It’s nearly 16 months since we last enjoyed an engineering visit at Rode Heath, and even then, it was only virtual, with engineer and entrepreneur, Laurence Cooke, engaging our pupils over a 45-minute Zoom.

So it was with huge pleasure that we welcomed seven engineers and scientists from the Dalton Nuclear Institute and Sheffield University – in the flesh – to teach our KS2 pupils about Nuclear Engineering..

The event had been a long time in the planning and significant thanks go to our science governor, Dr Paul Nevitt – Science and Technology Director at the National Nuclear Laboratory – for introducing us to Rachel Law, Outreach & Communications Office for the Dalton Nuclear Institute, who brought the team together.

Inspiring role models

We couldn’t have asked for better role models for our pupils. The energy and enthusiasm they shared for their areas of expertise was infectious. Nuclear Energy is not the simplest subject matter to convey to primary aged children but the group managed to both energise and educate our learners over the course of the day, as evidence from the work that was produced clearly shows.

It all started with an assembly, led by James Mansfield, PhD Researcher at the Immobilisation Science Laboratory (the University of Sheffield), who having introduced his colleagues, gave an overview of how nuclear energy is made. This was the first time since COVID disrupted our lives that the pupils have been gathered together in the hall and what an amazing re-introduction it was.

Not only did James entertain us with a word-perfect rendition of the Periodic Table song – (who knew that so many elements make up nuclear waste!) – he then demonstrated how we keep waste safe by helping one of our Year 4 pupils wrap a fellow classmate in multiple layers of clingfilm, tin foil, kitchen roll and brown paper to represent the four layers of glass, metal canister, clay and solid rock.

James measured Hattie’s temperature before and after being wrapped up. It was interesting to see that it had dropped from 24 – 19 degrees, clearly illustrating the insulating properties of the materials.

Next it was time for some activities.

Interactive nuclear stations

There were five interactive ‘nuclear stations’ set up for the children and expertly manned by the volunteers.

These included: –

1. Using robots and a ‘glovebox’ to move ‘radioactive materials’ around
2. Splitting your own atom and see how a fission reactor works
3. Using a Geiger counter to see how radioactive things really are
4. Learning more about nuclear waste disposal using a Lego model
5. Using a plasma ball to learn about nuclear fusion

Reza, who was responsible for activity 2, had designed and 3D printed two halves of a uranium atom, which the children threw ‘neutrons’ at to split. It had taken over 40 hours to print, which reminded me of our own foray into 3D printing during our ‘Out of this World’ space project.

The children were completely engrossed and asked many searching questions. The complexity of the subject matter didn’t seem to faze them at all and they were able to clearly explain the processes when encouraged by those leading the activities.

Evidence of their learning was further demonstrated back in class where each pupil was tasked with producing a poster to display their understanding of nuclear energy.

The results speak for themselves.

Huge thanks must go to Jess Paterson and Kirstie Ryan, Reza Farrokhnia, Meg Watters, James Mansfield and Tatiana Grebennikova, who expertly delivered their sessions 20 times over the course of the day – always with great enthusiasm and a smile on their face.

Exposing children to real engineers and scientists is hugely important if we wish to make them aware of the wide range of exciting STEM careers available to them. Our visitors today certainly gave our Rode Heath pupils plenty to aspire to.

Continue reading →

Sometimes it feels as though you are swimming against the tide and there have certainly been moments during our Think Like an Engineer project when the going has been tough. Maintaining motivation and direction is tricky when faced with the demands of an already over faced primary curriculum.

Support is a key to success

Fortunately, at Rode Heath we have had the support of many organisations and people who have facilitated our progress over the past four years:

• STFC who, during the initial stages of our engineering journey, provided access to engineering apprentices over a six-week period.
• Individuals such as Marc Fouldes from Siemens who has delivered regular engineering workshops to our KS2 classes.
• Visiting ambassadors ranging from Pete Lomas of Raspberry Pi fame to members of RAF Cosford offering expertise on our many whole school engineering days.
• And more recently, Cheshire East Highways who sponsored the printing of 3,000 of our Engineering Log books allowing many schools in Cheshire East to follow our programme.

For the past three years we have also taken part in the excellent Greater Manchester Engineering Challenge (GMEC), a campaign devised by the University of Manchester’s Science and Engineering Education Research Innovation Hub (SEERIH) to inspire 7-14 year olds to engage with engineering using project-based tasks linked to the National Curriculum: https://seerih-innovations.org/tinkering4learning/gmec/

All the above, I believe have been contributing factors to us continuing our efforts.

