Intent

Design and Technology at Priory Park Infants develops children’s skills and knowledge in design, structures, mechanisms and a range of materials, including food. Children learn how to create products with due consideration of their own and others’ needs, wants and values.

Implementation

At Priory Park we offer the children opportunities to solve real life problems making functional products across a variety of contexts. Children will be able to practice their skills and develop their subject knowledge through a vocabulary rich environment.

The children are encouraged to make decisions for themselves and engage with practical work. They will be given plenty of opportunities to create products they can see, touch – and even taste – for themselves. This will be done through both individual and collaborative projects. Children will learn how to be critical of their work and that of others and develop their evaluation skills.

Children will be taught DT skills and be given opportunities to practice these through focused practical tasks and design, make and evaluate assignments. They will also be given opportunities to practise and consolidate the more practical skills through continuous provision and more structured opportunities within the classroom.

Impact

This will allow our children not only to engage with the design process but also to develop their skills of perseverance, resilience and communication. For children, having to think about specific purposes and users for their product is much more demanding than simply following instructions to make something – which is what we aim to embed within our DT teaching and learning. Children have to think, decide and plan, as well as go and create. This makes the results for them far more rewarding. We feel it is vital to nurture creativity and innovation through design, and by exploring the designed and made world in which we all live and work.