We provide high quality resources that help pupils to improve their results in the STEM subjects. Our team includes award winning teachers and former senior and principal examiners from across a range of examination bodies. We understand that raising attainment and supporting the progress of learners is key to developing outstanding learning and teaching.
We provide high quality resources that help pupils to improve their results in the STEM subjects. Our team includes award winning teachers and former senior and principal examiners from across a range of examination bodies. We understand that raising attainment and supporting the progress of learners is key to developing outstanding learning and teaching.
Sustainability is a crucial part of Design and Technology and one of the topics at GCSE where pupils frequently make mistakes or show an incorrect understanding. This 20 page PowerPoint resource has been written by a former senior examiner for one of the three main examination boards and has been tried and tested with students in the classroom.
It introduces the 6Rs (rethink, reduce, refuse, repair, reuse, recycle), explains to learners what each means and shows how each can be used. It also introduces activities to help students to remember the 6Rs and demonstrate the knowledge needed for the examination.
It is suitable for the both the current and new GCSE D&T courses where sustainability and/or the 6Rs is covered by the specification.
What teachers have said about this resource:
'Thanks for this resource - well made and very useable for my students.' - SG
This is a 12 slide PowerPoint presentation prepared by an experienced, award winning teacher and former senior examiner to assist in the delivery of the systems approach knowledge as part of the Engineering and/or D&T GCSE 9-1 specifications. It could also be used as a training resource to support colleagues unfamiliar with or new to this area of the specifications.
Included is an overview of what makes a system, examples of input, process, driver and output devices, the use of block diagrams and feedback. Four exam style questions are presented so that students can test their knowledge and understanding.
Create outstanding customised starters and plenaries for your Food Preparation and Nutrition lessons in minutes!
This resource contains over 60 slides. Its objective is to support literacy in the new GCSE in Food Preparation and Nutrition, by focusing on key terms in food safety. The slides include picture recognition, cloze questions and anagrams. Simply copy and paste the appropriate slides for your own lessons.
This is suitable for use to support teaching of the new GCSE in Food Preparation and Nutrition or at Key Stage 3. It has been written with direct reference to the AQA specification, but due to common content could be easily adapted for courses from other awarding bodies.
Create outstanding customised starters and plenaries for your Design and Technology lessons in minutes!
This resource contains over 80 slides. Its objective is to support literacy and numeracy in the new GCSE D&T, by focusing on key terms in designing and design issues. The slides include picture recognition, cloze questions, anagrams and numeracy problems. Simply copy and paste the appropriate slides for your own lessons.
This is suitable for use to support teaching of the new GCSE in D&T or at Key Stage 3. It has been written with direct reference to the AQA specification, which has been approved for first teaching in September 2017.
This resource is a set of time saving marking grids for providing formative feedback to students and recording improvements in their performance. It is linked directly to the 2014 Key Stage 3 Design and Technology National Curriculum. It has been used successfully in the classroom as presented, but can be adapted and modified to suit individual school and departmental requirements. It has been created by an experienced middle leader and advisor for the subject.
A marking grid is provided for each bullet point of the programme of study, split into the strands of Design, Make, Evaluate, Technical Knowledge and Cooking and Nutrition. The grids also include criteria for literacy and presentation skills within Design and Technology.
In addition to the main marking grids two types of student self assessment sheets have been provided as a bonus resource, one of each type for each strand of the curriculum.
Included in this Resource:
Instructions on how to use the resource and an example of how it can be used.
A marking grid for each bullet point of the KS3 programme of study (19 in total).
Student self assessment sheets - two types for each strand of the programme of study (10 in total).
Setting cover work can be a time consuming and difficult process that often has to be completed at short notice. That's why we created our Key Stage 3 D&T Cover Pack!
This is a pack of resources designed to help teachers and department leaders save time when setting cover work for Key Stage 3 Design and Technology classes. It contains a mixture of one-off cover lesson design tasks, literacy and exam style worksheets and mini-projects for covering longer term absence.
This resource does not include Food Preparation, Cooking and Nutrition. A separate cover pack will be made available shortly for this subject.
Included in this pack:
15 pupil activity sheets ideal for setting as one-off cover lessons. These are mainly design based activities but also cover other elements of the design process.
3 five lesson mini-projects with PowerPoint presentations and worksheets needed for delivery. Ideal for covering longer term absence.
30 worksheets focussing primarily on literacy and exam skills within D&T. Ideal as short tasks within cover lessons, or for when pupils have completed other set cover work.
Teachers' notes explaining best use of the resources.
Create outstanding customised starters and plenaries for your Design and Technology lessons in minutes!