Does engineering make a difference?

One of the questions we are asked most, is what impact the project is having on our Rode Heath pupils. As teachers, we can point to increases in resilience, confidence, problem solving and communication skills, but hard evidence is difficult to find. That is why I was delighted this month to learn of the success achieved by two of our Year 6 pupils, prize winners in this year’s Great Exhibition at Home competition – an event sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering: https://www.big-ideas.org/join1851/

Isaac and Lili were placed 2^nd overall for their invention – the ‘pollution solution’ – designed to harvest plastic from the North Atlantic Garbage Patch. Moreover, theirs was the top-scoring entry for primary schools in the country, winning a trophy for Rode Heath.  This was a considerable accomplishment, as the competition was open to a wide range of pupils from Year 4 to Year 12 and had to be completed at home during lockdown.

Remote collaboration

The competition meant Isaac and Lili working together via Zoom on a 7-week STEM adventure. Each week they learned about a different invention from the original Great Exhibition and took part in an engineering challenge. The competition culminated in the production of a one-minute video which showcased their solution to the question: How can engineering help protect the planet? 

For more information about the winners follow this link: https://www.big-ideas.org/the-great-exhibition-at-home-2020-prize-winners/

You can watch Isaac and Lili’s prize-winning video here: https://youtu.be/YBBuMfKHvyM

For me, this feat validates the integration of engineering into our curriculum over the past four years and is why we will continue to fly the engineering flag at Rode Heath whilst encouraging other schools to join us.

With the curriculum currently focused heavily on maths and literacy, it is perhaps even more important to inspire children with some real-world creative learning.

 

NOTE: Any company wishing to sponsor the printing of more Engineering Log Books for schools, please contact me. You can access an example of one completed by different year groups here: https://thinklikeanengineerproject.com/ehoms/completed-engineering-log-book/ 

Gavin Williamson thinks we should go back to teaching children in rows. That is all well and good but will it help with their learning?

During lockdown, I wrote a blog celebrating the creative approach that many pupils have adopted outside the familiar school structure. Despite having limited guidance from their teachers and working in very different conditions, they have managed to cope and often thrive, gaining greater independence and control over what they choose to study.

Towards the end of June, many of these children returned to their classrooms for a few weeks and I was keen to find out what the Rode Heath contingent had gained from their experience of learning at home. The vast majority had been absent for over three months from full time education and would have had plenty of chance to reflect on the positives and negatives of not being at school.

What is the best learning environment?

As educators we have a responsibility to provide the best learning environment for our pupils so we should take the opportunity to listen to what they have to say on that topic.

To try and find out more, I put together a brief survey, which asked four basic questions:

• Can you tell me 3 things that you liked about being able to learn at home and 3 things that you didn’t like?
• Can you tell me 3 things that made learning at home different from learning at school?
• If there was work that you found difficult, how did you find out the answer without a teacher being there to help?
• Do you think that the way in which you learn something can help you to remember it better? If so, what is the best way for you to learn?

As all children hadn’t returned to school, the survey was set as a Home Learning task, which pupils either completed in school or at home. Altogether, it was done independently by 62 KS2 pupils out of a potential cohort of 116 – 32 of the respondents were girls and 30 were boys. There were also a handful of Y2 children who answered the questions in class – (7 boys and 4 girls).

As the questions were qualitative in nature, there was a broad range of answers; however, there were several themes that kept reoccurring. As ‘sticky knowledge’ is such a hot topic nowadays, I was particularly interested to discover whether children were able to reflect on whether learning from home had positively impacted their memory. If so, then replicating their experiences in the classroom would surely be worth doing.

The need for a quiet atmosphere

Most children, particularly girls, appeared to like working in a peaceful environment. Although they certainly missed their friends, being able to concentrate was thought to be a good thing.

A flexible way of working

We know that children have different needs and one rule does not fit all. The survey painted a clear picture of children welcoming the new flexibility that the home learning offered. They particularly appreciated being able to take their time over subjects that interested them and found it much more useful being able to choose the order in which to carry out their tasks. This view applied equally to girl and boy respondents. Many children enjoyed being able to make decisions about how they recorded their work too, which was clearly evident in the wealth of creativity that was displayed, particularly in science.

Teachers are essential to learning

The good news is that although parents were overwhelmingly the source of help during lockdown – with Alexa only being mentioned once – children felt that having a teacher to guide and explain things was definitely the best option.

