Design and Technology at Senacre Wood

At Senacre Wood Primary, we love getting stuck in with designing, creating, building and evaluating. Using their creativity skills, pupils design and make products aimed at real and relevant problems.

The children have lots of opportunities to develop their creative and technical skills, whether this is experimenting with a range of tools in their weekly Art lessons, or building, constructing and cooking during their Enquiry based learning.

In EYFS, the children have a wide range of construction to plan, design and make exciting models and structures, including rockets, bridges and zoos! Oak class are taught how to handle tools and objects safely.

In KS1, the students at Senacre Wood apply lots of design skills across the curriculum. Ash Class spend lots of time selecting and using a wide range of materials, they love junk modelling in the classroom and at home! To round off their Term 2 enquiry, the children in Ash Class prepared and made fat balls for the wildlife at Senacre Wood.

Beech Class focus on designing and making, and are learning how to improve their technical knowledge. In Term 2, the children are designing and creating castles as a part of their History enquiry – ‘How do I protect my Kingdom?’ They will be using a wide range of materials to create their models, and during the evaluation process, will consider how they could have made their structures stronger.  

Rowan class devote time in their Enquiry and Art lessons to practise using a wide range of tools and equipment accurately. Throughout the year, they link their Design and Technology learning to their History, Geography and Science enquiry. In Term 1, the pupils were very hands-on with researching, designing and making different settlements. They focused on joining and finishing their creations, and had to think outside the box when it came to choosing their joining materials as masking tape was strictly forbidden! The structures had to survive an intense evaluation to see if they met the design criteria. Miss Gallagher sprayed the settlements with water, shook the table to test if it was windproof and even used a hair dryer to test to see if they were heatproof!  

Willow Class practise a range of Design and Technology skills. In Term 2, they focus on the Cooking and Nutrition areas of our curriculum. As a part of their Enquiry, they have been learning about Thanksgiving in America. They will be thinking about the multiple stages of baking bread, and will be developing food preparation and baking skills when making the pumpkin seed wholemeal bread in class. To further enhance their cooking and nutrition skills, Willow Class will be taking a trip to Living Land 2022, to explore how food gets from farm to plate. 

Maple Class have lots of Design and Technology planned for this academic year. The pupils kick-started the year with a virtual workshop with the V&A. The class were (virtually) joined by artist Gayle Chong Kwan, and investigated a range of museum objects. After developing their creative thinking, Maple Class used ‘waste materials’ as a starting point to experiment and create an imaginative design prototype. Other DT includes developing an electronic greeting card, using circuit components and designing and making Victorian toys with moving cams.  

In Sycamore Class, the pupils are encouraged to be independent thinkers. They research and select from a wide range of materials. In Term 2, the class are linking their DT learning with their Enquiry – ‘Is my route to school safe? The pupils will be creating motorised vehicles. Throughout the Spring terms, Year 6 explore wartime and evacuation. The children apply the skills involved with preparing and cooking dishes safely and hygienically, focusing on popular foods from the 20^th century wars.