Design and Technology
At the Newark Hill Academy, CHILD is at the heart of our enquiry based curriculum.
We challenge our pupils to recognise and achieve their full potential. We give the pupils the skills to solve real life problems and use their learning from mathematics, science, engineering, computing, and art. We ensure we meet the need of all of our learners, including pupils with SEND.
We ensure happiness and health in Design and Technology, by ensuring they consider the needs, wants and values of others and themselves. Pupils also explore and evaluate healthy lifestyles through their study of food technology.
Our children will be inspired being encouraged to explore their creativity and imagination to make products which answer relevant problems for different contexts.
We equip our pupils with Lifelong Learning in Design and Technology, so they are prepared for life beyond the classroom. This could be planning, preparing, and making a healthy meal or designing and evaluating products and prototypes made by themselves or by others. Thus becoming enterprising and inventive citizens.
We celebrate diversity as pupils contribute to the wealth, welfare, culture and happiness of the nation.
Implementation
At Newark Hill Academy, our Design and Technology curriculum encourages all our children, across all year groups, to be creative, use their imagination and bring to life their own ideas. We encourage our children to think like ‘Designers.’, using correct vocabulary and developing an understanding and knowledge of the way in which design and technology impacts the world around them, from the food they eat to the use of mechanical and electrical systems. By providing a variety of learning opportunities, our children learn how to take risks, evaluate their actions and problem solve throughout the key stages, developing skills and attributes including becoming reflective and resilient, which they can use throughout their education and into adulthood.
Our academy promotes healthy eating across all our year groups and an important area within Design and Technology is developing an understanding of what healthy eating means and why it is important. We teach the valuable principles of nutrition, as well as teaching our children the crucial life skill of how to cook.
Lessons are planned through the process of design, make, evaluate and technological knowledge,
following the national curriculum. Through various projects and tasks, our children explore and evaluate designs from the past and present. They use design criteria to create their own design to solve a problem and then bring their idea to life, selecting appropriate materials and tools and using their technical knowledge to include mechanisms such as levers, wheels and axles. Examples at our Academy include making a Christopher Columbus flag using levers and sliders in KS1, to creating a vehicle with working mechanisms in KS2. Children enjoy creating and testing their designs to see if they are fit for purpose and if they are not the children are taught to evaluate, make changes and try again to meet the challenge.
Lessons and activities are purposefully creative and hands on, engaging all our children in their learning, and developing their knowledge and skills, through memorable experiences. At Newark Hill 
Academy, Design and Technology lessons are designed and tailored to meet the needs of our children and projects are based around the specifically chosen current topics, allowing us to get the best results for our children. This supports a cross curricular approach allowing our children to develop, use and implement their skills from other subjects to help solve problems and further their knowledge of Design and Technology. It also creates engaging, relevant and memorable experiences allowing our children to develop skills in all areas and bring their learning to life, seeing the relevance to our local area and the world we live in. For example, the Year 6 pupils recreate Anderson shelters to withstand a bomb attack imagining life during the war, when Peterborough was bombed. Year 3 pupils are also able to use Flag Fen, a local archaeological park, as inspiration when designing and building their round houses. Other examples of the great projects at Newark Hill are designing and creating puppets, Mayan headdresses and using Lego We:Do to incorporate the use of gears when designing and making a vehicle and much more.
Children explore cooking and nutrition across all year groups to instil the importa
nce of a healthy balanced lifestyle. Children find healthy alternatives to foods from the past and those we enjoy today, linking this to their Science and P.E. knowledge, highlighting the impact this has on their bodies and lifestyle choices. Children enjoy creating healthy meals, such as a healthy lunch for the tiger who came to tea and designing a healthy meal for Neil Armstrong’s return to Earth! We are lucky enough to have our own school hens, so our children can experience seeing first-hand where their food comes from, when collecting fresh, free-range eggs.
Impact
By the end of KS1, children will be able to design purposeful, functional, appealing products for themselves and others based on design criteria. They will evaluate their ideas and products against design criteria to build structures and explore mechanisms.
By the end of KS2, Children will use research skills and develop design criteria to inform the design of innovative, functional, appealing products that are fit for purpose. They will generate, develop, and communicate their ideas through discussion, annotated sketches, prototypes and technology. Our children will have a wealth of knowledge and skills to aid in their future studies especially if they chose to go on to become designers and engineers.
National Curriculum in England: design and technology programmes of study
Our Design and Technology Coordinator is Mrs Farrow (Mrs Kendal covering maternity leave)