Recently we had a visit from five Ofsted inspectors – not an official inspection but an opportunity for them to trial their latest inspection framework. Nevertheless, it was quite an intensive experience. One of the interesting points to emerge over the two days was that of ‘sticky content’. How can we as practitioners ensure that children remember what they have been taught in previous years? How can we effectively make content stick?

For children to retain all the information they have been taught over the years is quite an ask. Children tend to remember what they are particularly interested in – which surely can’t be everything. If you are continually revisiting previous learning, then you run the risk of running out of time to teach new facts, so what’s the answer?

Providing a learning experience that is both engaging and memorable is a key factor. And, perhaps more importantly, giving children the opportunity to apply their learning in real world contexts by designing, building and creating. It is a well known fact that children learn best when they are actively involved in the decision making.

Much of this can be achieved through the integration of engineering into topics that are already being taught. Perhaps a good place to start is science, from which engineers draw knowledge to inform their designs. By creating a series of end of topic activities which ask children to apply concepts they have been learning in science we are naturally reinforcing their understanding. These might include: designing a maglev train system (Y3 magnets); a burglar alarm (Y6 electricity); or designing a hand pollinator (Y2 plants).

This is something that we are going to be working on at Rode Heath from September, taking our inspiration from the award winning American STEM curriculum Engineering is Elementary – https://www.eie.org/

What we want to avoid above all is the introduction of more testing. Although these activities are a form of assessment, they will relate to the real world and provide a means of using science and mathematical knowledge in authentic ways.

The Impact of Engineering at Rode Heath

I had the opportunity at the end of the summer term to talk to a couple of Year 6 girls about their engineering journey at Rode Heath. It is now three years since we started using the log books and both Ellie and Rebecca were in my Y4 class when we launched our Think Like an Engineer project. That’s plenty of time to gauge whether our efforts have been successful.

Here they are talking about one of their latest projects:

And reflecting on their log books:

Of course, we also have children who started engineering in Reception three years ago and are now at the end of KS1. You will notice from this interview with Jack (Y2) that there is much reflection on learning.