CONTENTS
Draft curriculum content
This page is based on the draft Year 8 content for Technology, which is currently open for feedback. Schools are not required to implement changes until the consultation process is confirmed.
Have your say:
In Year 8, your child works on more complex projects that follow a rigorous design process and its application to real-world challenges.
They explore how all parts of a system interact and combine the use of physical and digital tools to plan, test, improve ideas, and create reliable outcomes. Students learn to make thoughtful, ethical, and culturally informed choices with their designs, materials and final products. This prepares them for specialised learning in Years 9 and 10.
Design and innovation#
With your child, you could:
- encourage them to identify small problems at home and brainstorm creative solutions, for example, making a storage system for waste products
- ask them about what they are creating in their Technology lessons and to explain why they made particular design choices, and how their solution helps people or solves a problem
- look at spaces in your home and question the layout and how it could be improved or made more comfortable
- get them to help you with putting together new furniture from flat pack kits, can they understand and follow the instructions? What do the little drawings and symbols say?
- create specific criteria for an outcome they want to make, for example, a garden planter needs to be a certain size, use strong materials, be durable and weatherproof, what colours, shapes or patterns would look best?
What the teacher will focus on#
Teachers support students in developing their critical thinking skills to refine design briefs. Students practice iterative design, fine-tuning their combining, testing, and refining of materials through collecting feedback and ongoing testing and evaluation. They focus on local contexts, taking into account culture, environment, and the people. They analyse existing solutions and expand on their ability to evaluate the performance and functionality of products.
For example, by the end of Year 8, your child may be able to:
- develop creative and practical designs for products and environments that balance purpose, functionality, aesthetics (how things look), and sustainability, for example, designing packaging that is useful and biodegradable
- use an iterative design process that improves over multiple versions and is informed by feedback from peers and evaluation
- understand that design considers a wider context, for example, the whole lifecycle of an outcome, where do materials come from, how long is the product meant to be used, and what happens at the end of its life?
- use technical drawing skills and techniques to communicate ideas and plan for making.
Materials and ingredients#
With your child, you could:
- encourage experimentation and perform a taste test of different ingredients or meals, thinking about how they taste, smell, look and feel
- explore a product at home that has broken or failed, how could it be improved?
- look at items that you throw away in your household rubbish, how could these products be redesigned and redeveloped to reduce waste?
- test and trial a product made for a person, and look at what information was needed to help the design; for example, a knife handle uses information like hand size, grip comfort, and material texture to help develop the design
- make biotechnology and food products safely at home together, exploring the benefits, such as homemade yoghurt, lip balm, and popcorn with personalised flavours
- practise making dishes from cultures different from your own, Pākehā, Indian, Pacific Island, Māori, and discuss the protocols, whakapapa and histories of preparation.
What the teacher will focus on#
Teachers support students in understanding that materials and ingredients can be modified by following established testing processes and taking careful steps to meet the design brief and achieve the desired results. They use the tests they’ve done to make the best changes for the problem they’re solving.
For example, by the end of Year 8, your child may be able to:
- understand how materials behave, interact, and can be used safely to make products, for example, testing bioplastics, recycled materials, making lip balms, soap, sunscreen or food ingredients
- make products that are functional, safe, and suitable for their purpose by considering specific characteristics, for example, designing a sustainable snack bar that has eco-friendly packaging
- conduct reliable and fair tests, trials and experiments to improve the design of technological outcomes – learn that failure helps to inform design
- create clear specifications (criteria) based on technological knowledge and understanding of the design context, and use these criteria to review and refine designs
- explore and compare processing and manufacturing methods to select the most suitable one for the desired outcome, considering its impact, cultural practices and values, and innovative techniques.
Systems and control#
With your child, you could:
- encourage them to explore products that combine different types of systems, and look at how the different components work together, like in an automatic garage-door opener (electronic/electrical/mechanical)
- explore a digital system, like a computer and its related digital devices, and think about what the different parts do, for example, keyboards and mice provide input, the hard disc stores the data and uses electronic components to function, and outputs can be monitors, headphones and printers
- consider a simple electrical circuit and compare how different components can influence it, for example, a standard light switch turns lights on and off, a dimmer switch controls the current through resistance to make the light bright or dim, and a motion sensor turns it into a security light.
What the teacher will focus on#
Teachers help students to continue exploring different types of technological systems (mechanical, electronic, electrical, structural and digital). Students will use diagrams to explain how different parts of a system interact, including the input-process-output relationship. They are beginning to integrate electro-mechanical elements, such as motor-driven mechanisms, and document mechanisms, forces, control methods, and connections using appropriate conventions.
For example, by the end of Year 8, your child may be able to:
- understand how technological systems work by breaking the systems into diagrams with subsystems and exploring how feedback can help to control the system, for example, traffic lights and an automatic washing machine
- understand and make simple electronic and electrical systems, describe what the system does, and use knowledge of components and their colour codes, such as resistance colour codes on a resistor (resistors help electricity flow smoothly), to improve the design
- explore the combining of technological systems, such as electro-mechanical systems, and discuss how energy, forces, control, and materials affect the system.
Digital technologies#
With your child, you could:
- explore programming with tools like Scratch games, Piskel animations, or Minecraft Edu models, and use other creative software together
- play a video game using a cellphone, controller or a VR headset, and discuss how it encourages you to play through sound, movement, and vibration, challenge them to think about how the gameplay could be improved
- discuss what you know about Artificial Intelligence (AI), challenging them to consider both its benefits and drawbacks, and encourage critical thinking about its impact on our lives and society.
What the teacher will focus on#
The teacher will focus on computational thinking to teach programming. They will continue to apply the concepts they’ve been learning about digital devices, data storage, organisation, and programming in purposeful activities. They will deepen their understanding of how digital systems work, considering security, ethics and citizenship. They question the positive and negative impacts of Artificial Intelligence tools on people and society.
For example, by the end of Year 8, your child may be able to:
- describe how data is collected, stored and encoded on a computer; for example, how images, text and audio are saved
- start to practice using appropriate file formats and selecting code compression for a purpose
- use algorithms (logical step-by-step instructions) that make a game or robot work correctly, and digital tools to solve problems and test solutions
- collect their own data in real-world contexts and use spreadsheets and visual graphs to reveal patterns and interpret data
- evaluate how digital solutions and emerging technologies affect people, communities, and the environment, considering ethical and sustainable practices, for example, developing a digital project that tracks energy use or waste
- understand and question that information can be faked, misleading, or harmful
- begin to evaluate when AI is suitable or unsuitable for a task.