Unfortunately, opinions as to the best methods of retaining learning were more sketchily drawn. This may have been due to not understanding the question properly, or simply that the children found it difficult to be reflective. There were some interesting individual comments however, with these elements considered important:

• getting things wrong
• doing hands-on activities
• keeping notes
• persevering and having more time to digest
• keeping things simple
• collaborating with others

One Year 6 pupil even stated that the fact that he had learned in such strange circumstances – i.e. lockdown – would make it much easier to remember everything. Probably rather dramatic as a strategy though!

One tic-tac or two?

The younger children – Year 2 – enjoyed having breaks when they liked and seemed particularly motivated by reward systems, with one child bemoaning the fact that there were no prizes as his mum was unaware of the star and pebble system, whilst another was satisfied with the occasional tic-tac.

All in all, the responses made very interesting reading – certainly food for thought going forward.

2020 has definitely been an unprecedented year and it is still unclear as to what will happen in the near future. Many schools will be running catch-up programmes from September and there will be a heavy focus on Literacy and Numeracy. But let us not forget that to learn effectively, children need to be inspired – not drilled. We need to encourage their curiosity and make them eager learners. Children tend to invest more time and energy in topics that motivate and interest them so we should provide a rich and varied curriculum that is relevant to their needs.

 

There is an argument currently running that children’s absence from school is having a detrimental effect on their learning. To some extent, and for some children, this may be true – education is naturally a collaborative, shared experience with your peers and this has certainly been more difficult in lockdown.

However, if I look at the evidence that is pouring out via social media – not only from my own school but pupils from all over the country – learning seems to be flourishing. And, I would argue, it is more valuable and has greater ‘stickability’.

Guided by innate curiosity

This is undoubtedly because children are being children – exploring by themselves, questioning things and embracing new ideas. Subject matter is not being dictated. Instead, children are following their own interests, guided by an innate curiosity which is often driven out by our rigid education system. Maths is still being done, but more purposefully – measuring the growth of beans each day; weighing out ingredients for bread and cakes; counting birds in the garden; observing how the length of shadows change throughout the day – the list goes on.

A.A. Milne puts it very well:

“Christopher Robin came down from the Forest feeling all sunny and careless, and just as if twice nineteen didn’t matter a bit, and he thought that if he stood on the bridge and watched the river, he would know everything that there was to be known.”

Just because children are not sat at a desk rehearsing their times tables doesn’t mean they are not learning.

And it is not only children that have unleashed their inner creativity. You just need to look at the wealth of amazing resources that have been generated since we closed our schools.

Science seems to be particularly flourishing during lockdown.

One of the science campaigns particularly close to my heart is the Great Science Share – https://www.greatscienceshare.org/ now offering a new theme each week for children to engage in.

Another colleague – Dr Jon Chippindall – has been delivering his ‘Daily Doses’ of science, computing and engineering since March 23^rd – definitely one to subscribe to: https://drchips.weebly.com/

Time to reflect

As a teacher, I have also benefited during lockdown, having had the time to reflect and look at my area of specialism in much more depth – gaining a much better understanding of what happens in the various year groups. There has been space in the day to research what’s out there – making new discoveries and contacts for the future. We have certainly had to think differently about how we ‘teach’ our pupils remotely, but this has offered the opportunity to plan more creatively without the ‘paintbrush’ of the national curriculum.

There are indeed many benefits that we should take advantage of in these troubled times. At Rode Heath, the impact on children’s understanding of technology has been positive with many of our primary pupils – certainly in KS2 – adapting to their lack of face to face communication by becoming proficient in Zooming.

I suspect that oral Literacy will have improved with more conversations in many families going on around the dinner table. Parents also have become extremely resourceful – finding learning opportunities in many seemingly normal day-to-day activities.

nation of innovators and entrepreneurs

So, when we do finally return in full capacity to schools, which we will, let’s not go back to our old ways of teaching. We are a nation of innovators and entrepreneurs who thrive on creativity and we should therefore nurture the independence, curiosity and resilience our children have developed during lockdown.

It’s time for us to think differently about how we educate our children. This means abandoning conventional methods and trying something completely new – putting aside the paintbrush and painting with a sock instead. Who knows what might happen?

What an amazing time we had at Rode Heath. Our normal routines stopped as we all focused on Engineering activities for the day. Although we aim to incorporate engineering into our everyday curriculum these whole school days are very important as they allow children more time to develop their skills. They also offer an excellent means of sharing the work done across the school. And, even though the topics were very similar the progression in learning could clearly be seen.

