Think Like An Engineer

At Rode Heath Primary school, we believe in encouraging our children to be curious about the world around them and are committed to providing an environment where they can develop real-life skills such as creative problem-solving. Following on from our hugely successful Out of This World Space project, we have developed a new whole school initiative Think Like an Engineer, which will be documented in these pages.

The Think Like an Engineer project stems from our involvement with the Tinker Tailor Robot Pi project run by Lynne Bianchi from Manchester University. Over the course of 2015-2016 we learned about Engineering Habits of Mind and introduced the concept of Tinkering to our Year 3 & 4 classes. This proved to be so successful that we decided to take the idea EHOM further and independently developed our own Engineering Log Book to give to each child from Reception up to Year 6.

Contained in the log book is a series of engineering levels through which children will progress as they rise up the school. Reception children will start as technicians and move towards achieving the role of senior engineer by the end of Year 6. The log books contain tables of competencies at the back which children will need to meet before they can move on to the next engineering level. These are based on the UK Standard for Engineering Competence which have been rewritten into I can statements.

The aim of the project is to develop a collection of engineering activities to be carried out by individual year groups. Ideally these will span a wide range of engineering disciplines from mechanical and electrical, through to chemical, software and environmental. Where possible, engineering activities will be linked to an aspect of the science curriculum for that year group.

Central to each unit will be the Engineering Design Process (EDP): ask, imagine, plan, create, improve.  Emphasizing the EDP will help us to foster pupils’ questioning and creativity, and allow pupils to enhance their problem-solving skills. We will also be encouraging children to develop Engineering Habits of Mind (EHoMs) and translate these working practices to other areas of the curriculum.