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Design Technology at St. Catherine’s School for Girls
What is Design and Technology?
Design and Technology is a practical-based subject. Students develop D&T capability through combining their designing and making skills with knowledge and understanding to enable them to design and make products.
As well as having its own distinctive knowledge, understanding and skills, D&T also requires students to apply the skills, knowledge and understanding from other subjects, especially art, mathematics and science. The students’ imagination, creativity and Inventiveness are stimulated as they develop products to meet precise specifications.
Why do students have to study D&T?
Design & Technology is a subject which recognizes that we spend most of our time PLANNING and MAKING things that affect our own lives and the lives of others.
As adults we are required to carry out a wide range of activities drawing on an increasing range of knowledge, understanding and skills. Frequently we must make choices and decisions, usually working in teams.
The D&T curriculum acknowledges that the world of work is a complex, rapidly changing environment in which young people must learn to be flexible and to negotiate with others in order to solve problems by developing functional and wider skills for learning and life.
Students will develop their D&T capability through three types of activity. These include:
- design and make assignments in which the students pupils put their capability to work to develop a product that meets real needs
- focused practical tasks in which students develop and practice particular skills and knowledge;
- product and applications tasks in which students explore existing products, and use what they find out to add to their own repertoire of skills and knowledge and understanding.
How do we measure success?
Successful learners are students who enjoy learning, make progress and achieve. Students will be given target & aspirational target grades to help them achieve their full potential in Design & Technology. Self and peer assessment will be integrated into lessons and form part of assessment as well as more formal end of module tests. Tracks will be completed every six weeks to help students and parents monitor progress.
We aim to help students become confident individuals who are able to lead safe, healthy and fulfilling lives. We also encourage students to be responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society.
In Design & Technology students will address the five areas related to the ‘Every Child Matters Agenda’
- Be healthy
- Stay safe
- Enjoy and achieve
- Make a positive contribution
- Achieve economic well being
Key Stage 3 – Year 7,8,& 9
At St. Catherine’s School for Girls, students in their first three years, in the Design & Technology Faculty, follow a coordinated course designed to meet the requirements of the National Curriculum in Design & Technology.
Through the Design and Expressive processes the students are encouraged to respond to visual, tactile and technological problems, learning that there is always a variety of possible solutions through which to express their ideas or with which to solve a particular problem.
Students will work with four distinct materials spending ten weeks in each area;
- Resistant Materials (Wood, Metal & Plastics )
- Textiles
- Food
- Systems and Control
Key Stage 4
GCSE courses are offered in the following subjects:
Catering
Child Development
Graphic Technology
Textile Technology
Enrichment Activities
Students are offered the opportunity to take part in both local and national competitions such as Future Chef, Make it With Mince Challenge and Young Enterprise. Recent successes include: Georgina Ellis, third in the Make it With Mince South East Regional Competition and Sophie Owen, runner-up in the Kent Local Heat of Future chef
Students in KS4 are also given the opportunity to attend after-school clubs to complete and improve aspects of their course-work.
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