At Marlborough Road Academy, we follow the National Curriculum at Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. This is taken as a minimum entitlement for learners at Marlborough Road Academy.
‘Art, craft and design embody some of the highest forms of human creativity. A high-quality art and design education should engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design. As pupils progress, they should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of art and design. They should also know how art and design both reflect and shape our history and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our nation’ (The National Curriculum, Continuous Improvement).
The DT curriculum at Marlborough Road Academy provides children with a relevant, coherent, progressive knowledge of the design process and an appreciation of the work of a range of craftspeople:
- Investigate, disassemble and evaluate
How have materials and components been used? How has the product been made? Why has it been made this way? What are the different parts of a product called and what does each do? How does the way a product works relate to its intended purpose?
How can materials, structures and techniques be tested? How can materials and structures be joined? Where might materials and structures fail?
- Design and make, evaluate
How will ideas be explored, developed, communicated and modelled in a variety of ways? How will a product be made; what materials, equipment and processes will be used? What alternatives are there, if initial attempts fail? How well did the product work? What were the strengths and areas for development? How well did the final product relate to its intended purpose?
Our curriculum is design to embed core disciplinary knowledge, and the ability to approach challenging, design questions
- Marking out and cutting skills
- Fixing and joining skills
- Mechanical and control skills
- Finishing skills, including food hygiene
- Related language skills
Design Technology at Marlborough Road Primary Academy, is taught, generally, in alternate half-terms and is cross curricular. In EYFS art/DT 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 are planned around Rosenshine’s Ten Principals of Instruction framework and we believe that this alongside the use of Kagan structures promotes cooperative learning as well as enquiry.
- A cycle of lessons for each subject, which carefully plans for progression and depth.
- Children sketches and drawings should show the build-up of knowledge and skills needed to create a purposeful product.
- Children will be given the opportunity in each lesson to evaluate an aspect of their learning.
- Trips and visiting experts who will enhance the learning experience.
- A means to display and celebrate the pupils’ design and technology work
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 class will have the opportunity to share and discuss their new product with a different class.
Our Design and Technology curriculum is also planned in a way which promotes the cultural capital of all our children. We enhance our curriculum especially for the most disadvantaged by organising school trips, promoting careers with design and engineering, and focusing on how DT can be used in the wider world.