Teaching Design and Technology 3 - 11

Douglas Newton

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781446237533
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

?Douglas Newton?s Teaching Design and Technology gives encouragement to creativity in younger pupils. Aimed at ages 3-11, it contains a variety of suggestions for activities providing more than just a collection of ideas, there are many suggestions that might help children plan and work towards quality products? - The Times Educational Supplement

?An excellent book which is both thought-provoking and extremely practical. The philosophy and history behind D&T is enlightening and very entertaining, whilst the numerous ideas for practical activities make it a ?pick up and use? book. Unusually, it provides a wide range of activities for children as young as 3 up to 11 years of age, and detailed lesson plans demonstrate how they can be presented in class. The problem-solving approach taken by this book supports views on ?best practice? as described in the government publication ?Excellence and Enjoyment?. As the focus in education is on developing a more creative curriculum, this book is a must for both experienced teachers and students alike? - Linda Johnston, Head at Sedgefield Hardwick Primary

?This book is packed full of sound advice and good ideas interlaced with the essence of what Design and Technology in primary schools should be? - David Jinks, Jerwood Laureate

?A very practical book, which focuses on sound advice from an expert in D&T education... Here you will find a wealth of ideas for putting into practice.

What shines through is the depth of experience that Newton brings to the work... This is an invaluable resource for any primary school and deserves to be widely read. I have no doubt that teachers will rate it highly? - Primary Science Review

?This very readable book gives a wealth of simple interesting examples of technological development that will be appreciated by children throughout the primary school... Very practical general teaching advice is given throughout... a valuable resource for trainees and teachers who lack experience in this subject? - Journal of Education for Teaching

Training to teach Design and Technology? Need ideas for your lessons? Want to refresh your D&T teaching?

Professor Douglas Newton?s succinct guide to teaching design and technology uses ideas that have been road-tested and developed over his many years of teaching and of training student teachers and practitioners.

Assuming no prior knowledge, this straightforward book will quickly help you teach D&T in the primary school and D&T-related activities in the very early years. It gives you ready-made lesson plans and banks of teaching ideas for immediate use in your classroom.

Written for the busy trainee and teacher, this practical book features:

-A clear account of the nature of D&T and what is expected of you.

-Time-saving, photocopiable worksheets to help children grasp problems, develop ideas and plan.

-Lots of activities for the children, some set out in step-by-step detail.

-Advice on helping children make progress and on assessing their work.

-Looking ahead: some guidance for the aspiring teacher on preparing for curriculum leadership.

-Helpful chapter summaries.

CHAPTER 1

What is Design and Technology?

Just the words Design and Technology (D&T) make some people nervous. What comes to mind are enormous machines in factories, personal computers, helicopters, holograms, photocopiers, robots, space stations, mobile telephones and televisions. But we tend to overlook the enormous number of familiar things we have around us that are neither complicated nor expensive: brooms, forks, egg whisks, pencils, erasers, sticking plasters, torches, toys, paper weights, mitts, mixed fruit drinks, buttons, teabags, rubber boots, safety rulers, spinning top: no book is long enough to list them all. Children can understand things like these. What is more, they can design and make simple things like these themselves and solve practical problems with a small number of tools and materials. D&T need not be complex and doing D&T does not have to involve rolls of blueprints or machines. So, what is it?

Inventions that solve practical problems

Design and Technology is the process of inventing or improving things to satisfy practical needs and solve practical problems. Think of a ball of wool in a shop window. The shopkeeper wants to attach a price tag. The problem is that some ways of attaching a tag could damage the wool. Then no one would buy it – think of those annoying holes that some tags make in garments. But, if the tag is not attached firmly, it could drop off. What is the solution? One solution is to cut out a rather broad, blunt arrow-head from thin card. The ‘pointed’ end is pushed into the ball of wool and the price is written on the piece that sticks out. Being V-shaped, the card does not fall out and, made from thin card, it does not damage the wool. This is just one solution and you could probably think of others. Simple practical problems like these that can be solved in many different ways are very useful in the classroom. They give the children the opportunity to be creative and solve the problems in their own way.

