Year 10 Product Design – Child’s Toy project

Topic: Child’s toy

Year Group: 10

Focus: 1. Preparation for GCSE NEA. This project will touch on each of the 5 key areas that  students will work on during their NEA coursework

What we will be learning

• Students will receive the context of “A child’s toy” as a starting point, in the same way that they will receive a context at the end of year 10 as their starting point for their GCSE coursework
• The will carry out research into this context exploring different problems and possibilities for products that could fit within this context such as toys to develop gross and fine motor skills, toys for play therapy, toys to help children with special needs, educational toys etc…
• Students will find a real life client that they will interview and create the product for. The client may be the parent of a child depending on the age of the child
• Students will write their own design brief and specification for the project
• Students will generate a wide variety of design ideas and then model and test these ideas arriving at the most suitable and best one with help from their client
• Students will then manufacture the product, test it out and evaluate the whole process

Why is this important? Where does this link to future/past learning?

• This project replicates what will happen in the GCSE NEA so links really closely to the tasks that will happen in the future.
• It also brings together all of the skills being developed since year 7 in a “practice run” before embarking on the real thing.

How will this topic be assessed? Formative and summative

• Formative assessment and feedback happen each lesson through teacher questioning and advice on work in progress and completed. Students also have broad targets in their sketchbook that act as a scaffold for them to reflect on their work and generate their own personalised action plan for improvement in their learning. These targets are linked to “DIRT” activities aimed at building independence and metacognitive skills within the students
• Students design and manufacturing skills will be assessed through comparative judgement and rank order of projects which accounts for 50% of the students overall mark for term 2.

What make a strong piece of work in this topic, and what can I do to stretch myself in this topic?

• A strong piece of work is creative, unique and uses a variety of processes and techniques that have been carefully chosen to arrive at a solution that the student is proud of and their client is happy with
• The student’s sketchbook displays a rich variety of investigative techniques and creative potential solutions. It also clearly documents the design process and the mistakes they made and struggles they overcame on the way to arriving at that final solution
• The final piece is manufactured very accurately and finished to a really high standard using appropriate finishes
• In order to stretch themselves in this project students should ask lots of questions about how their research can be improved, what techniques they could use, and work to be as independent as possible in trying to find that really unique and special solution.
• Students should also practice their sketching skills (Product Design Maker Youtube channel is excellent to help with this) and also develop your CAD skills by practicing how to use Onshape and TinkerCAD.