Ch 5 Ch 1

Safety is entered as a professional discipline on day one, not an add-on: hazard, risk and control are the working vocabulary of the room. The built environment is established as the subject's object of study — shelter and settlement as human needs with environmental consequences.

Specification learning outcomes: 1.1, 1.10, 1.11, 1.12, 1.13

Key learning

• Describe current health and safety regulations as they apply to the Construction Technology classroom and to construction sites, and explain why each exists.
• Apply risk management strategies and current safety protocols, including the appropriate use of Personal Protection Equipment, in their first workshop activities.
• Collaborate with others in maintaining a safe working environment — the safety gate through which all later workshop work passes.
• Describe the natural and built environment, emphasising the critical role of shelter and settlement in human existence and its impact on the environment.

Checked by: Safety quiz · safety gate · Ch 1 check

Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4

Design excellence in housing; heritage as a living context for contemporary design rather than a museum piece; site and planning as the point where design meets regulation and place. Sustainability threads through: orientation and shading as design decisions with energy consequences, conservation as repair-versus-replace judgement.

Specification learning outcomes: 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9

Key learning

• Analyse elements of architectural design in the built environment and evaluate the features that contribute to design excellence in housing.
• Recognise the importance of architectural and built heritage in influencing a contemporary built environment, and justify measures for the preservation and sustainable management of buildings.
• Assess sites for a domestic dwelling and describe the planning process, using site layout conventions correctly (north point, boundaries, access).
• Communicate design thinking through freehand plans, elevations and annotated sketches — orientation, shading, form and massing.

Checked by: Ch 2 / 3 / 4 tests · assessed site sketch + site map

Ch 6 Ch 7

Universal design as design for everyone across a lifetime, not special provision; lifecycle thinking (embodied impacts, reuse) as the frame for material choice. Together the two ideas complete Strand 1's argument: good housing design serves people and planet at once — and both are examinable through the same verbs teachers will meet in the specification: evaluate, justify, analyse.

Specification learning outcomes: 1.14, 1.15, 2.1, 2.2, 3.15

Key learning

• Describe and apply principles of universal design relative to a domestic dwelling, and evaluate the social and lifelong impacts of universal design for occupants.
• Discuss the environmental impact of materials, considering the lifecycle of materials in the built environment.
• Justify how the sustainable use of materials can reduce the impact on the environment.
• Analyse the environmental impact of building design, choice of materials, and construction techniques.

Checked by: Ch 6 / 7 tests · cumulative check 1 · Christmas examinations

Ch 8 Ch 14 Ch 15 Ch 16

The core learning shift of the course: a dwelling is not a collection of separate elements but an integrated system in which structure, enclosure and performance depend on the interaction of connected components. Three continuous barriers — moisture out, heat in, air controlled — must be traceable through every junction; the 1:5 complete-the-detail discipline makes that continuity visible and examinable. Building Regulations (TGDs) enter wherever a detail touches them: DPC, radon, thermal continuity.

Specification learning outcomes: 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.14, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, 3.13, 4.9

Key learning

• Describe different types of construction materials, their properties and their appropriate use, and justify the selection and suitability of materials in design decisions.
• Explain the principles of the building fabric as an integrated system — substructure and superstructure, not a list of separate elements.
• Explain how the fabric performs its functions: shedding water, retaining heat, controlling air movement and moisture, and resisting the loads placed on it — including resilience to a changing climate.
• Complete and label construction details at 1:5, maintaining the continuity of the moisture, thermal and airtightness layers through every junction, and interpret the graphical conventions used to communicate detailing.
• Read and interpret construction drawings as sources of information about how a dwelling is assembled.

Checked by: Ch 8 / 14 / 15 tests · four 1:5 junctions · drawing-reading task · cumulative check 2 at Easter

Ch 17 Ch 18 Ch 19 Ch 20

Applying fabric-as-system knowledge to judgement: retrofit as intervention in an existing system (with risks at every junction), passive design as the fabric doing the heating, wellbeing and ecology as design outcomes rather than afterthoughts. The five-stage design journey (My Design Journey) is experienced end-to-end at practice scale, so the real ECE brief in 6th year is familiar ground.

Specification learning outcomes: 1.4, 3.2, 3.4, 3.10, 3.12, 3.14, 3.15, 3.16, 4.1, 4.2, 4.6, 4.9, 4.10

Key learning

• Evaluate retrofit strategies for existing dwellings, complete retrofit junction details (external wall insulation at sill and eaves) and identify the risks where retrofit is done badly.
• Explain the principles of passive and low-energy housing — solar gains, shading, thermal mass — on an annotated section.
• Assess how buildings affect the health and wellbeing of their occupants, including daylight and ventilation.
• Justify ecological design measures such as rainwater harvesting and green roofs.
• Synthesise the year's construction knowledge in an A3 whole-house section, foundation to ridge.

Checked by: Chapter completions · A3 whole-house section · house examinations (Chapters 1–20)

Ch 21 Ch 22 Ch 23

Regulation as the codification of everything Year 1 taught — each TGD clause exists because a junction fails without it. Comfort as measurable (temperature, humidity, air movement, surfaces) and condensation as physics, not bad luck. Heat transfer as the mechanism beneath U-values: the calculation is introduced as a layout to be mastered, in the examination register from the first attempt.

