Design and Technology Statement of Intent

At Sheringdale, Design and Technology is taught in a cross-curricular way to ensure learning is meaningful.  Our DT curriculum is anchored in three key skills: constructing and joining, sewing and textiles, and cooking and nutrition.  DT lessons allow children to apply their knowledge and skills learned in other subjects, particularly Maths, Science and Art. The hands-on, practical nature of DT ensures all children can access learning through open-ended tasks, adjusted to support those with SEND and stretch and challenge the most able.   Children’s learning centres around generating and developing their own ideas, as well as teaching the creative and technical components they need to design, plan and make. We give our children the opportunity to build upon and apply their knowledge and skills across the school, to make products for a wide range of uses. We believe, through testing and evaluating their products children can then develop their problem-solving and reasoning skills to find the best solution.  When working with food, we also believe having first-hand experience of cooking helps children to understand and apply the key principles of nutrition, an essential life-skill.

At Sheringdale children are taught to use simple tools and techniques competently and appropriately from the start of their school journey. In the Early Years children are given frequent opportunity to use a variety of construction materials. They can self-select tools such as scissors and tape needed to shape, assemble and join materials they are using. Across Key stage one and two children are given a variety of relevant contexts in which to develop their designing and making skills such as sandwich and sandwich box making, making cardboard houses and vehicles with moving components, and cooking biscuits for a biscuit sale.