CONTENTS
Draft curriculum content
This page is based on the draft Year 3 content for Technology, which is currently open for feedback. Schools are not required to implement changes until the consultation process is confirmed.
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In Year 3, your child develops stronger design thinking and understanding of the impact of technology on people and the environment.
They develop their ideas by drawing sketches, modelling and planning. They identify what works well and what doesn’t, and investigate how they can improve their designs. They use this thinking to refine their ideas as they make and test their creations. Students also begin to break down simple tasks into logical steps.
Design, make and innovate#
With your child, you could:
- explore how products are used at home, how well they are made, what they look like, and how and why they work, such as a spray bottle or drink bottle
- plan a simple making project, like a bookmark or baking a cake, and introduce the idea of whether materials can be reversed or not after heating or mixing
- experiment with combining and testing materials for different purposes, use recycled materials from around the home, like milk containers, fabric scraps, or wood, to build and test a small outdoor animal shelter, noticing which materials cope best with the weather
- investigate how equipment and products work safely, and how they are made, for example, looking at broken old machines, pegs, or kitchen utensils
- discuss how we follow steps or a process, for example, following a routine to get ready for school, or trialling different food properties such as taste, texture, and smell.
What the teacher will focus on#
Teachers encourage students to think critically about the impact of products on people and the environment. Students are supported to select materials, tools, and equipment that match the focus of the problem they’re solving, encouraging experimentation and evaluation.
Teachers help students learn basic skills safely and responsibly, such as joining, combining, modelling, and decorating. These activities provide them with experience in using technologies and help them make informed decisions. This is the start of understanding design as a careful process focused on what people need.
Teachers will enable students to create, follow and give logical, sequential and clear steps for simple tasks. Students will find and solve problems with their instructions through testing and trialling.
For example, by the end of Year 3, your child may be able to:
- plan and record steps in the design process, for example, sketching a model bridge
- select suitable materials, ingredients, tools and equipment, for example, choosing cardboard, string and tape to build a small structure or plant shelter by thinking about each material’s properties
- test and improve designs, for example, adjusting a toy plane to make it fly further
- identify how design choices affect people and the environment, for example, using recyclable materials to make a pest trap to keep bugs out of a garden, and asking questions about how it works and why
- identify changes that can be undone (like melting chocolate) and some changes that cannot be reversed (like frying an egg)
- understand that solving problems often requires clear, ordered steps, and that mistakes can be found and fixed, for example, by giving instructions to a friend or robot to complete a task like drawing a shape or solving a maze.