This is a full subject pack of the following resources, presented at a discounted price (seven resources for the price of six), each written for the AQA specification.
Starter or Plenary Slides for NEW GCSE D&T - Electronic Systems and Mechanical Devices
Starter or Plenary Slides for NEW GCSE D&T - Energy and Forces
Starter or Plenary Slides for NEW GCSE D&T - Environmental, Ecological and Social Issues
Starter or Plenary Slides for NEW GCSE D&T - Designing and Design Issues
Starter or Plenary Slides for NEW GCSE D&T - Manufacturing Tools, Equipment and Processes
Starter or Plenary Slides for NEW GCSE D&T - Materials and Material Properties
Starter or Plenary Slides for NEW GCSE D&T - New and Emerging Technologies
Each resource contains between 60 and 100+ slides. Their objective is to support literacy and numeracy in the new GCSE D&T, by focusing on key terms across the main topics of the GCSE specification. The slides include picture recognition, cloze questions, numeracy problems and anagrams. Simply copy and paste the appropriate slides for your own lessons.
This is suitable for use to support teaching of the new GCSE in D&T or at Key Stage 3. It has been written with direct reference to the AQA specification, which has been approved for first teaching in September 2017.
This resource provides a form in an Excel format that can be used to carry out the risk assessment of Design & Technology workshops.
Electronic copies can be used when updating the risk assessment, saving time by reducing the need to re-enter data or values that have not changed. The format used is based on that recommended in the D&T Association publication 'Risk assessment in Secondary Schools & Colleges Design & Technology Teaching Environments'.
Included in this resource:
An Excel spreadsheet tool to assist in carrying out risk assessments of D&T rooms.
Notes explaining the effective use of the resource.
This is a PowerPoint explaining the common command words that could be used in exam questions for the subject, alongside a sample question and answer for each type of question.
In order to maximise exam performance, it is vital that pupils fully understand the questions that they are being asked so that they are able to answer them effectively. This can make a huge difference to the grades that they achieve. In addition, with the increased emphasis on literacy in schools it is more important than ever that pupils can understand exactly what they are being asked to write and demonstrate a good command of the English language when presenting their answers.
This PowerPoint based resource, written by a former senior examiner, is designed to be used by teachers in class to guide pupils through the common command words that could be used in AQA GCSE Food Preparation and Nutrition examination questions. These include which, state, give, describe, explain and discuss. It can also be printed/placed on a VLE for students to use as part of their GCSE revision. In addition to an explanation of each command word, the resource also provides a sample question and answer for each, giving pupils clear examples of how to structure their answers to each type of question.
This resource is an example of a departmental maintenance schedule. It was prepared by an experienced Head of Design & Technology and Engineering (HOD) and a Health & Safety Consultant. It was initially intended for use in the HODs own school, to provide guidance to the technician on which activities to carry out on a daily/weekly/termly basis.
In use, the technician enters the date on the relevant table and ticks off the activities carried out. This allows monitoring of the activities and provides a record of the maintenance carried out.
Please note that for use in other schools, it will need to be edited and customised for the specific processes available and working environment. Some blank lines have also been included for school-specific additions.
This resource is designed to support Assessment for Learning in OCR A-Level Design and Technology.
This resource, written by a former senior examiner, presents an approach that has been proven in classrooms to raise attainment. It breaks down the NEA criteria into a series of easy to understand statements in student friendly language. It supports both self assessment and peer assessment, thus enabling students to identify their own areas for improvement.
It can also be used to support teachers in understanding and applying the assessment criteria for A-Level D&T. It has been developed from an approach used for GCSE D&T courses; this was developed by a former senior examiner and applied in his own classroom with great success, typically improving value added by more than one grade.
Included in this pack:
Teachers notes, including an introduction to using Assessment for Learning (AfL) and how to use the resource.
Tables listing the specific requirements to achieve the marks in each section of the NEA, written in ‘student-speak’, alongside tick boxes for self and peer assessment.
An editable version of the tables to allow for teacher customisation.
The ‘tick-box’ tables can be used either individually or as a booklet by students, to support improvements in their own attainment.
This resource is a PowerPoint presentation designed to improve teacher understanding of systems theory and systems diagrams.
This resource includes an introduction to systems and key terms such as input, process, output, sub-system and feedback. It also provides an additional 23 slides showing examples of systems diagrams ranging from simple three block systems typical of the level found at key stage 3 Engineering and/or D&T, to complex systems including sub-systems and feedback, typical of the higher end of GCSE Engineering.
