Design and Technology at Oxford Grove

Our Award Winning Provision for D&T

Since 2023

The Design and Technology Mark is a quality mark awarded to primary schools who are providing excellent teaching and learning in Design and Technology. It provides an opportunity for schools to undertake a rigorous evaluation process and strengthen their practices within Design and Technology. Schools who achieve the award have clearly demonstrated the quality of their provision, ensuring that they are providing the best possible experiences for the children to give them the knowledge and skills needed to excel now and in later life.

Achieved in October 2023

At Oxford Grove, we recognise the important role that Design and Technology plays in the curriculum. Each topic has been carefully planned, taking into account a progressive and sequenced approach as children move through the year groups. Our curriculum has been designed to provide opportunities for children to regularly revisit and recap their knowledge and skills, enabling them to know more, remember more and apply more as they progress through school.

We recognise and celebrate the diverse community that makes up the Oxford Grove family and this is reflected in our teaching. Regardless of background, all children have access to the same opportunities and experiences through our curriculum. We regularly look for ways in which we can provide cultural capital for our children with ‘wow’ experiences, beginning right away in the EYFS. These experiences include workshops with people who have a career within an area of Design and Technology, allowing them to see how their knowledge and skills can be applied in the real world. This allows our children to meet a range of inspiring people and see how their learning at Oxford Grove can really help to shape their futures.

Core aspects of the curriculum like English, Maths and Science are integrated within our Design and Technology topics, and dedicated Design and Technology sessions allow children to acquire the skills and knowledge they need to design and create a wide variety of products. Through our dedicated timetable and well-planned curriculum, children are able to see the connections between Design and Technology and other aspects of their learning, and continuously apply their knowledge and skills in new and exciting ways.

Ultimately, the Design and Technology curriculum at Oxford Grove inspires our children to dream big. Children are encouraged to take ownership of their learning, to challenge themselves and to create exciting and unique products. Our children leave Oxford Grove with the confidence that they can achieve anything they put their minds to.

Design and Technology Enrichment – enhancing our D&T Curriculum

Children have many opportunities to see Design and Technology in action through the workshops which take part in school. The workshops, led by experts, are designed to give our children some hands-on experience of designing and making in the real world in a variety of contexts. Examples of these workshops include:

Links with Bolton SICT
Children across school take part in this brilliant, highly interactive workshop. It allows our children to experience building and programming something from scratch. Children work in small teams, using the Lego WeDo kits to create a model and then programming it to move by linking their creation to an iPad! Early introduction of the concept of programming, monitoring and controlling products, alongside our Computing curriculum, prepares our children to explore this area of the curriculum further in KS2.

A-Life
Our annual A-Life workshops give all year groups the information needed to make healthy life choices. There are many activities linked to choosing healthy and varied diets, knowing and understanding where food comes from, and understanding seasonality.

Textiles
Children develop their skills in cutting, shaping, joining and finishing with materials and textiles and this gives them the opportunity to practise different sewing techniques. Their work has been used to create a large-scale piece which is displayed within our corridor.

Food and Nutrition
Children are introduced to the life skill of learning to cook through a variety of sweet and savoury recipes from around the world – including paella, samosas and sweet breads. The children learn different methods of cutting and chopping and are taught about the importance of a healthy, balanced diet with the help of the Eat Well Plate.

Mechanisms and Structures
The children have the opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills to create a variety of innovative and creative mechanisms and structures. They are introduced to the history of and create their own mechanisms such as moving picture books, cars and fairground rides.

Links with KS3
Our Year 6 children are given the opportunity to visit local Secondary Schools to handle the equipment and provides them with an insight into what Design and Technology looks like at KS3. This enables the children to feel more confident when beginning this subject at High School. 

Work Related Learning – providing real and relevant design contexts and involving the local community

Work Related Learning is an event which takes place annually at Oxford Grove. With class teacher support, children use research to design innovative, functional, appealing products aimed at particular groups within our community, which provides a very real and relevant context for our pupils. They learn about how to conduct market research to make their product appealing to a particular audience. They learn about different marketing techniques, and how to make a profit! Children then take part in selling their products to their families and other members of the local community at our Work Related Learning event. This develops a real sense of pride for our children in what they do, as it is also a chance to showcase their work to a wide audience.

Learning environment – promoting key subject knowledge and celebrating achievement

At Oxford Grove, we take pride in our learning environment, and ensure that it is stimulating and useful to the children. In classrooms, working walls allow information to be continuously updated alongside learning. They also include key vocabulary and useful information for the children and teachers to refer to throughout their projects and long after the topic has finished, helping children to remember more. Design and Technology displays also feature in our main corridor area as a celebration of the fantastic work our children produce. Through these displays, we inspire children from other year groups as they embark on their own Design and Technology projects. Our Design and Technology curriculum starts straight away in the Early Years, where children are exposed to Design and Technology opportunities daily within the continuous provision.

High quality resources and texts underpinning our Design and Technology curriculum

We use high quality texts, by making links with other subjects in the curriculum, to inspire a context for our learning within Design and Technology. These links also help to ensure that Design and Technology is embedded within other areas of the curriculum such as History, Geography, PSHRE and Art. High quality texts also underpin core learning in reading, writing and speaking & listening throughout Design and Technology units.

Design and Technology is extremely well-resourced at Oxford Grove. We have a large range of resources including tools, materials, equipment and handling collections, designed to support out Design and Technology curriculum in each year group. We give our children the opportunity to handle real products to develop their understanding of Design and Technology in the real world, and to support the development of ideas and the innovation of their thinking. This begins right away in our EYFS unit, where children have access to a wide range of tools and materials to explore both freely and with teacher support in our continuous provision.

Promoting enjoyment and developing a love of Design and Technology through competitions and home based projects

Our children are given opportunities to apply their Design and Technology skills more independently by working on projects at home and with their families. We have held several competitions where children are challenged to create a range of free-standing structures at home, such as houses and landmarks within Bolton. This allows children to take their passion for designing and making home, and to work together with their families to create some outstanding pieces of work.

OG Designers

Responsibilities:

* Support Miss Simpson with D&T RRR assemblies

* Support class teachers with the safety rules for equipment

* Help to organise and promote D&T competitions

* Choose winners for D&T competitions

* Check that teachers have the correct resources

* Remind their class of the purpose and intended audience for each project

* Be creative and share their ideas with their class for D&T topics

Life Skills

At Oxford Grove we believe cooking and having an understanding of nutrition is paramount to leading a healthy lifestyle and forming a foundation for adult life skills. Our progressive cooking curriculum ensures children are taught safe ways to prepare and bake different dishes alongside teaching them the vital information needed to understand where our food comes from and how ingredients work together to create tasty and nutritious meals

The national curriculum for design and technology aims to ensure that all pupils:

• develop the creative, technical and practical expertise needed to perform everyday tasks confidently and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world
• build and apply a repertoire of knowledge, understanding and skills in order to design and make high-quality prototypes and products for a wide range of users
• critique, evaluate and test their ideas and products and the work of others
• understand and apply the principles of nutrition and learn how to cook