Here is another practical problem. Think about a pile of loose sheets of paper on your desk. Someone walks past and the papers fall to the floor and become mixed-up. How can you prevent that happening? You might, for instance, put the sheets in order and push a pin through one corner. This was how papers used to be attached to letters and, of course, you would probably catch a finger on the pin as you took the letter from the envelope. The pin is a solution, but not an ideal one. Something cheap that can hold a few pages together without injuring those who handle them is needed. The improvement is, of course, the wire paper clip, invented by the Norwegian, Johan Vaaler in 1899.

Ideas can come from anywhere. Temporary fasteners for items of clothing are an obvious need and the button and the zip are two solutions. In the 1950s, George de Mestral was walking in the countryside in Switzerland and noticed that burdock seed heads – burrs – clung to his clothes. A microscope showed him how they did it. Each spine ended in a tiny hook. This hook solves the problem of seed dispersal for the plant but de Mestral went on to use it to make another solution to the problem of fastening clothes, Velcro^®. This has tiny plastic hooks on a strip of fabric. Another strip has tiny loops. When the two are pressed together, hooks and loops engage and keep the strips together.

Often, inventions do not solve a new problem but improve upon an existing solution. Take clothes-pegs, for example. Originally, these were split twigs bound at one end, but after a while, the binding becomes loose. An improvement was to make a one-piece wooden peg, but these have a tendency to split so there was still room for improvement. The next step was a peg with two wooden legs held together by a spring. After that, the wood was replaced by a plastic material. This peg would not split but it is still not perfect. Sunlight and use weaken plastic pegs and they tend to snap. New designs for clothes-pegs continue to appear.

Inventions in history and everywhere

Inventing things to solve practical problems or make things work better is not something new. People have done it for thousands of years. Remarkable evidence of this comes from the frozen, 5000 year old remains of a man found in the mountains on the Austrian–Italian border. He was wearing a fur cap, a cape and leggings. Around his waist was a belt with a pouch to hold his fire-making materials. His leather shoes were lined with hay to keep his feet warm and he wore a cloak made from grass over his clothes to shed rain like a thatched roof. He had a flint knife in a plaited sheath, a bow and some arrows and, like a modern hill-walker, a backpack. He even carried a medicine kit containing a fungus that could be used to deal with infected wounds. These are solutions to some of the most fundamental problems we all face: keeping dry and warm, collecting and preparing food, carrying things and keeping healthy. Amusement and entertainment, though not essential for survival, are also needs that people seek to satisfy. It was no different long ago. For instance, a toy crocodile made from wood was found in an ancient Egyptian child’s tomb. Its lower jaw was held in place by a simple hinge and when a string was pulled, the jaw would snap shut. We can easily imagine this child pestering her brothers and sisters with her snappy crocodile, just like a modern child would do. In China, at much the same time, people were playing flutes made from hollow bones and in the Middle East, they were making lute-like instruments using natural fibres for the strings.

All people face practical problems and try to solve them, no matter when or where they live. For example, enormous waterwheels were constructed in India centuries ago. They were used to irrigate fields by lifting water from rivers. The Greeks and Egyptians constructed water clocks because sun dials do not work at night and cannot indicate small intervals of time clearly. The Chinese made a clever earthquake detector that rocked to and fro in response to a tremor. The motion made balls fall into the mouths of metal frogs. Nor is ingenuity confined to adults; children all over the world use what is to hand to make their toys.

Inventors: men and women

Customs, past divisions of labour and the way history is written can give the impression that inventing is something done mainly by men. This is not the case and probably never was. Men and women solve problems in whatever they do. For instance, if your life is centred on domestic affairs, you will tend to meet domestic problems. In 1893, Josephine Cochran invented the dishwasher. Presumably, she saw the tiresome drudgery of washing dishes by hand. In 1904, Annie England patented a spoon that would hook over a treacle-tin so that it dripped into the tin, rather than made a mess on the table. Perhaps she had had enough of mopping up sticky treacle when using a conventional spoon. In the same year, Sophia Turner patented an ear-flattener. When asleep, children may lie on their ears in a way that makes them stick out. The ear-flattener was intended to prevent this. Presumably, she had noticed the problem when caring for children and set out to solve it. A more noisome problem is that of washing nappies. Whoever deals with that soon wants an improvement and in 1951, Marion Donovan invented the disposable nappy. Such concerns arose from domestic problems. When your concerns are elsewhere, so is your inventiveness. For instance, in 1870, Margaret Knight, a shop assistant in Boston, invented a satchel-bottomed paper bag, still used today. Presumably, she saw the need and how such bags would make life easier.

