Design & Technology topics explained for parents
Design and technology runs from Year 1 to Year 9 and covers designing, making, evaluating, technical knowledge, and cooking and nutrition. Children begin with simple structures, mechanisms and healthy eating, move on to mechanical and electrical systems and savoury cooking, and in secondary school work with specifications, microcontrollers and computer-aided manufacture. Schools choose the actual projects and materials, so what your child makes will vary.
Key Stage 1 design and technology
Key Stage 2 design and technology
- Analysing existing products
- Cams, levers and linkages
- Cooking savoury dishes
- Series circuits in products
- Design criteria and evaluating work
- Gears and pulleys
- Grown, reared, caught, processed
- Inventors and designers who shaped the world
- Choosing materials
- Healthy and varied diet
- Programming and controlling products
- Prototypes, patterns and CAD
- Strengthening and reinforcing structures
- Research and design criteria
- Seasonal food
- Sketches and exploded diagrams
- Using tools accurately
Key Stage 3 design and technology
- Gears, levers and mechanisms
- Communicating design ideas
- Computer-aided manufacture
- Biomimicry and user-centred design
- Identifying design problems
- Writing a design specification
- Electronic circuits and systems
- Sensors, actuators and microcontrollers
- Understanding user needs
- Impact and responsibility of designers
- New and emerging technologies
- Nutrition and healthy eating
- Studying designers and engineers
- Kitchen skills and techniques
- Properties of materials
- Cooking savoury dishes
- Seasoning and adapting recipes
- Choosing materials by properties
- Source, season and ingredient properties
- Workshop tools and machines
- Beams, frames and forces
- Testing and refining a product