Design and technologies / Foundation to Year 2 / Design and Technologies Knowledge and Understanding

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Curriculum content descriptions

Explore how technologies use forces to create movement in products (ACTDEK002)

Elaborations
  • exploring how the principles of push and pull are used in the design of toys, for example in a spinning toy such as an Aboriginal mammandur
  • identifying, and playing and experimenting with, components such as wheels, balls, slides, springs and available local materials, tools and equipment to solve problems requiring movement
  • selecting materials to demonstrate how material properties are appropriate for particular designed solutions, for example materials that enable sliding or floating
  • exploring a system such as a marionette or Indonesian wayang kulit shadow puppet to see that by combining materials with forces movement can be created
  • combining materials and using forces in design, for example designing the door on a cage or a simple conveyor belt to move materials short distances
  • exploring how to manipulate materials using a range of tools, equipment and techniques to create movement, for example when constructing a toy boat that floats and moves
General capabilities
  • Critical and creative thinking Critical and creative thinking
ScOT terms

Mechanical energy,  Engineering

Video

Different paper plane designs

How many different paper plane designs are there? Lots! Watch as Dylan Parker, paper plane expert, demonstrates some of his favourites. Notice the way the different shapes and features of the planes cause them to move through the air in different ways. Which one do you like the most? Why not have a go at making something similar?

Video

Use your creative thinking skills!

Ashwini Ranjithabalan from Women in Engineering and IT at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) sees engineering as the business of solving future problems. What are some of the challenges we (and our societies) might face in the future? Get some friends together and see if you can brainstorm a list. Now choose one ...

Video

Thinking about the design process

Watch as UNSW student and Blusat member William Frohlich talks about the design process. What are some of the important things to consider before you start to make a project? Why does William say it's important to be flexible with your designs? Design your own obstacle course for your family using objects from around your ...

Interactive

Sites2See: Astronomy for primary

A small galaxy of sites and resources, from Galileo making discoveries that changed our view of the universe, to new images and understandings from Hubble, on a page tailored for Primary students.