The theme for this Engineering Day was renewable energy. This was a very apt continuation of our previous theme of plastic pollution. We started the day talking about sustainable development and how we can help to protect our planet. This led to a brief look at the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals, of which Number 7 – Affordable & Clean Energy – was our target for the day.

Although the focus amongst the year groups was mainly on water and wind power; it was amazing to see the variety of different approaches taken by the teachers.

Having moved ping pong balls successfully down an arrangement of water chutes, Reception children set about making dam to contain their booty.

In Year 1, the challenge was use wind power to propel Supertato from one side of a river to another. Linking engineering to Literacy texts is something that we do very well at Rode Heath – with the bonus that it brings the story alive for children.

There was plenty of excellent questioning going on:

• Where on the mast should the sail be positioned?
• How would this effect the balance of the boat?
• How big should the sail be?
• Would bigger sails make the boat move faster?

The children were given a foam block to stick their mast into. It was up to them whereabouts in the boat to place their block.

In Year 2, the children were making wind turbines out of cardboard tubes and testing them with a hairdryer. This was to make sure that the test was fair, as it was pointed out that some people might have more puff than others!

In the afternoon they exchanged their paper blades for tin foil dishes and created water wheels – allowing many D&T skills to be covered.

In Year 3 the theme was also wind turbines but this time the children were focusing on the shape of the blades and asking the question: ‘Which combination would be the most effective at capturing the wind?’

Mr Randall had gone to town as usual and had built a K’nex model with his son, Benji, to demonstrate how wind could be used to power an LED. Generating enough wind by manually blowing proved quite difficult, so Mr Randall used his finger to get the blades going – not sure whether that is cheating, but it definitely illustrated the principle. Glad to see the class fan being used later, though – bet that was the children’s idea!

When I walked into Year 4, I was delighted to see them exploring hydropower by constructing a water wheel, which was powered by a jet of water streaming from a plastic bottle.

The design was quite intricate and had required the Year 4s to do some planning – using ‘visualising’, one of the Engineering Habits of Mind we talk about at Rode Heath. Evidence of this was their annotated diagram drawn in the Engineering Log books. Considerable skill also went into thinking how the different elements would fix together and the impact that the water would have on the glue. There was certainly much resilience needed. Fortunately, we had a parent volunteer to help out with the glue gun.

In Year 5, hydropower was also the theme. The question being asked was: How can hydropower be used to lift an object? The key to this activity was thinking about the shape of the plastic blades and their position on the cork. Children whose blades were more curved were more successful. It was also important to make sure that all the blades were facing the same way. The device was powered using the tap in the classroom. Prototypes were tested and improved.

Successful products were able to lift small objects.

The atmosphere in the classrooms is always engaging. Children are eager for their designs to work effectively. And, it is wonderful to see those children excel who are not always as academically gifted as others.

My final visit was to Year 6, who had also taken on the hydropower theme. Mr Scott had hoped to use his geography expertise to carry out a geothermal activity; however, it was felt that generating enough steam would be both tricky and most likely too much of a hazard! As the key was for children to be hands-on, they looked at the effect of low and high tides and created some very interesting examples of how this type of force could be harnessed.

At the end of the day we all came together in the hall to share our experiences. As well as the amazing array of devices, what impressed me was the confidence and eloquence with which the children explained what they had been learning and how their mechanisms worked – from Reception up to Year 6. Every presentation was different and built upon the previous work. It was clear to see, in a snapshot, the progression of learning across the year groups.

Ofsted are now very keen on teachers ensuring that their pupils retain knowledge – ‘sticky learning’ is the phrase often used. This whole day ‘hands-on’ approach surely goes a way to achieving this.

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.

I can’t believe we are nearly at the end of another school year and one which has yet again been packed full of engineering at Rode Heath. I have decided this month to let our pupils take a turn at writing – after all, good communication skills are essential if engineers wish to share their ideas with a wider audience.

To set the scene: the Year 5s are currently studying the topic of Space in science and were investigating robotic arms. One of our parents, Mr Northwood, happened to work in robotics and offered to come in to talk about his job.

Over to Liliana and Alfie . . .

“First, we had a task to balance one book or more on the back of our hands to show if there was friction. At this point, we all felt excited and ready to learn more. To help out in space, scientists have used robotic arms for many years. Space doesn’t just include science and engineering it also includes maths and especially biomimicry, which is the design and production of materials, structures and systems that are modelled on biological entities and processes.

