Design & Technology
KS3
At Key Stage 3, our learners are given opportunities to build on skills, knowledge and understanding acquired at Key Stage 2. They design familiar items that draw upon a range of skills and practical processes, and manufacture quality products that meet the needs of the target user. Focus areas include Resistant Materials, Product Design, Systems and Control and Food and Textiles, and learners use handcraft skills and CAD CAM to create their final proposals. Learners follow the design process to:
- Research design problems
- Generate ideas that suit the given brief
- Communicate their design proposals to the target audience
- Plan out a logical sequence for manufacture
- Manufacture high quality products using a range of materials and ingredients
- Critically evaluate the success of their work
Projects draw on the local ethos, community and the wider world, as learners seek to identify needs and opportunities and respond creatively to problems. During Key Stage 3 learners produce a broad variety of functioning outcomes and learn to design with increasing levels of independence.
GCSE Product Design
Product design helps pupils at Brynmawr Foundation School to design products that work. The students are taught how to find out what people want, to understand their needs and to design products for them. Our aim is to develop designers who can re-appropriate existing designs and explore emerging technologies in a playful way and use them as a creative medium throughout the design process. Learning draws upon IT skills and traditional designing methods to produce a folio of work and a manufactured product. Candidates will acquire a set of usable skills including:
- Sketching, rendering and product styling techniques
- Manufacturing skills, including Quality Assurance and Quality Control procedures
- Modelling using a variety of techniques to produce both functional and aesthetic prototypes
- Reverse engineering, product development and evaluation techniques
- Use of CAD/CAM packages in designing and making original products
This course is a combination of traditional drawing and ICT based modelling to encourage learners to acquire skills in the production of a range of outcomes. Learners use software packages such as 2D/3D CAD modelling and DTP to manufacture stylistic 3D products.
CONSTRUCTION Level 1/2 Vocational
WJEC Level 1/2 Award in Constructing the Built Environment
The WJEC Level 1/2 Award in Constructing the Built Environment is designed to support learners to develop an awareness of trades in the construction industry. It mainly supports those who want to learn about the construction industry from the build perspective. It provides learners with a broad introduction to the different trades involved in the sector and the types of career opportunities available. It is mainly suitable as a foundation for further study. This further study could provide learners with the awareness of the work of different types of job roles in the sector such as plumbers, carpenters and bricklayers. As a result, they may wish to start an apprenticeship or continue with their studies in order to pursue those job roles.
Safety and security are important considerations for those involved in construction projects. This may relate to commercially sensitive information such as tenders or construction designs and working in potentially unsafe environments. Safety and security relates to belongings, environments and people, whether they are colleagues or members of the public. All projects need to be planned. Some projects will last for months or years and need a Project Manager with several staff involved. Smaller scale projects, like refurbishments, might only involve one or two people throughout. All projects involve drawings and/or specifications which use international standard symbols and terminology which must be interpreted. From this technical information, calculations have to be made to identify resources required before the build process takes place.
This structure has been designed to allow learners to develop the understanding and skills related to a range of job roles in construction. The units provide an overview of technical roles such as bricklayers, carpenters and electricians as well as professional roles such as site inspectors, project managers and architects and how they work together to completion construction projects. Each unit has been designed so that knowledge, skills and understanding are developed through tasks that have many of the characteristics of real work in construction. Each unit has an applied purpose which acts as a focus for the learning in the unit. This approach is called applied learning and enables learners to learn in such a way that they develop:
- skills required for independent learning and development
- a range of generic and transferable skills
- the ability to solve problems
- the skills of project-based research, development and presentation
- the fundamental ability to work alongside other professionals in a professional environment.
The qualification has been devised around the concept of a ‘plan, do, review’ approach to learning, where learners are introduced to a context for learning, review previous learning to plan activities, carry out activities and review outcomes and learning. This approach mirrors many work-related activities in construction and also provides for learning in a range of contexts from urban to rural environments in mainly small scale construction projects. As such, the qualification provides learners with a broad appreciation of work involved in the constructing the built environment and wider opportunities for progression into further education, employment or training.