Intention

At The Vine School, our aim is to give Design and Technology (DT) a purpose by using a project approach using the 3 Ps: making something – Product - for someone – Person - for a reason - Purpose. Pupils are taught that everything has been designed and made by somebody, and so they look at real-life examples of designers, chefs, engineers and technologists to inspire them and give them a reason for their learning and product-making.

Implementation

Skills are taught through DT lessons, either in weekly lessons or in blocks at a time, and are developed across the year groups. DT is taught once every other half term, 3 times a year. As well having its own body of knowledge, DT is inherently a multi-disciplinary subject, so will include a variety of cross-curricular links as and when applicable. The skills taught include understanding of:

• Food, e.g. how to prepare fruit and vegetable, different food groups, what a healthy plate of food looks like, seasonality, where food comes from and culture/foods from around the world.
• Mechanisms, e.g. how to create and use sliders and levers, and experiment with different types of wheels and axels to use in our designs and products.
• Structures, e.g. how to create free-standing structures and shell structures, like nets for packaging, using computer-aided design (CAD), and frame structures for supporting heavy weights.
• Textiles, e.g. how to create templates and patterns, use different methods to join fabrics together and expand on sewing abilities to combine various 2D fabric shapes to create a 3D product.
• Electrical systems, e.g. using a range of simple circuits and switches, then advancing to using more complex circuits and switches.
• Mechanical systems, e.g. using levers and linkages to create moving products and using pulleys and gears to help us learn about ratios in Maths.

Christian and British Values, SMSC and Global Links

DT has many cross-curricular links and application to the "real world". These include: sustainability, culture, seasonality, fair trade, and organic produce.