Intent, implementation and impact

The Design and Technology (D&T) curriculum at Goresbrook School aims to give our children the appropriate knowledge they need to appreciate and take part in numerous craftworks.  From making foods such as fruit kebabs and bread, to products such as pop-up books and photo frames, our children are given a range of opportunities to design and create, ensuring they are taught various skills to take with them further in life. 

Design and Technology is a vital part of our curriculum at Goresbrook School, giving many skills and benefits to our children: 

• Children’s creativity is fostered and promoted
• Confidence is built through trying, failing, repeating and succeeding 
• Children have an increased knowledge of design, structures and mechanisms
• Children have an increased curiosity of the world around them and its materials
• Children are encouraged to be resourceful, innovative and enterprising
• Children are encouraged to evaluate and improve

Design and Technology at Goresbrook School is taught once per term in one-week blocks, ensuring that our children have their skills nurtured and progressed. In Early Years, Design & Technology is taught throughout the year as part of the children’s daily activities.

For our D&T lessons, our teachers ensure:

•  Lessons are planned around Rosenshine’s Ten Principals of Instruction framework, alongside the use of Kagan structures. This ensures our teaching is purposeful and engaging. 
• The cycle of lessons for D&T plans for progression and depth.   
• Children are given the opportunity in each lesson to review their learning.   
• Trips and visiting experts are present throughout the year to enhance the learning experience.     
• There is a way to display and celebrate the pupils’ D&T work in their class.

Our Design and Technology Curriculum is planned to show progress each year, building on their craft and design skills from the previous years. 

If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they will build on the design strategies a that they have learnt in the years beforehand. 

Each year’s work challenges the children to expand and push their D&T skills beyond what they have already learnt, and thus children are judged to be making good progress by achieving the outcomes expected at their year level. 

We enhance our curriculum especially for the most disadvantaged by organising school trips, promoting careers with design and engineering, and focusing on how D&T can be used in the wider world.