Wheatfields Primary School

Design & Technology

Design and Technology is a subject enjoyed by all children at Wheatfields. It encourages creativity, problem solving and resilience. Pupils at Wheatfields take part in a wide range of Design and Technology projects throughout their time at school. These include: food and nutrition, woodwork, electrical circuits, structures, wheels and axles, levers and pulleys, computer-aided design and textiles.

The teaching staff strive to make their projects fun, exciting and challenging. Sometimes they are linked with the topic that the children are learning, or they are standalone projects with a brief and real-life application. Pupils learn to draw on, and apply the knowledge and skills learned in other subjects: particularly Mathematics, Science, Computing and Art.

Examples of recent D&T projects at Wheatfields are detailed below:

Applying their knowledge of diet and healthy living from their Science and PSHE lessons, pupils evaluate, design and create their own healthy recipe using fruits and vegetables. The brief pictured below was to create a crunchy vegetable salad to have as part of their family dinner.

 

While learning about materials in Science, Year One pupils further develop their knowledge by evaluating the sturdiness of certain structures and subsequently design and build their own structure to follow a brief. For the project pictured below, the brief was to use different materials to make a house for a duplo figure. The structures were then tested with a fan to see if they would survive the threat of being ‘blown over’! Can you guess the fairy tale?

Prior to a school trip to a local nature reserve, Year Two children were asked to design and make a hand puppet of British wildlife/insects to raise awareness for the reserve. Examples of different puppets were evaluated and pupils used non-fiction library books to find ideas. They were then taught different methods to join fabrics, including stitching and creating a seam, before designing and creating their own puppets independently.

As part of their topic on the Egyptians, Year 5 children worked in pairs to design and make a working model of an Egyptian Shaduf.

 

Other D&T projects at Wheatfields include applying their Science learning about electrical circuits to create a circuit with lights and buzzers to bring a 2D or 3D character to ‘life’ and recreating old recipes from different time periods. In Year Four, the children make Viking bread and in Year Five they make vegetable turnovers using seasonal, locally grown vegetables– considering the impact of rationing and the ‘Dig for Victory’/‘Grow Your Own’ initiative from World War Two.