New Waltham Academy Pupil Voice

Design Technology

We value the views of our pupils and hold termly informal chats with groups of pupils from EYFS - Year 6 to hear what they think about each subject. We worked with mixed groups of children so that we get opinions and ideas from throughout the school.

February 2024

In our pupil voice this term, we focused on what the children enjoy about their design and technology lessons. Teachers also held discussions with the children about what they had voiced previously (see February 2023) and actions subject leaders have made, to act upon some of these things. Children understand that leaders cannot change everything, but that their voice and opinions are taken into consideration.

February 2023

What have you enjoyed making in DT?

EYFS – have made models from boxes and tubes sticking them together with sticky tape.

Year 1 – Designing a teapot, designing and making a vehicle for Beegu

Year 2 – Designing and making a vehicle for Beegu

Year 3 – Designing and making a toy based on the type played with long ago.

Year 4 – Designing and making Wooden toys including wooden mazes, wacky racing cars, pull long toys

Year 5 – Designing a coat based on Joseph and the technicoloured dream coat, using colourful fabric to show the design.

Year 6 – Designing and Making catapults using spoons, rubber bands and wood

               Enjoyed the building bridge challenge using just art straws and testing the result for strength.

What do you like about DT most of all?

Many children said they enjoyed the designing as well as the making, but most said they enjoyed the making bit best.

Some children like the decorating the finished design because I can use my imagination and make it colourful.

Some said they like how you can embrace your creativity.

Some the process of taking an idea and designing then making it.

We learn new skills like drilling, hammering, gluing, carving, cutting, sanding down, colouring, painting.

Year 6 said they like how they work on designs and look at ways to improve them and make them more successful.

What have you learned?

They learned the processes: designing, building, decorating and evaluating.

We have to be adaptable and patient when making because it doesn’t always go according to plan.

What would you like to do more of in DT?

In Year 2, would like more time to free choose his designing build not always following a given project.

Designing and making more food based projects.

Designing new products for sale in shops, which could be packaging products completely new ideas or following a given brief.

Older children would like to use ICT more in their designing process.

First, we discussed the question 'What is DT?' and we collected our thoughts and ideas. We gathered these together by working collaboratively and created a word cloud using all of the words that we associate with DT. These ideas are displayed below: