At Crestwood Park, we want our children to feel engaged and enthused by this practical subject. We aim to teach them the skills and technical knowledge that they need to design, make and evaluate purposeful products. We have shaped our design and technology curriculum to: 

• Encourage problem solving
• Inspire creative, independent thinking
• Provide purposeful contexts to design 
• Develop a range of skills in different areas 
• Allow children to discover their passion in design and technology
• Develop self-reflection and resilience
• Boost confidence to try and test ideas
• Reassure children that their creations are not always perfect 
• Teach children to recognise and make healthy choices
• Ensure progression as children move through the school.  

The skills and technical knowledge which we impart have practical applications within design and technology and beyond. They may lead our children to become carpenters or electricians. They may encourage our children to become fashions designers or chefs. Children may go on to be engineers or mechanics; the possibilities are boundless.  

We will teach our children these skills by presenting them with problems to overcome, encouraging a thorough design process. We will then provide our children with the resources, skills and support to bring their designs to life. Finally, we follow a robust evaluation process, looking back at the problem and asking: did we solve it? We apply similar processes to a range of applications, including woodwork, modelling, food preparation and textiles.  

We work alongside the Design and Technology Association to provide a robust DT curriculum for our children. We use their 'Projects on a Page' to provide purposeful, meaningful contexts and quality projects, which are open ended and testable. We aim to follow the Design and Technology Association's minimum requirements for teaching DT, so we teach 1 food unit every year, we have 8-12 hours DT teaching each term and we cover the 6 principles of DT.  

 At Crestwood Park, we want all of our children to experience a broad and balanced curriculum. All children, including those with SEND, will experience the same learning opportunities and high expectations. Our DT Gems (learning outcomes) are sometimes explored differently to enable children to succeed. Learning might be scaffolded and supported to help children achieve this outcome. Scaffolded activities provide pupils with extra resources, such as visual prompts, to reach the same learning goals as the rest of the class.

With design and technology being a practical subject, we monitor the impact of our curriculum mostly through pupil interviews with some scrutiny of work produced. We take lots of photographs to document practical applications. We use flashbacks to revisit previous learning in DT. We use low-stakes assessment strategies, quizzing and questioning to assess children’s knowledge and understanding. This provides the opportunity to identify skills that children have not yet mastered, so that we can teach responsively to address any misconceptions in the moment.  

The documents below illustrate how we teach design and technology across the school, from EYFS to year 6.