Our next challenge was to make robotic arms out of lollipop sticks, plastic cups and sponges. Some groups were very successful as they managed to pick up a ping pong ball multiple times. Did you know the closest planets to Earth are Venus and Mars?

Then a robot expert called Mr Northwood came in. He works for Peak Analysis and Automation Ltd UK – (PAA) – which provides state-of-the-art automation technology to the pharmaceutical and chemical industries.

He told us some of the names of different robots such as: 6 axis robot, scara robot, anthropomorphic robot, tripod robot and S-LAB robot. The anthropomorphic robot acts like a human and basically does everything the same. Did you know that the tripod robot is the fastest robot in the world?  Also the word ‘robota’ comes from the Czech language meaning forced labour. We then received a microtiter plate each, which is a tub of lots of little holes that you put chemicals in and it makes a new medicine. The chemicals mimic a reaction that takes place inside the body and the medicine will stop it. If it does, the medicine will work on humans, if not you come up with a different medicine and retest. This is called Life Science and it can cost approximately £1,000,000,000 to make a new medicine.

We then got to see a robot grabber in action. This robot was very delicate and efficient. One day there might even be a robot which does your homework (not approved by us and the teachers). Next we saw robots such as: a jellyfish robot, a crab robot, a butterfly robot, a kangaroo robot, a gymnast robot and a bat robot.

Afterwards, we watched some videos about some robots falling over. We were laughing our heads off!”

 

Teaching is definitely not for the faint-hearted. You need to be resilient and able to adapt to the constantly changing environment. It’s not always easy to be creative – sometimes you just need to work on a day-to-day basis to get through the ever-increasing workload.

At Rode Heath we have been trying over the past few years to encourage other schools to follow our lead and adopt engineering into the curriculum. We have found that it has had a real impact on the way children approach their learning in other areas – they become less afraid of failure; work more independently and express themselves confidently and articulately. Girls particularly have fared well.

However, finding a space for engineering in the already over-stretched curriculum is a big ask. It takes careful planning and time – something that teachers don’t always have. One way of doing this on a smaller scale is to hold a whole school Engineering Day.

And, with the summer term approaching, this could be something to think about after SATs when the timetable tends to be slightly freer.

So how do you approach this?

Firstly, you must think of a theme. We have held various days over the past few years, including Cardboard Hacking, Marble Runs, Kite Making & Flight with RAF Cosford. Last month, because of our involvement in this year’s Greater Manchester Engineering Challenge, we focused on re-purposing Plastic.

This is of course a very topical issue and so there were plenty of resources to call on. It is important though to show progression through the year groups so the activities for each class need to be carefully considered.

Make links

One way of ensuring that each class has something different and relevant to do is to try and link the activities to other areas of the curriculum – science, computing and DT being the obvious ones. For our plastics theme, we also managed to find a Literacy text for each class. This meant that teachers could build up to the Engineering Day by using Plastic as a focus in their Literacy lessons, if they wished. These titles ranged from fiction books such as Duffy’s Lucky Escape and Captain Green & the Plastic Scene through to non-fiction titles such as One Plastic Bag and Ellen Macarthur Foundation’s – The Circular Economy for Year 6

A copy of the plan for the event can be found here: Plastics Plan for Engineering Day

The idea is to make it as simple for teachers to engage with as possible. And, if they can tick off some of the objectives they have to cover in other areas of the curriculum, then even better.

Be prepared

Obviously, if you are going to be re-purposing plastic, then you need to decide well in advance what resources you need to acquire and where you are going to store them. Parents are usually very good at responding to such requests. It is probably best for each teacher to organise their own collection.

You also need to try and make items that are not going to be thrown away at the end of the day – this rather loses the purpose.

Involve the community

It is always useful to enlist outside help for the event itself, especially if you intend to spend part of the day building products. Parents can be surprisingly handy, though it is important that you decide in advance what job they will be doing.

Given enough warning, you will find that engineers are often willing to take part. We have developed a number of strong relationships with engineering companies over the past few years including Siemens, STFC and Cheshire East Highways.

There are numerous ways in which they can assist:

• starting the day off taking part in a whole school assembly
• demonstrating equipment
• promoting their organisation
• helping with activities
• talking to children about what it means to be an engineer

In this case of our Plastics Day – we were lucky enough to have three engineers from Cheshire East Highways helping us out for the morning: Vicky, Jon and Maddison. Their contribution was particularly relevant to the theme as the organisation has started using recycled plastic bottles to create materials which are then reused in the construction of bridges. Jon brought some samples with him to show the children.

