-120x120.gif)
Your child will be a lot more critical while thinking about, constructing and evaluating his or her designs (which, at this stage, the Government says must cover a wide range of materials, including textiles and food)
What will they learn?
Research must be carried out and children become more aware of how professional designers and the manufacturing industry work. For example, during a lesson about healthy soups, they think about the objective - to encourage people to eat more fruit and vegetables. They must understand the properties of the ingredients so that they can apply this understanding when designing their dish. This may mean classifying foods by their sources (animals, crops and plants, organic, local or import) and nutritional information (from healthy eating guidelines, for example). They must select ingredients with different functional properties and think about the effects of varying these ingredients (sensory and cost, for example).
Your child will use ICT to evaluate and present information about the choices made; to say whether these meet the objectives; to show how problems were tackled; and to suggest how any improvements could have been made.
Lesson examples
Here are some lesson examples
Year 7s learn about how evaluation informs the design of products, for example, how choice of material can help control costs and how product development often responds to the demands of consumers, as with character toys.
‘Pastry-wrapped sweet and savoury products suitable as a finger-food' is the design brief given to pupils in Year 8. They carry out scenario activities and discuss ingredients and processes that could be used for the product, explaining why they made particular choices.
A teacher disassembles a battery-powered hand-game to allow his class of Year 9 boys to see and discuss the circuitry inside. He then shows the boys what materials, components and equipment could be used to make their own games.
