Building Success: The Final Engineering Workshop of the Year

On Thursday 16^th May we enjoyed hosting a group of Year 7s from St George’s School Windsor for our very last DT & Engineering Workshop of this academic year!

Jeff Fuller, DT teacher at Leighton Park, gave a quick introduction to the class before the students got to work creating their own Lego car prototypes. After everyone had built a car that could climb the mildest slope, the session relocated into a classroom to enable the children to learn about the iterative process and watch a few demonstrations.

Now that they were aware of the iterative design process, the students went back to their Lego cars with new insights into how to enhance their model to enable it to climb a higher hill. The Year 7 students in worked hard to design, build, and refine their LEGO Technic cars with some very creative solutions.

Anand’s favourite part of the DT &Engineering Workshop was “modifying the vehicles” whilst George said he enjoyed “improving my car”.

In addition to offering opportunities for experiential learning, the workshop promoted tenacity and learning from mistakes because not every attempt resulted in success—some cars even reversed or flipped down the ramp. However, the children were not deterred and continued to build impressive iterative car designs, especially as they weren’t scared to break the whole vehicle down and start over again.

The kids conveyed their enjoyment and wish for further time to investigate and create more vehicles. Herbie commented that the session would have been even better “if we had more time to build the Lego cars.” Teachers John Williams and Herman Padam, teachers from St George’s Windsor, concurred, saying, “The boys would have loved to have stayed for the afternoon”.