Specification learning outcomes: 3.14, 3.17, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.10

Key learning

• Identify and apply current building regulations and standards (TGDs) as they apply to domestic dwellings — including applying Part L and Part M to their own Year 1 drawings.
• Explain the factors that determine comfort in the indoor environment, and assess condensation risk in a room.
• Explain the principles of heat transfer — conduction, convection and radiation — on a house section.
• Set out a U-value calculation in the examination format (λ and R values), the layout that Unit 7 will bring to full speed.

Checked by: Regulation task · Ch 22 / 23 checks · ECE brief expected (★ SEC)

Ch 24 Ch 25

Airtightness as the third continuous barrier made rigorous: standards, testing, and the discipline of an unbroken line on plan and section. Energy performance as arithmetic the examination rewards: λ → R → U → rate, amount, cost — one layout, practised to reliability. Operational carbon as the reason the arithmetic matters. In the ECE, the design journey's middle stages: investigation conclusions feeding a design solution, and design closing in an agreed, buildable plan.

Specification learning outcomes: 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9, 4.10, 4.11

Key learning

• Explore airtightness standards, methods, materials and testing for a domestic dwelling, and complete an airtightness detail at 1:5 (window head).
• Describe ventilation systems and their suitability for domestic dwellings, and set out a ventilation strategy on plan with the airtight line marked.
• Calculate U-values and the rate, amount and cost of energy loss in a dwelling — worked under time, in the examination layout.
• Discuss the environmental impact of operational carbon, comparing energy demand and cost with tables and graphs.
• Assemble a calculation portfolio: one clean layout per calculation type.

Checked by: Ch 24 / 25 tests · calculation sign-off · ECE: design → agreed plan

Ch 26

Heating completes the term's argument: regulation set the standard, physics explained the loss, airtightness and insulation reduced the demand — heating meets what remains, from the most appropriate source. Completing given heating drawings (pipework, pumps, valves) is the examination register for services: read the system, complete it, label it.

Specification learning outcomes: 4.12, 4.13, 4.14, 4.17, 4.21

Key learning

• Discuss the appropriateness of energy sources used in the built environment.
• Evaluate different space heating systems for a domestic house and describe how they distribute heat.
• Describe the integration of renewable energy heat sources into a hot water system (solar thermal and cylinder), and analyse the integration of renewable energy systems into a dwelling.
• Consolidate the term's Strand 4 learning: one drawing per chapter, from memory.

Checked by: Ch 26 test · cumulative check 3 at Christmas

Ch 27 Ch 28 Ch 29 Ch 30

Services as systems to be read, completed and labelled — the same register as heating: intake to outlet, always in sequence, always protected (water conservation, electrical safety, treatment before discharge). Smart control as the layer that manages the services the unit has assembled, evaluated rather than admired. The unit's calendar is dense by design: services teaching runs while the ECE closes and the CSA opens — the planner's week-by-week is the load-bearing document.

Specification learning outcomes: 4.15, 4.16, 4.18, 4.19, 4.20, 4.22, 4.23, 4.24, 4.25, 4.26

Key learning

• Describe the functions of components and systems in cold and hot water supply, and illustrate their design layout — including conservation measures.
• Identify the design principles of drainage systems (surface versus foul), illustrate pipework layouts, and explain on-site wastewater treatment and its contribution to water conservation.
• Explain how electrical energy is delivered through intake and consumer unit, explain the principles of electrical safety, and illustrate the wiring layout of a dwelling.
• Evaluate how smart technologies contribute to the efficient use and management of services.
• Integrate the four services in a full layout for a given dwelling — the assessed synthesis.

Checked by: Chapter checks · pre-examinations · assessed services layout · ECE submission (★ SEC) · CSA partials

All strands · revision

Revision as retrieval and rehearsal, not re-teaching: the junction details, calculation layouts and craft sequences already exist — this unit brings each to examination reliability and uses the pre-test to make remaining weaknesses visible while there is still time to close them.

Learning outcomes: revisits outcomes across all four strands — no new outcomes introduced

Key learning

• Complete examination-register junction details of choice, under time, to examination standard.
• Produce clean calculation layouts under time for every calculation type in the portfolio.
• Demonstrate CSA readiness: tools, sequence and timing rehearsed under prescribed-task conditions.
• Identify and close individual weak areas ahead of the summer term.

Checked by: Cumulative check 4 · CSA pre-test — the full three hours

All strands · revision

The written paper rewards exactly what the two years practised: completing and labelling details, clean calculation layouts, notes-and-sketches reasoning, and judgement verbs — evaluate, justify, analyse — applied to unfamiliar cases. The drawing bank turns thirty chapters into thirty rehearsed drawings; the final fortnight targets, it does not tour.

Learning outcomes: revisits outcomes across all four strands — no new outcomes introduced

Key learning

• Complete practice papers under examination conditions and act on the review of each.
• Apply course knowledge in unfamiliar contexts (Higher level) — the discriminating skill of the written paper.
• Compile the drawing bank: one key drawing per chapter, redrawing the weakest until reliable.
• Complete the Craft Skills Assessment in the SEC three-hour session (week 27).

Checked by: CSA — SEC three-hour session (★) · practice papers · state examinations in June