At about that time, Stanley Webb, a butcher, patented ‘Webb’s Improved Skewer’. Being a butcher, he would need something to display the price of his products. His solution was a thick wire spike with a curly top to hold the price ticket. Men have a problem with the daily growth of beard hair. For many years, the solution was to scrape off the hair with a ‘cut-throat’ razor, an implement which is hard to use, hard to keep sharp, and scary. K.C. Gillette solved the problem in a better way, with the disposable razor blade fitted into his safety razor. If you spend a lot of your time dealing with paper, your problems will often be paper-related. There will have been times when you had a mug in one hand, a biscuit in the other and found you needed a third hand for your papers. Dominic Skinner recently solved that problem by making a mug with a biscuit shelf so you need only one hand for your coffee and biscuit.

The point is that the situation makes the need. Sooner or later, someone will have a go at solving the problem or satisfying the need. If women had beards, K.C. Gillette might have been a woman. If Stanley Webb had worked with treacle, he might have invented the hooked spoon. If Margaret Knight had worked in Webb’s shop, she might have invented the price ticket skewer. If men had been the ones to wash nappies, it could have been a man who invented the disposable nappy. The practical problems you meet are determined by your situation. Change it and you meet different problems, some of which you may solve.

This is not to say, however, that boys and girls do not develop their own interests and ways of responding to the tasks you set. These can even support what you are trying to achieve. For instance, some girls may care enormously about the appearance of their design plans. As a consequence, the drawing and written work they hand in can look good. But take care not to think in stereotypes. Do not assume that all girls are like this or that no boys are like this.

Solving practical problems can also be the concern of businesses. They look for opportunities and seek to make a product that satisfies a need (or desire) and fills a vacant niche in the market. So, for instance, we have washing machines for the household market, electric hand drills for the DIY market, paving blocks for the building industry and self-service restaurants at motorway stops.

But invention and innovation are not the exclusive preserves of large companies. Mary Phelps Jacob, prompted by the appearance of her corset under her gown, invented a ‘backless brassiere’ in 1913 and sold the idea to a corset company. Ladislao Biro, working independently, invented the ballpoint pen in the 1930s. Working as a secretary, Bette Graham saw the need for a paint to cover typing errors so she invented Liquid Paper then, in the 1950s, manufactured it herself, eventually selling the business to a larger company. More recently, James Dyson spent years working alone on his ‘cyclone’ vacuum cleaner before it appeared on the market. At the same time, the products people create are not always devices that you pick up and use in the conventional sense of the term. Arthur Wynne, for instance, was a journalist who had the problem of providing something to entertain people in the 1913 Christmas issue of his paper. His solution was the crossword puzzle.

Not all inventions are successful or serious but inventing them can be fun

Inevitably, we are surrounded by inventions that are successful. Think of the sweeping brush, the eraser, pens and pencils, bed springs, and the mass of other items we often take for granted. Those that do not make it just disappear. Some years ago, Clive Sinclair invented the C5, an open-topped buggy for getting around town. It used a battery-powered washing machine motor to propel a lightweight body big enough for one. On the surface, this affordable, electrically-propelled buggy sounds like a good idea yet very few people bought it. Compared with the conventional car, it could not compete so that was the end of it. The patent records are full of ideas that never made it. Children, however, do not know of these and so have a distorted image of invention. They may think that all inventions are good and make it onto the market.

In Japan, there is the Art of Chindogu. A Chindogu is an invention that solves a problem but it is more effort than it is worth or creates another problem or is simply not something we would want to do. For example, if a baby has reached the crawling stage, why not put him or her to good use as a mop? Sew mop heads onto her romper suits and set her free on the floor. Why struggle with an umbrella? Fit one to your hat. Never burn your tongue again. Use a plastic tongue-cover. A Chindogu is an invention that simply amuses you. Inventing can be a lot of fun.