This material has recently been used in the construction of the new Wistaston Brook footbridge at Joey the Swan, which has been made with 100% recycled plastic planks.

During the course of the day, it was wonderful to be able to walk through the school and see the children so engaged in their activities. There was such a variety of learning going on. Children were cutting, sanding, fixing, programming and constructing – all with the same aim in mind, to re-purpose their plastic waste. The engineers played their part too, helping to drill holes in plastic lids and offering advice to the children were needed.

Activities ranged from catamaran building in Year 1; vertical gardens in Year 2, programming recycling trucks with Lego Wedo in Year 3; plaiting plastic bags to make skipping ropes in Year4,; constructing a Viking ship in Year 5 and designer planters in Year 6. Alongside this, the children learned about the damage that plastic is causing in the oceans; how to recognise symbols on plastic material; designed their own alternative materials and thought of ways to stop one use plastic items – all helped by some excellent BBC resources:

https://www.bbc.com/teach/class-clips-video/science-ks2-trashing-the-deep/zjk3mfr
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/11CnCQR0GJfkDgJs57sR5Ps/plastics-action

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Yesterday was the GMEC19 Pupil Challenge Day at Manchester University. This was the culmination of all the engineering tasks that schools have been working on over the past couple of months. Nobody except the event organisers knew what to expect. What were going to be our final challenges? What categories would they fall into? Would we be prepared?

These were the questions going through the minds of our six Year 5 pupils as they travelled on the train to Piccadilly station. Their excitement was palpable – it’s just a shame that we had to leave the rest of the class behind.

Fortunately, at Rode Heath, we make sure that every child has the opportunity to engage with engineering on a regular basis. We not only hold termly whole school Engineering Days and half-term Big Tinkers, but teachers actively plan engineering into their every day curriculum.

 

On arrival at Manchester University, we were led into the Great Hall where a sea of animated children met our eyes. There were some familiar faces, but many of the participants were new to the process – great news for the development of engineering in the primary sector.

In fact, there were so many schools present, that following an introduction on recycling plastic by Professor Lin Li, half of us trooped to the floor below to await our instructions.

Imagine & Plan

The first task was to design a solution for the problem of air pollution. It was amazing to see the creativity and diversity of ideas emerging.

Rode Heath pupils chose to go down the safety route, with a Fitbit type watch which alerted its wearer, via Bluetooth, when the risk of air pollution was high. As well as the band vibrating, the product included a badge which changed from green to amber to red, depending on the level of air pollution in the area. Once alerted, the person could then put on a face mask to protect themselves from the fumes. The badge was designed to warn other people of the dangers.

They chose a very apt name – Air Alert – which they changed to Awair Alert (deliberately misspelled) to fit in with their presentation.

Considering the children only had 30 minutes to come up with an idea; sketch and label their concept and create a presentation, there were some magnificent contributions in the room, including our own Rode Heath offering which you can see below:

Create & Improve

We knew this would have something to do with plastic, as we had been asked to bring a bag full; however the theme of the creation was only revealed in the afternoon – build a product to help young people in school feel less lonely.

This was something that we had been looking at in our small Year 5 group and had thought about creating an App, which would give helpful hints to children experiencing loneliness. Indeed, intrepid Isaac had even developed some prototype screens using Scratch.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Unfortunately, this didn’t particularly help with ideas for the plastic challenge and it took a number of suggestions from making homes to attract hedgehogs into the garden to manufacturing bird feeders or plant bottle gardens, before a robot pet was finally settled upon.

Once a design had been formulated, the children set about collecting suitable components for the build. Everyone had responded very enthusiastically to the call for recycled plastic and there was a veritable mountain to choose from. In addition, the University had provided various electronic equipment, including light bulbs, batteries, motors and wires – and fixing materials, all of which the Year 5s made good use of.

Time was very short and it was touch and go as to whether we would even finish. There was certainly a great deal of trouble trying to fix all the electronics onto the bottle – the masking tape was definitely not very cooperative. We probably should have opted for the glue gun. Anyway, after a massive final push, which involved white tack, elastic bands and a good deal of perseverance – the robot pet was born:

There were some amazing and innovative ideas throughout the room. It was wonderful to see children so animated and creative. I hope that schools around the country have a go at these challenges too. I can’t wait to see children’s work uploaded onto social media. Who knows what might be invented?

If you haven’t already done so, visit the GMEC19 website and download the Challenge resources: https://seerih-innovations.org/tinkering4learning/project/the-greater-manchester-engineering-challenge/

Make sure your school doesn’t miss out on this exciting opportunity!