This resource can be used to support the training of teachers in this topic area, for example, through presentation at department meetings or in teacher CPD time, or by individual teachers to develop their own knowledge and understanding of this topic.
Create outstanding customised starters and plenaries for your Design and Technology lessons in minutes!
This resource contains 60 slides. Its objective is to support literacy in the new GCSE D&T, by focusing on key terms in new and emerging technologies. The slides include picture recognition, cloze questions and anagrams. Simply copy and paste the appropriate slides for your own lessons.
This is suitable for use to support teaching of the new GCSE in D&T or at Key Stage 3. It has been written with direct reference to the AQA specification, which has been approved for first teaching in September 2017.
A series of 19 worksheets designed to support literacy in Design & Technology, focused around the use of ACCESS FM for product analysis.
This resource comprises of:
A pdf document containing a series of worksheets.
A PowerPoint presentation, giving the answers to the worksheets.
The worksheets are designed to support literacy in technology, through the use of key terms, the development of correct recall and spelling. The worksheets range in difficulty from simple, such as wordlinks or missing letters, to more complicated, such as codebreakers or crosswords.
For some worksheets there is a differentiated version, where the possible answers are shown in a box below the puzzle. These versions could be used to provide additional support to lower-ability learners.
A series of 16 worksheets designed to support literacy in Design & Technology, focused around the design process.
This resource comprises of:
A pdf document containing a series of worksheets.
A PowerPoint presentation, giving the answers to the worksheets.
The worksheets are designed to support literacy in technology, through the use of key terms, the development of correct recall and spelling. The worksheets range in difficulty from simple, such as wordlinks or missing letters, to more complicated, such as codebreakers or crosswords.
For some worksheets there is a differentiated version, where the possible answers are shown in a box below the puzzle. These versions could be used to provide additional support to lower-ability learners.
These cards provide easy to follow instructions for 39 outstanding starters and plenaries. That's more than one great idea to try each week of the academic year! All have been proven to work in the classroom across Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4.
This digital version of the cards is presented as printable A4 PDFs of both the front and back of the A6 cards (4 cards per A4 page) - ready for laminating and guillotining.
This resource includes:
39 outstanding starter and plenary activities (four per A4 page) as digital files for printing and/or laminating to create a set of cards (front and back of cards provided).
Word templates to assist in the delivery of some activities which may require worksheets for pupils/students to use.
This is an independent research task for learners to build and consolidate their knowledge of composite materials, using the aviation industry as a theme. It can be set as a homework or class based activity, or a mixture of both. Supporting the main task sheet is a short test that can be used to assess what the students have learnt at the end of the task.
This resource is suitable for supporting learning in Engineering, Product Design and Resistant Materials at key stage 4. In addition to developing subject knowledge the resource is also designed to help learners improve their independent learning skills and examination technique.
Included in this resource:
Suggestions for use.
Main research activity sheet/handout.
15 minute test set in the style of a short examination.
Mark scheme for the test.
Schools use attainment criteria to facilitate the assessment of progress. However, the Secretary of State for education has disapplied the attainment criteria previously used for Key Stage 3 Design & Technology. One of the weaknesses of the previous attainment criteria was that there was no direct link to progression at Key Stage 4/GCSE Engineering. This disapplication gives the opportunity to adopt new assessment criteria, which more accurately reflect the development of skills that will be assessed in GCSE Engineering.
The following descriptor statements are based on the NEA assessment criteria in the new GCSE 9-1 Engineering specification. They were developed by a group of examiners for use in their own classrooms. They were not prepared by, and have not been approved by, any exam board.
This is an Excel spreadsheet based tool to assist Design & Technology departments in ensuring that they are addressing all of the requirements of the National Curriculum 2014 Programme of Study.
Every project or significant activity in Key Stage 3 Design & Technology should be evaluated to determine which areas of the National Curriculum 2014 Programme of Study (PoS) are being addressed. Across any Key Stage as a whole, learners should have the opportunity to address every area - this will normally be achieved by addressing different requirements across several different projects. This resource can be used to identify areas where action is needed to improve how well the PoS is addressed.
Schools use attainment criteria to facilitate the assessment of progress. However, the Secretary of State for education has disapplied the attainment criteria previously used for Key Stage 3 Design & Technology. This disapplication gives the opportunity to adopt new assessment criteria, which more accurately reflect the development of skills that will be assessed in GCSE 9-1 Design & Technology.
The following descriptor statements are based on the NEA assessment criteria in the new GCSE 9-1 Design & Technology specification. They were developed by a group of examiners for use in their own classrooms. They were not prepared by, and have not been approved by, any exam board.