D&T and children

What does D&T have to offer children? First, the made world is a very significant part of life for most children and adults. Through D&T, children can begin to understand the made world and have well-founded confidence in dealing with issues in it. They can, for instance, think about what makes a good product, choose wisely from competing products and begin to learn what influences designing and making. Second, learning to solve practical problems benefits from practice and guidance. In D&T, the child can learn to handle ill-defined problems that have many acceptable solutions. People with this capability have a certain kind of independence and autonomy. Third, D&T gives opportunities to acquire or supplement various life skills, such as working co-operatively and communicating effectively. Fourth, because D&T can draw on knowledge from any area of experience, it can serve a useful function in tying knowledge together for the children, making it more concrete and meaningful and memorable. Fifth, learning about D&T and engaging in it prepares the way for further learning and, in the longer term, employment for some. But children cannot acquire all of this at once. It has to be staged.

The 3 – 5 stage

An early stage relates to children between 3 and 5 years of age. This tends to be referred to as the early years, pre-school, or foundation stage. In practice, this stage overlaps with the period of compulsory schooling in the UK so that it includes children in the reception or first class of the primary school. There are various guidelines for practice in this stage. For instance, in England, these organize the curriculum into six ‘learning areas’: personal, social and emotional development; communication, language and literacy; mathematical development; knowledge and understanding of the world; physical development and creative development. In Wales, the areas are similar with the addition of bilingual and multicultural understanding. In Scotland, expressive and aesthetic development is included while in Northern Ireland, ‘early experiences in Science and Technology’ is a specific inclusion. Broadly speaking, these curricula are not subject-centred but prepare the children for what they will do later. For consistency, this stage will be referred to as the early years stage or by reference to the age range it encompasses (3 – 5 stage). The children in it will be decribed as very young children if describing them otherwise would be ambiguous.

D&T-like activities can make a useful contribution to any of the learning areas of the early years stage. It can, for instance, help the very young child acquire new ways of working and confidence in working independently and with others (as when using scissors to cut out shapes for a greetings card and sharing them with others). It can provide opportunities to explore, predict and experience the satisfaction and pleasure of simple problem-solving and making activities (as when finding a way to help Winnie the Pooh move a large box). It can provide opportunities to describe, explain, discuss and use pictures for ideas to support their thinking (as when choosing an animal to make). There are opportunities for learning ways of doing things, like how to make copies of the same shape (as when making ladybird ‘wings’ from card), counting, and measuring by comparison. Both through the contexts used and what is made, children can add to their knowledge and understanding (as when they find that ladybirds have six legs and are harmless to people). Practical activities are opportunities for very young children to increase their planning and manipulative skills and hand-eye co-ordination (as when making a tail that will wag for a shoe box dog and the children have to work inside and outside the box at the same time). Open parts of activities give children the opportunity to make decisions and try out their ideas (as when deciding what the picture on a greetings card will be).

The 5-7 stage

The next stage applies to children between 5 and 7 years of age. These are firmly in the period of compulsory schooling. In England and Wales, these children in state schools are subject to the Key Stage 1 requirements of the National Curriculum, of which Design and Technology is one subject. (In Wales, by 2008 the term, ‘Foundation Phase’, will describe the period 3 – 7 years of age and a revised curriculum will apply). The requirements in Northern Ireland and the National Guidelines for Scotland include technology as an aspect of The World Around Us and Environmental Studies, respectively. This period of schooling will be referred to as the 5 – 7 stage. The children in it will be decribed as younger children if describing them otherwise would be ambiguous.

How the children’s day is organized is for the school to decide but, even where subjects are specified, this does not mean that younger children will have subject-centred lessons. A single, interesting topic may be used to achieve goals in a variety of subjects. Often, a topic will provide a meaningful context for D&T and younger children may not notice the move from one subject to another.

The exercise and development of thinking skills is also generally expected in the 5 – 7 stage. These include:

• information-processing skills (D&T can contribute here when, for instance, you have children search through pictures of playgrounds to find a range of play equipment to model);
• reasoning skills (as when you ask children to expl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Biographical
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by David Jinks
• Preface
• Chapter 1 What is Design and Technology?
• Chapter 2 Thoughtful Designing and Making
• Chapter 3 Teaching Designing and Making
• Chapter 4 D&T-Related Activities for 3 – 5 Year Olds
• Chapter 5 D&T Activities for 5 – 7 Year Olds
• Chapter 6 D&T Activities for 7 – 11 Year Olds
• Chapter 7 Talking About D&T
• Chapter 8 Helping Children Make Progress in D&T
• Chapter 9 Assessing D&T
• Chapter 10  Subject Leadership in D&T
• Further Reading
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index