediate experience.
•Education with Character
Our curriculum - which includes the taught subject timetable as well as spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, our co-curricular provision and the ethos and ‘hidden curriculum’ of the school – is intended to spark curiosity and to nourish both the head and the heart.
Subject-specific rationales are built on these six principles.
Implementation
Design and technology at Abbey Hey Academy is taught, generally, in alternate half-terms and is cross curricular. In EYFS design and technology is taught through the EYFS framework through focused modelling and daily provision activities.
Teachers are provided with an additional three planning days per year on top of their PPA, to plan their curriculum. As part of this planning process, teachers need to plan the following:
- All lessons at are planned around Rosenshine’s Ten Principals of Instruction framework and we believe that this alongside of Kagan structures promotes cooperative learning as well as enquiry.
- Lessons are recorded in indivdual books, which move up with them to disply the progression of skills they have learnt across Abbey Hey.
- Our design and technology books should show the build-up of knowledge and skills needed to create a purposeful product.
- Trips and visiting experts who will enhance the learning experience.
- A means to display and celebrate the pupils’ design and technology work in their class.
Impact
Our Design and Technology Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression year on year, giving pupils the skills and knowledge and vocabulary that they need to move forward in their learning, alongside opportunities to apply their knowledge to different situations. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- Pupil discussions about their learning; which includes discussion of their thoughts, ideas, processing and evaluations of work.
- A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes;
- Each year group will have the opportunity to share and discuss their new product with a different year group.